-
14. Language Diversity and the Responsibility of the WPA
- Southern Illinois University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
212 14. Language Diversity and the Responsibility of the WPA Susan K. Miller-Cochran As a writing teacher and writing program administrator, I often find myself struggling to respond to a perplexing dilemma: the more I understand about my students’ complex linguistic backgrounds and literacy histories , the more I question the long-accepted practices and assumptions of the profession. I question the ways in which we structure programs, place students into classes, design curricula, and prepare graduate students. Shondel J. Nero points out in this collection that “teaching writing in the twenty-first-century composition classroom is, and will continue to be, about coming to terms with linguistic diversity as the norm rather than the exception.” The paradox is that, as Scott Richard Lyons reveals in his chapter, most writing programs are in the business of assimilation yet at the same time say that they value diversity. Therefore, writing programs and writing program administrators (WPAs) are caught in a dilemma that Nero eloquently articulates. We want to honor (and if possible, preserve) students’ home languages and cultures, but we are expected to teach them “Standard Academic English.” While I sometimes find myself blaming the nature of the first-year writing requirement and its function as a “gate-keeping” course (Crowley), I don’t necessarily see the existence of the paradox as negative. Rather, I see it as a step on the way toward developing a better approach to teaching writing and structuring writing programs. But acknowledging the paradox, and realizing that our classes are much more linguistically diverse spaces than we might have previously recognized, is the first step in a process that can lead to change. The authors in this collection enrich our understanding of the language backgrounds of students in college writing classes in three ways: they identify many of the unique challenges of working with linguistically diverse populations , they reveal the inadequacies and inconsistencies of current practices, and they point the direction toward potential solutions to these problems. Nero, A. Suresh Canagarajah, Kate Mangelsdorf, and Paul Kei Matsuda complicate our understanding of who second language writers1 are and how they compose; Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe with Yi-Huey Guo and Lu +RUQHU&KLQGG $0 Language Diversity and the Responsibility of the WPA 213 Liu enrich our understanding of the interconnectedness and complexity of digital and linguistic literacies; Lyons and Elaine Richardson raise our awareness of marginalized groups that represent rich areas of language diversity the profession has historically ignored; and Min-Zhan Lu and John Trimbur reveal the histories and implications of English dominance. While the histories they outline are compelling, the problems they identify are complex and ingrained through decades of institutional practice. The call for some kind of action is clear, but the specific direction is less so and the obstacles can seem insurmountable. What should a WPA do with this knowledge, and in which direction should this awareness point the profession? The WPA’s Dilemma Once a WPA realizes that “the presence of language differences is the default” in U.S. college writing classes (Matsuda, this volume), then he or she is caught in the aforementioned dilemma. Examining the curricula and structure of most writing programs in institutions of higher education in the United States reveals several assumptions about students and pedagogy that—when stated outright—most rhetoric and composition specialists would agree are false. Even a cursory glance demonstrates that most writing programs are structured around (at least) five myths about second language writing that negatively impact students in our writing classes by ignoring their linguistic diversity. When the implications of these myths are extended to other linguistically diverse groups of students, the impact is enormous: 1. Second language writers are easy to identify. As Linda Harklau, Meryl Siegal, and Kay M. Losey, Patricia Friedrich, and others have shown, terms such as “second language writer,” “ESL,” and “native/non-native” are not easy to define. Students who come from linguistically diverse backgrounds might include international students, resident ESL students (sometimes called Generation 1.5), immigrant students, bilingual students, bidialectal students, and students who speak unprivileged varieties of English, among others. The common practice of placing first-year students into mainstream or second language writing classes based primarily on nationality, or simply putting all students who are “underprepared” into basic writing classes without paying attention to the underlying language differences that should impact our pedagogical approaches (Matsuda, this volume), is woefully inadequate. The profession needs to develop a more nuanced understanding...