- Based on my discussion of important terminology related to Metz's article in the podcast, what would you consider yourself literate in other than writing/speaking Standard English? Why?
- Describe a moment when you experienced or recognized linguistic injustice. How would you explain what happened?
- Choose a section from Sitler's chapter. Write the title of the section you are choosing first. Then summarize the section and discuss your thoughts on it.
- Choose a section from Metz's article. Write the title of the section you are choosing first. Then summarize the section and discuss your thoughts on it.
See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320545438
Addressing English teachers’ concerns about decentering Standard English
Article in English Teaching Practice & Critique · October 2017
DOI: 10.1108/ETPC-05-2017-0062
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Addressing English teachers’ concerns about decentering
Standard English Mike Metz
Learning, Teaching and Curriculum, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA
Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to address concerns of English teachers considering opening up their classrooms to multiple varieties of English. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the author’s experience as a teacher educator and professional developer in different regions of the USA, this narrative paper groups teachers’ concerns into general categories and offers responses to themost common questions. Findings – Teachers want to know why they should make room in their classrooms for multiple Englishes; what they should teach differently; how they learn about English variation; how to balance Standardized English and other Englishes; and how these apply to English Learners and/orWhite speakers of Standardized English. Practical implications – The study describes the author’s approach to teaching about language as a way to promote social justice and equality, the value of increasing students’ linguistic repertoires and why it is necessary to address listeners as well as speakers. As teachers attempt to adopt and adapt new approaches to teaching English language suggested in the research literature, they need to know their challenges and concerns are heard and addressed. Teacher educators working to support these teachers need ways to address teachers’ concerns. Social implications – This paper emphasizes the importance of teaching mainstream, White, Standard English-speaking students about English language variation. By emphasizing the role of the listener and teaching students to hear language through an expanded language repertoire, English teachers can reduce the prejudice attached to historically stigmatized dialects of English.
Originality/value – This paper provides a needed perspective on how to work with teachers who express legitimate concerns about what it means to decenter Standardized English in English classrooms.
Keywords English teaching, Literacy and identity, Critical language awareness, English dialects, English language variation
Paper type Conceptual paper
One recent spring afternoon, on the blossoming campus of a university in the Midwestern USA, faculty members in education engaged in earnest discussion of charged subject matter. One senior scholar, face reddening as the debate unfolded, finally exclaimed, “It makes me want to throw up!”.
What were we discussing to arouse such disgust? Was it blatant plagiarism from a doctoral candidate? Failure of a cherished colleague to receive tenure? Budget cuts that would eliminate valued programming? No. We were discussing grammar and usage in student writing. In this particular case, we were discussing the Associated Press validating the use of singular they as a gender-neutral pronoun in their style guide. While the APA, MLA and CMS have not yet endorsed singular they, it is likely those changes are coming as well.
Decentering Standard English
363
Received 12May 2017 Revised 7 August 2017
25 August 2017 Accepted 31 August 2017
English Teaching: Practice & Critique
Vol. 16 No. 3, 2017 pp. 363-374
© EmeraldPublishingLimited 1175-8708
DOI 10.1108/ETPC-05-2017-0062
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/1175-8708.htm
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For English teachers raised in a prescriptive grammar tradition – a tradition that promotes one “correct” form of English usage (Curzan, 2014) – changes such as these, which counter years of hard fought “error” correction, feel like betrayal. Many English teachers have taken on the role of language guardians, advocating the grammar of Standardized English[1] in students’ speech and upholding the writing conventions of historically sanctioned style guides.
Debates about standards for grammar and usage have existed since the first efforts at standardization (Wright, 2000), and these debates spill into English classrooms (take, for example, the heated and unresolved battle about the Oxford comma). In our current, polarized, political climate even grammar – the historically “objective” content of English language arts (ELA) classrooms – takes on heightened social and political meaning. As we witness a global rise in populist movements, demonstrated by the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump, along with a growing wave of xenophobia, the role of language in defining social insiders and outsiders carries significant weight. English teachers can play an important role in countering social prejudice by teaching about English language variation.
