Multiculturalism in Composition Studies

Multiculturalism in Composition Studies

Kent, Foster, Pratt, Elbow, Mitchell, Smitherman

David Foster

Post Process Theory, as Kent describes it, is based in the notion that there is generalizable writing process to which everyone could comfortably adhere. He argues that the three main assumptions behind Post Process Theory are that writing is public, interpretive, and situated, all of which suggest that each person has an individualized process that cannot be universally codified. However, David Foster is hesitant to let process theory go and embrace post-process theories, specifically a cultural critical approach. He argues that process theory enhanced the importance of schooling by naturalizing it in a framework of analytic conversation between student and teacher. Foster also argues that by leaving behind process and moving to a cultural critical pedagogy, teachers introduce a lot of unnecessary risk to the composition classroom: turning toward the social and emphasizing difference leads to unpredictable and unstable interactions, which then leads to conflict. Thus, comp studies must think carefully about the effects of dissonance and conflict on writing scenes because articulating difference is risky, stressful, and potentially painful.

Mary Louise Pratt

Pratt does not support the Process Movement, but argues for classrooms to confront difference in the way that Foster urges us to refrain from doing so. She explains that classrooms are “contact zones,” or social spaces in which cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other. Pratt points out our classrooms are potentially full of underprivileged and underrepresented students, and that we can change our classroom practice so that they can gain more of a voice in the composition classroom. She suggests that teachers should embrace the difference and incorporate nontraditional assignments (like ethnographic narratives) in order to allow cultures to deal with the tension each one has because it is different from the others. Pratt does not deny that this could potentially be risky (that students could get angry or upset as their culture clashes with another), but she urges that the pedagogical benefits are worth the risk because we will be able to produce a critically aware student body that can approach social and cultural issues in an appropriate manner.

Peter Elbow

Elbow has made many contributions to comp studies, but one of the most important ones is the notion that students should be allowed to compose initial drafts of text in what he calls their “mother tongue(s),” by which he means the dialect(s) with which the students are most comfortable (likely the one they were raised speaking with their family). This means that students could stop worrying about their writing being judged incorrect or inadequate; the classroom becomes a safe space in which they can use their own dialects freely. However, in order for this safety to continue, Elbow argues, it is imperative that students’ final drafts are in Standard Written English (SWE). In other words, they can write as many drafts as they need to in their “mother tongue,” but by the time their final draft is submitted, it must resemble an academic essay (although he admits no such thing truly exists). If students do not learn to translate their home dialects into SWE, we are doing them a grave disservice; though our classroom may be safe for the time being, the rest of the university will not be. Elbow’s notions have implications for multiculturalism because they provide a framework from which to both teach students SWE while encouraging them to maintain their “mother tongue.” He acknowledges that no one speaks SWE as their “mother tongue,” but some have had access to language that is closer to it; the ones whose “mother tongues” are vastly different from SWE need to work through a period of transition, and we should encourage and help students who need it. On the other hand, if we simply try to quash out any minority dialects, we run the risk of writers drifting toward the dominant language and losing their “mother tongues” through lack of use; therefore, we risk wiping out minority dialects. Elbow argues that such dialects will not flourish unless there are legitimized in our classrooms.

Candace Mitchell

Mitchell also grapples with the tension between students being required to write in SWE but also needing to hold onto their home discourse. She argues that we must absolutely teach them how to write in academic settings. Mitchell brings up an instance from her own experience in which she witnessed composition teachers whose only graded writing assignments were journal entries. Such assignments were valuable in that they validated the writing of (especially underprivileged) students who were able to write in whatever way seemed comfortable to them. However, she argues that relying so heavily (indeed, entirely) on a nonacademic form of writing did those students a grave disservice because they did not achieve practice in writing academic discourse. Mitchell explains that the genres of the academy hold the key to power; the students who succeed in such genres as the academic essay are the ones most likely to succeed in college and beyond. Thus, it is imperative that students learn how to write correctly in academic genres; to refrain from doing so is to deny them access to particular forms of discourse that could prove indispensable in the future. Mitchell does not think requiring underprivileged students to learn SWE is unfair or Imperialistic; she sees it merely as a tool for advancement. Indeed she appears to draw from Spivak’s answer to her own question at the end of “Can the Subaltern Speak?”: yes, but only through the dominant discourse. But Mitchelle does not believe the two (a student’s home discourse and the dominant discourse) to be mutually exclusive. Like Elbow, she encourages a classroom space where students’ home dialects are safe but where they are also learning to use translate their writing into the dominant discourse.

