Monday, October 20, 2008
Driving Question #1
The controversy as I see it applies to teaching English Language Learners (ELL) and Non-Standard English (NSE) speakers in the writing classroom. What responsibility do teachers of writing have in assimilating/acculturating (I am still working out the differences in my mind) students into academic discourse? For a more detailed description of this responsibility, please see the conversation started by Cassie in her comments to post #1. Thanks in advance to all contributors.
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3 comments:
Erica,
You've initiated some timely and quite interesting dialogue. I look forward to future questions and comments.
On the issue of "assimilating" ELL and NSE students, there seems to be a double bind (as prior comments on this blog have thoughtfully pointed out).
First, so-called progressive pedagogies often aim to value and promote language diversity against the backdrop of U.S. hegemonic (and xenophobic) power. On the other hand, refusing to teach Standardized Academic English literacy will marginalize students, as they will be denied access to the dominant discourse of U.S. civic and academic debate.
I tend to think of Gloria Anzaldua's renowned work Borderlands/La Frontera. If Anzaldua had written her book only in Spanish, she would have marginalized herself by limiting her audience. Furthermore, if she only wrote in Nahuatl--the indigenous language of many past and present Mexicans--Anzaldua would have marginalized herself even further. Anzaldua's English language skills permit her to speak to and critique "the belly of the beast," so to speak.
The issue is, indeed, one of power and access.
Think of this same conversation in the context of graduate education. What if your faculty denied you access to the dominant works in the field? What if you were kept from reading James Paul Gee, Andrea Lunsford, Theresa Enos, Paulo Freire, or Michel Foucault, and journals like CCC, College English, or Rhetoric Review? Clearly, we'd all marginalize ourselves and limit ourselves from ever making interventions in rhetoric and composition studies.
My grad school example is not quite analogous to the complex language politics of ELL & NSE education, but I think it's worth consideration. Another question: do we "assimilate" ourselves by becoming educated in the dominant discourses of rhet/comp? Or more importantly, are we necessarily always "assimilating" ELL & NSE students when we teach Standardized Academic English? Are there other possibilities? Other choices?
Damián Baca
My philosophy is always openness. I tell my students what my intentions are for every little thing that I have them do and the way that I do it. I tell them about my struggles with my own writing and my uncertainties with respect to my teaching, and I do so in order to de-center the classroom in a way - while acknowledging that it's also a little hypocritical to say, "Don't feel that I'm an authority figure because I, as an authority figure, told you not to" - and to show them that I am open to constructive criticism. I tell them why it's a problem, in a way, to discuss race, because it's a construction, and talking about it further propagates that construction, while at the same time, it would also be a problem to refuse to discuss race and thereby pretend that that construction doesn't exist or have any impact. And so I also tell them that, really, even though I'm most interested in their ideas and their argumentation of them, I also have to consider, when putting a grade on their paper, their communication of them in terms of conventions of grammar and punctuation - or, really, how much their departure from those conventions interferes with meaning and credibility - since language itself is a convention, and communication is dependent upon conventional meanings in order to take place at all. If I refuse or fail to use words in any way close to their typical meanings, you're not going to understand a thing I say. Academic writers must consider their audience, and standard usage is part of that.
Many institutions limit access to their online information. Making this information available will be an asset to all.
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