A growing body of sociolinguistic knowledge demonstrates connections between beliefs about language usage and social identities (Alim and Smitherman, 2012; Bucholtz and Hall, 2004; Eckert, 2000). The linguistic fact that all dialects and varieties of English are patterned, rule governed and linguistically equal, reveals that the concept of “correct” English is a language ideology, not a linguistic truth (Wolfram and Schilling, 2015). The emphasis on one version of English as “right” and others as “wrong” is based in social hierarchies rather than inherent characteristics of particular grammatical constructions (Lippi-Green, 2012). Increasing dissemination of these linguistic facts has begun to weaken the reliance on romanticized tradition in how English norms are taught.
Since I stepped out of the classroom after 15 years of teaching, I’ve worked extensively with new and veteran teachers exploring the relationship between language, culture and power in English classrooms. While most teachers I work with support the idea of valuing students’ cultural ways of being, they often balk at decentering Standardized English. By decentering, I mean removing Standardized English as the central focus of language teaching, and instead, including Standardized English as one, amongmany, Englishes at the heart of language study.
The reluctance on the part of many English teachers to embrace the English varieties their students bring to the classroom stands in contrast to the way these very English teachers embrace other aspects of cultural pluralism. I’ve worked with English teachers who eagerly adopt multicultural texts reflective of the students they serve, use young adult literature to engage students as active readers and develop students’ literary analysis skills through the integration of multi-modal texts; yet these very teachers hold tightly to grammar instruction that marginalizes and stigmatizes all Englishes other than Standardized English.
Perhaps more than any other content area, ELA teachers experience the importance of the relationship between students’ identity and the subject matter being taught. We know that students need to see themselves in the texts we study (Landt, 2006). We know that they need opportunities to express their own understandings and life experiences as they develop their skill as writers (Martin, 2003). Yet, we have been slow to take up the inclusion of diverse English varieties as legitimate content in our study of the English language (Mallinson and Charity Hudley, 2013). Over a decade ago, this journal devoted two complete issues to the theme “Knowledge about language in the English/literacy classroom” (Locke, 2005, 2006) yet progress incorporating those ideas plods tediously. How do we account for
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the slow pace of change in the way language is taught? My experience working with pre- service and in-service teachers in various contexts across the USA shows that teachers express similar, valid concerns as they wrestle with the idea of decentering Standardized English.
In the remainder of this article, I make the case for embracing multiple Englishes and teaching English language variation by addressing the thoughtful questions of concerned teachers and administrators I’ve worked with over the years. My hope is that by highlighting the political nature of choices to teach about English, and the resulting social consequences, English teachers will consider the impact of teaching English “as they were taught” and work toward integrating more linguistic research into their teaching and talk about language.
What’s the point? “Is justice the point of literacy? Are we supposed to build equality through our language? I’m not sure I agree with that.” (A veteran English teacher)
During a recent course I taught, a veteran teacher asked the above question on a discussion board in response to readings about language, culture and power. The question reveals that some reluctance to teach about language variation goes back to beliefs about the fundamental purposes of schooling. There are many English teachers who view language diversity as a problem (Curzan, 2014; Hancock and Kolln, 2010). These English teachers aspire to create a common culture that promotes national unity. This common culture takes the form of a monolingual, mono-cultural society predicated on White middle-class norms. This set of beliefs aligns with traditionally conservative views of what it means to be American, and what knowledge should be taught in schools to preserve American culture (Hirsch, 1988; Provenzo, 2006). For these teachers, Standardized English is a vehicle to create this national unity. The teacher quoted above sees her role as an English teacher as helping her students in gaining access to this national culture through language. I strive to help these teachers unpack that understanding.
It is important that this teacher invoked the principles of justice and equality in her question because historical efforts to promote a narrow view of national identity have led to unjust and unequal treatment of many Americans. Americans who experience injustice and inequality based on Standardized English ideologies in schooling practices are those who experience discrimination in other aspects of society based on their skin color, cultural practices and linguistic background (Alim et al., 2016; Hartman, 2003; Lash, 2017). Continuing to teach English the way we always have perpetuates this injustice and inequality for many Americans.