Geneva Smitherman

Smitherman discusses the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language,” the document that worked toward wider social legitimacy of underprivileged and foreign students’ languages and dialects and to bring about mainstream acceptance of marginalized cultures, history, and language. The goals of this document are to 1) Heighten awareness of language attitudes, 2) Promote the value of linguistic diversity, and 3) Convey facts and information about language and language variation that would help teach nontraditional students more effectively. Smitherman’s discussion goes well with Elbow’s and Mitchell’s (and really, Foster’s and Pratt’s as well) because, even though this document has been in effect since 1974, it addresses a language issue with which comp studies still struggles today.

How I would answer a question on this theme

Pretty much as I have here, except I would add one more connection among the resources. In order to enact Pratt’s contact zone classroom in a way that would not bring pain and hurt to students (as Foster fears), the teacher would need to adapt Elbow’s and Pratt’s notions about nontraditional discourses in the classroom.

Basic Writing Theories

Basic Writing Theories

Bartholomae, Sommers, Perl, Soliday, Shor, Smitherman

Sondra Perl and Nancy Sommers

Perl’s study looks at unskilled college writers to see what their revision process looks like. She used compose-aloud protocols in order to determine how unskilled writers write and if their writing process can be analyzed systematically. She found that many of her test subject could speak full, proper sentences but wrote partial, misspelled ones; part of the reasoning for this is when the subjects read the sentences back, they automatically corrected them. Perl found that the student’s writing processes were consistent (pre-, writing, and editing) and occurred in recognizable, sequential patterns. This suggests that the process was internalized. Some of the key implications Perl found were that teachers’ focus on fixing surface errors takes away the excitement of writing; as such, teachers instead need to find which aspects of each student’s process facilitate or inhibit writing and work to enhance or rehabilitate them.

Sommers’ study follows a year after Perl’s, and also looks at revision strategies. The student writers focused on rewording, which suggests that they believe the meaning is inherent in their writing and all they need to find is the “right” word. Also, students only recognize lexical repetition, not conceptual. They also believe that if their writing comes easily (if they are “inspired”), then they don’t need to revise; if they know what they want to say, there’s no need to change anything. Lastly, students lack strategies for global revision: they can handle local, but are often stumped on the larger picture. However, experienced adult writers see revising as finding the form/shape of their argument. For them, writing is a constant process of writing and rewriting. They can also view their work from the perspective of a reader and make changes accordingly. Finally, the adults tried to create/discover meaning through revision.

These two studies have implications for basic writing because they show how unskilled and inexperienced writers see both writing and revising. Both studies imply that we need to focus less on minute details of grammar and mechanics and instead treat larger global and conceptual issues first. Once the students have their thoughts organized, we can focus on the small stuff.

Geneva Smitherman

Smitherman explains the 1974 Students’ Right to their Own Language document. Its goal is to heighten awareness of language attitudes, promote the value of linguistic diversity, and to convey information about language variation that would help teach nontraditional students more effectively. This document has implications for basic writing because it makes it clear that students’ home dialects are allowed to be used in the FYC classroom; in other words, we as teachers need to be more open to language variation in our students’ writing. We need to respect (and even celebrate) their language differences.

 

Ira Shor

Shor’s book (When Students Have Power) is a personal story about when happened when students shared authority in his classroom. He emphasizes the individuality of each student and that we need to recognize that their backgrounds may not match ours. One of the most interesting points of Shor’s book deals with the “Siberian Syndrome,” which is the tendency for certain students to consistently sit as far away from the teacher as they can and disengage from the class as much as possible; this represents their subordinated and alienated position, as well as one of the few instances they have of exhibiting agency. They are defensive about the unequal power relations in the classroom (the teacher and the curriculum in which they have little say). As such, Shor wanted to distribute authority in the classroom. Beginning on the first day, he allowed them to negotiate the syllabus and course requirements (he later admits that he should have allowed them to negotiate the texts they read as well), then he expected them to talk a lot and produce a variety of texts in order to educate the teacher about their interests, levels of development, idiomatic diversity, cultural backgrounds, and thematic preferences. Short also created the After Class Group (ACG), a smaller group of students from the course who met after each class to discuss how it went and how Shor could better serve the students. In doing so, Shor created a democracy in his classroom because he consulted the students about policy and process, thus allowing them to develop as independent citizens. This means that Shor listened as much as (if not more than) he talked, and did not ignore, silence, or punish unhappy students.

