Containment and Cultural Issues in SLW

Containment and Cultural Differences in SLW

Matsuda's article ("The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity") closes with the directive, "To work effectively with the student population in the twenty-first century, all composition teachers need to reimagine the composition classroom as the multilingual space that it is, where the presence of language differences is the default" (649). Matsuda's main critique is against the idea that introductory composition courses at the college/university level assume that students should all be fluent speakers of what Matsuda calls a "privileged" English standard dialect. Interestingly, instead of focusing solely on non-native English speakers, he addresses containment of speakers of languages other than English as well as native English speakers whose primary dialect/L1 is one considered non-standard (or not "dominant"). To Matsuda, the problem is that addressing the issue of writing instruction and assessment for second-language writers is not a central concern for everyone in composition classrooms.

Casanave's first chapter of Controversies in Second Language Writing speaks directly to composition instructors, putting the primary responsibility for awareness of the concern of teaching writing to second-language students (Matsuda's concern) onto composition teachers. Having taught high school composition, I found myself very engaged in this chapter, thinking about my own beliefs (why I taught what I did, the way I did, when I did). While I did not have any L2 students in my classroom, many of my students wrote how they spoke: with a rural-Central Illinois drawl. I found myself battling this vernacular-in-writing, often more focused on form than content in my grading, because I felt that the students should learn how to write in (what I was taught was) Standard English (according to the grammar text). Reading this text, I recall reflecting on my teaching during my tenure; however, I never reflected deeply enough to answer some of the questions Casanave suggests writing teachers should ask themselves (why my belief systems were the way they were); and, I certainly did not have time to read, ponder, and discuss with my colleagues current research on writing instruction (obviously, they were not reading and pondering, either).

If, in the course of my years as a high school English teacher, I had had the responsibility of teaching a student from another country or culture (an L2 learner) I would have attempted to apply what I knew about teaching L1 students to instructing the L2 student. In other words, I would have relied on whatever focus I used to teach writing (creative expression, genre-based, structural-based, etc. -- probably an amalgam of these, as Hyland asserts), attempting to adapt these strategies to instructing L2 students in their writing. Admittedly, this strategy has merit. However, I would not have considered the potential (probable, really) cultural differences inherent, those that Hyland addresses in Chapter 2 of SLW. As Matsuda laments, students studying to be composition teachers do not (at least they did not when I was in the College of Education at UIUC) receive instruction on how to adapt our curriculum for L2 students. Hyland's chapters were incredibly eye-opening for me (troubling, too, actually), in that I had never considered that students from other cultural backgrounds may think about writing differently. In learning Spanish right now, I compose in English, with the form(s) I usually use (topic sentence, thesis statement, transitions, etc.), and then translate to Spanish. I never grasped that, for example, some non-Western cultures consider an indirect approach to communication as flattery to the reader. I would have marked "Needs more support! Give examples! Use transitions to show relationships!" on a student's paper...and perhaps I would be "othering" that student, denying him/her the freedom to incorporate his/her cultural background into the writing. In a way, the "containment" Matsuda is speaking of is a type of colonization: as writing teachers, we may not be traveling to other geographies in order to "civilize the natives," but perhaps in imposing a dominant standard English on L2 learners we are not to far from that.

PS -- Out of curiosity, I scouted around UIUC's College of Education requirements. I'm surprised that the course requirements have changed so much since I was there! (Just kidding -- it's been many years...). At any rate, I found this:

CI 415

Lang Varieties,Cult,& Learning

Credit: 3 hours.

For students in the elementary certification program. Introduces students to issues related to first- and second-language development, cultural diversity, and language variation. Addresses the above issues in terms of teaching and learning and serves as a base for subsequent courses that will extend these issues in the content areas. Prerequisite: Students must be admitted to the Elementary Education Program prior to taking this course.

I didn't find this course's counterpart in the Secondary Teaching requirements, but I am relieved that Matsuda's concern in the article we read for class this week is also that of at least one university. I trust other institutions have similar requirements.

Week 2, SLW: My Literacy Autobiography

My L1 Literacy Autobiography begins when I was born, I guess. My mom has shared with me that, from the time I was an infant, she talked to me constantly. And, she has specified, she spoke to me when I was young as if I were an adult. In other words, she did not speak "baby-ese" to me. The way she speaks to me now -- with the adult vocabulary and sentence structure -- is the same way she spoke to me when I was a small child.

As I grew, I was very interested in books. Obviously, language acquisition is a participation in a concert involving language reading, speaking, listening, and writing. I learned to read at an early age, was an avid talker, listened to my parents' conversations as well as those on TV programs. But I hated to write. Composing did not come as naturally to me as speaking and reading.

Writing in middle school seemed generic. My classmates and I learned sentence structure (back when diagramming was pedagogically popular), paragraph structure, and five-paragraph essays. It was in high school that purpose-specific strategies were shared with us. We practiced analysis writing by reading and responding to articles in Time and Newsweek. We composed essays and speeches as well as other genre-specific pieces (letters to the editor of our local newspaper).

As in the individuals portrayed in the case studies in Silva and Reichelt's article, I can pinpoint where and when my writing really began to "come into its own." In undergraduate courses at UIUC, I was shocked to realize that, really, I was poorly prepared to write for the situations required. I had written one research paper before I went to college. My analytical writing skills were quite undeveloped. As a psychology major -- and then as an education major studying to teach English in secondary schools -- I scrambled; I paid attention to every comment, every mark on every paper returned to me, and I set out to not make the same composition mistakes again.

While my analytical writing skills improved by leaps and bounds when I was an undergrad, it wasn't until I was in my third graduate school (here at ISU) that I finally began to learn (I feel as if I'm still learning!) how to write academically. For the most part, instructors' comments on my writing and synthesis of ideas and arguments have been helpful. However, I did encounter a time with a favorite instructor when, going over my seminar paper in a coffee shop, she scrawled on the front, "TAKE METAMUCIL BEFORE WRITING!" Apparently, I was trying so hard to sound academic that my writing was choppy, verbose, stilted, etc. My ideas and my argument were lost in a sea of verbosity. And so, since that moment, I have worked to achieve an academic style without sacrificing readability and coherence.

Silva and Reichelt's case studies touched on one more issue: writing for specific purposes. Last semester, in Dr. Robillard's Life-Writing course, we students were asked to compose two life-writing pieces. In preparation, we read other life-writing pieces (personal essays as well as longer works) as well as texts based on life-writing theory. I composed my piece. Then I changed my topic. Then life changed again, and so I felt I had something else to write about. In the end, I chose one topic, wrote a personal essay about it, revised it, and submitted it. I was quite pleased with it, as I had worked very diligently on it. When Dr. Robillard returned the essays, I eagerly sought her comments on the back page and what I expected was an A for a grade. I did not receive an A. Apparently, while I have learned to write for some purposes (academically, analytically, ...), I had not learned at that point to write a personal essay. Creative writing was totally new to me. After reading her comments, visiting her to chat about them, and then painstakingly composing the second, longer piece, I *think* I have figured out how to succeed in writing in that genre. But this experience showed me that writing skills in one mode do not necessarily point toward success in writing in other genres.

One final note I'd like to touch on: As I'm progressing through four semesters of learning Spanish, I've come to discover that the composing process in a second language can be excruciating. Currently, I am working through vocabulary and grammar exercises, hoping the composition exercise at the end of the unit will just magically disappear. Thus, I'm in awe of these L2 learners who have or are completing graduate work in their second language. Perhaps I'll attack that Spanish paragraph head-on later today.