To this teacher and others who may wonder if we must politicize our teaching of language and literacy I reply, “What is the alternative?” If the point of literacy is not justice, what is it? If we are not building equality through teaching language, what are we building? None of the teachers I’ve worked with over the years would advocate injustice. That is not their goal. None want to hurt children. Teachers do what they think is best for their students. But they often view literacy and language as neutral; standing outside of issues of justice and equality. And that view is not sustainable in the middle of the twenty-first century, in increasingly multicultural and multilingual societies, in a time where speakers of world Englishes out-number speakers of American English (Canagarajah, 2006). Holding onto a romanticized and inaccurate view of a single correct, and unchanging, English, that follows uniform, rigid and persistent rules is not a neutral stance but rather a strongly ideological set of beliefs that is ultimately political in nature.
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As many before me have explained much more eloquently that I can (Appleman, 2015; Cochran-Smith, 2010), there is no neutral position in teaching. Even support of the status quo involves taking a position. The status quo for teaching about language in ELA classrooms positions students who speak historically stigmatized language varieties as deficient, uneducated and even immoral. (In their text for teachers, Dunn and Lindblom (2011) powerfully demonstrate and critique the societal link between language and morality through an analysis of “grammar rants”.) Continuing this practice contradicts established research in linguistics and promotes injustice and inequality.
I am transparent about subscribing to a view of schooling, which embraces our pluralistic society and values the diversity of languages, cultures and knowledge traditions represented by the heritage cultures in our immigrant nation, as well as the continually evolving hybrid cultural practices that result from the intermingling of those traditions. From my point of view, this plurality is the strength of the USA. I show teachers examples of people – Barak Obama being a prime example (Alim and Smitherman, 2012) – who employ varied linguistic resources to move fluidly through wide-ranging cultural communities. A goal of schooling should be to help students expand their repertoires of linguistic and cultural ways of being so that they can communicate comfortably across contexts. The goal of schooling is to give students more options, not fewer. Expanding the number of Englishes taught in school allows students to access mainstream culture if they choose, while validating and supporting the diverse cultures that make up the USA and other countries in our increasingly intermixed global society.
What do I teach? “So, you’re saying that when it comes to grammar and writing, anything goes?”
“If I can’t correct their mistakes, then I should just let them go?”
Once teachers accept the validity of multiple Englishes, they often feel stuck. I get questions like the two above from teachers at a summer institute I led in the San Francisco Bay Area. These are valid questions that represent honest struggle with changing a long-held belief about what counts as correct English, and the English teacher’s role in supporting it.
Error correction, in speech and writing, remains a staple of ELA classrooms (Shaughnessy, 1979; Smith and Wilhelm, 2007). When I ask teachers to stop thinking in terms of “errors” and “correction”, they’re not sure what to do instead. Many teachers express frustration through questions similar to the one above, “If I can’t correct their mistakes, then I should just let them go?” I tell these teachers there is a third option.
First, I emphasize getting rid of the terms “error” and “mistake”. Unless we are talking about a typo (which is an error and a mistake), the errors and mistakes teachers usually identify are not errors at all. They are alternative grammatical constructions or stylistic options that come from Englishes or registers different than what the teacher expects or accepts (Reaser et al., 2017). Using an alternative, and equally valid, language variety is a fundamentally different concept than making an error. Because they are not errors, they do not need to be, and should not be, corrected. That does not mean that students’ grammatical usage should not be addressed.
Identifying features of different Englishes in students’ writing creates opportunities to teach students about the English language (Chisholm and Godley, 2011; McBee Orzulak, 2013). Take, for example, the two variations of the sentence below.
(1) Ashley sing in the car. (2) Ashley sings in the car.