Shor’s notions have implications for basic writing because often basic writers are misunderstood and underprivileged; they are used to being told they are not good enough and probably enacting the Siberian Syndrome. A democratic, power-sharing approach like Shor’s is a way to get them engaged in their education because they have a hand in creating the curriculum and standards to which the teacher will hold them. Such engagement would address a lot of inequality issues through the reinvention of power.

 

Mina Shaughnessy

In Errors and Expectations, she emphasized that students must be acculturated to academic writing. She urged teachers not to see basic writers as somehow deficient, but as beginners who are just beginning to understand how to engage in academic discourse.

 

Mary Soliday

Soliday points out that college students’ literacy was not a point of conflict until the mid-70s when Newsweek started the fake literacy crisis; remediation at the college level was not widely recognized until the mid-80s. The shift in attitude about remedial English are in part a result of the increasing middle-class need for the institutions to be exclusive: a college education is the defining feature of its social class identity.

One of the Soliday’s key points involves her questioning the ways in which students’ need for remedial writing instruction has become widely associated with the need to acculturate minorities to the university. She works to disentangle politics from remediation, thus challenging the assumption that a politics of language use is equivalent to the politics of access to institutions. She also challenges identity politics: she points out that those who think basic writers are simply refusing to assimilate are mistaken; often the writers want to assimilate, but we don’t know or understand how to help them to do so. Soliday urges basic writing teachers to explore pedagogies of translation, wherein students engage in rhetorically aware code switching. This allows student writers to act and think as intellectuals who discuss issues significant to each other and to their families as well as to the teacher. This could lead to students and teachers using negotiation to create new knowledges and identities, possibly even to fuse different cultures. In fact, Soliday argues, when students can present their private literacies to a readership in a broader public framework, they are more likely become politically active, which will also lead them to be more open to critical thinking and a critical consciousness about different discourses. Soliday’s core argument is that the politics of language should remain central to classroom work.

David Bartholomae

Like Shaughnessy, Bartholomae believes listening to basic writers requires close reading. One of the key ways to help students develop their writing skills is for us to understand why they make the mistakes they do. He asserts that basic writers’ mistakes are intentional and catalyzed by a deficient understanding of (and inability to identify) how academic language sounds. Therefore, in a move that hearkens back to classical and nineteenth century rhetorical theory, Bartholomae claims that one way to help basic writers develop is for them to imitate the styles and voices of other writers.

Basic writers are often seen as pre-academic or pre-textual (like Ong’s orality), but they are really distinguished because they work outside the conceptual structures in which literate students work. He points out that since basic writers write sentences (however unconventional or incorrect), they are capable of thought; we do not need to “give” them sentences or thought, but only to help them understand how to translate or transform them so that they are more in sync with conventional expectations. Bartholomae’s call to action is that either the university needs to make its expectations clear for a univocal, common tongue, or it needs to accept that it is omnivocal and allow everyone to speak and write as they choose to. Most importantly, he asserts that writing needs to be taught as writing, not as sentence or paragraph practice. This methods allows them to realize that writing involves making choices, and they have control over which choices are made; thus, they begin to see the possibility for other decisions and options.

Interestingly, in contrast to Shor (who argues against all tests), Bartholomae suggests that an end of term 2-hour essay exam may be necessary for basic writers since a passing grade implies that they are ready for university-level writing. In order to pass, the writing must be reasonably error-free, coherent, and well-developed.

How I would answer a question on this theme

Only Soliday and Bartholomae actually talk about basic writing (the small bit of info on Shaughnessy came from either Soliday’s or Bartholomae’s book), so I would focus the most on them, despite the fact that their discussions of basic writing are so differently focused. Soliday looks at identity politics involved in basic writing, concluding that those who assume basic writers are refusing to assimilate are mistaken. She points out that often the want to, but do not know how to. Bartholomae studies the mistakes basic writers make, which could connect him to Sommers and Perl. All three have found that there is a systematicity to the writing of unskilled writers; they are not somehow deficient or pretextual, but are in the early stages of developing into more experienced writers: they need more practice and critical tools. Both Bartholomae and Soliday argue for basic writing to be taught as translation (code switching). This allows them to maintain their own voices, as per Smitherman’s explanation of the 1974 “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” document that is supposed make it safe for students to speak and/or writing in their own dialects while still being respected. One interesting comparison to bring up as well is between Bartholomae and Shor: Bartholomae gives his basic writers 2-hour exams at the end of the semester to determine if they will pass, but Shor argues that such tests are useless and punitive because they do not allow room for reflection.