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Sentence (1) follows a rule in African–American English that regularizes verb forms by not marking third-person singular verbs with an “s”. Linguist John Rickford describes the grammar rule this way, “Thou shalt not treat present-tense verbs with third-person-singular subjects any differently from verbs with other subjects” (Rickford and Rickford, 2000, p. 112). This feature is increasingly used by a wide range of young people in urban schools in America (Paris, 2011). In Standardized English, the third-person singular requires an “s”, thus a Standardized English user would follow the pattern in sentence (2). Neither sentence is right or wrong. Each follows a clear grammatical rule. Even so, teachers, for generations, have “corrected” students “errors” like this in subject-verb agreement. Rather than inaccurately “correcting” students, a more precise and productive approach would be to for teachers to describe the different grammatical rules regarding subject-verb agreement. Teachers can then explain when andwhy they expect students to follow each set of rules.
The alternative to “correcting” is not “anything goes”. The alternative to correcting is teaching students accurate grammatical information that validates the patterned, rule-bound nature of all dialects of English. Of course, few teachers have been taught this information themselves, which puts them in a tough position.
What do I need to know? “But I don’t have the language knowledge to pick out these moments and build on them. Are you saying I need to go back to school to study linguistics?”
Many of the teachers I work with have fantastic content knowledge when it comes to literature, writing and even Standardized English grammar, but few have much knowledge of English language variation. Even fewer have studied sociolinguistics or linguistic variation in ways that would prepare them to recognize and describe features of the many varieties of English they will encounter in their classrooms. Clearly, schools of education need to dedicate more time and attention to English language variation in teacher preparation courses. At the same time, holding teachers responsible for knowledge they were never exposed to is counterproductive. We can neither ask all English teachers to pick up degrees in linguistics nor should we. We can, however, provide teachers with some guiding principles and resources to help them navigate and learn as they wrestle productively with multiple Englishes over the course of their careers.
The primary principle I ask teachers to adopt is that there are no errors in students’ language use. By its very nature, language is patterned and rule governed. Our job as teachers of the English language is to help identify and describe the patterns we encounter. When a distinct term, phrase, pronunciation or grammatical construction stands out as being “marked” in some way, it presents an opportunity to learn something new about how language works. I can do the investigation myself, or I can invite students to investigate with me. Thanks to the wonderful community of sociolinguists and others studying language variation, resources abound. (I’ve compiled a growing resource list on my website: www.metzteaching.com/resources-for-teachers.html.)
An example helps illustrate what this process might look like. The majority of students I taught during my 15 years as a public-school teacher in Chicago spoke a variety of African American English. One colleague of mine, a fellow English teacher, was very particular about making sure students pronounced the word ask with the “k” sound at the end. When students pronounced the word with the k sound in the middle (aks or ax), she would correct them. The demeaning tone she would use, and the way she described the alternative pronunciation as “wrong” or even “ignorant”, troubled me. I didn’t have the knowledge to describe the linguistic process at play, and wasn’t able to articulate what bothered me about her approach, so I did some digging.
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AGoogle search of “ask aks” returned over five hundred thousand results, but the top hit was a very accessible newspaper article from the LA times that lays out the historical and social journey of the word, with an eye to the impact of language on identity (McWhorter, 2014). Further research gave more detail. (Spoken Soul by Rickford and Rickford is an accessible explanation of Black English, while American English: Dialects and Variation by Wolfram & Schilling is a comprehensive tome.) It turns out that the inversion of the consonant sounds in a word is part of a linguistic process called metathesis. It is common in many words, but ask vs aks is one of the most socially marked forms. I learned that Shakespeare used both forms in his plays. There is debate about whether aks or ask is the original form and which version is the changed form. I found out that the same principle is at play in pronunciation of nuclear as “nu-cu-lar” and comfortable as “comf-ter-ble.” However, these examples are not socially marked in the same way as ask and aks.
As I read more, I learned that the reason certain features get stigmatized has less to do with language andmore to do with the social identity of the speakers (Lippi-Green, 2012). As educational linguist Jonathan Rosa recently remarked, “In reality, we are often not correcting students’ language. We are correcting their identity. We are correcting their race” (Rosa, 2017). The use of ax is as much about signaling racial identity as it is communicating other content.
I didn’t know any of this when my colleague corrected our high school students years ago. I did not need to take a linguistics class to learn it. When I started with the assumption that my students were correct, but applying a different rule, I was able to find out aspects of the rule with minimal investigation. And now I know. Like anything else in teaching, I encourage teachers not to let their current knowledge limit what they teach their students. Learn with them!.
What about the real world? “My students need to learn Standard English for tests and job interviews.”
“What about the Delpit question?”
One day, after I delivered a research talk about teaching critical language awareness at Stanford University, a prominent professor asked pointedly, “What about the Delpit question?” By “the Delpit question”, this professor referred to the issue raised in Lisa Delpit’s much cited article “The Silenced Dialogue” (Delpit, 1988). In this article, Delpit interrogates an approach to language teaching summed up by the statement: “Children have the right to their own language, their own culture. We must fight cultural hegemony and fight the system by insisting that children be allowed to express themselves in their own language style. It is not they, the children, who must change, but the schools. To push children to do anything else is repressive and reactionary” (p. 291). Delpit critiques, not this belief, but the teaching (or lack of teaching) she observed in response to this belief. For Delpit, it is important that students who are not born into the culture of power are explicitly taught the codes of power. She saw teachers using the belief in students’ right to their own language as a tool to avoid taking responsibility for teaching students the codes of Standardized English that are necessary cultural currency in mainstreamAmerica.
When the professor asked me to respond to “the Delpit question”, he wanted to know how I address the tension inherent in asking teachers to teach the language of power, while also asking them, “to fight cultural hegemony and fight the system by insisting that children be allowed to express themselves in their own language style”.
I respond to this question in two ways. First, I clarify that this is not a case of “either or [. . .]” but a case of “Yes, and [. . .]”. I advocate a repertoire approach that seeks to increase
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the size of students’ linguistic repertoires – students’ linguistic toolkits (Orellana et al., 2010). Students need to acquire Standardized English forms and features, while holding onto the linguistic styles of their home and community. The more dialects and registers of English they can incorporate into their repertoires themore power they have.
Second, I trouble the notion that Standardized English is the language of power. Increasingly, monolingual speakers who only have access to Standardized English dialects are limited in their linguistic power. The new language of power is a language of flexibility and dexterity (Alim and Smitherman, 2012; Young et al., 2013; Canagarajah, 2017). It accounts for the complexity of identities expressed through language. When teachers need concrete examples, I show them Marc Lamont Hill. When Dr Hill speaks to large and multifaceted audiences he moves fluidly between registers and dialects. He will quote Foucault’s “insurrection of subjugated knowledges” in one breath, then in the next breath invoke contemporary hip-hop culture or drop references to the black church. He uses a range of linguistic codes to signal multiple aspects of his identity while meeting the diverse expectations of complex audiences. His extensive linguistic repertoire gives him power he would not have if he only spoke an academic register of Standardized English.
Delpit advocates teaching students the rules to the game of political and social power. In the 20 years since her article was written, the rules of that game have evolved. Political power in our society comes not from Standardized English, but from Standardized English meshed with other language varieties (Young et al., 2013). This is as true for students as for presidents (Alim and Smitherman, 2012).
We also need to be careful that we do not oversell students on the power of Standardized English. While it is an invaluable tool to include in their linguistic toolkits, it does not erase other forms of discrimination and prejudice (Flores and Rosa, 2015). Yes, our students need to be prepared to meet the linguistic expectations of test-makers and gate-keepers so that they can succeed in the political game if they desire. They also need to be able to recognize that the game is rigged to favor Standardized English. Teaching students the validity of multiple English varieties can help them change the rules of the game (Godley and Loretto, 2013).
What about my ELs? “My students are ELs. Teaching them different Englishes will just confuse them.”
While much of my work with teachers focuses on dialects of English, the linguistically complex classrooms many teachers serve necessitate an even wider vision of language. As teachers weigh the benefits of teaching English language in ways that validate language variation I’ve had many express reservations on behalf of students learning English as a second or additional language. These students have needs that are distinct from students who speak dialects of English. The concern teachers express in relation to their school designated English Learners (ELs) often parallels concerns addressed above: ELs need Standardized English to be successful on standardized tests and to enter the professional world of work and school. My response to this concern is the same as described above. Yes, and [. . .] Take a repertoire approach.
When teachers suggest that their EL students will be confused if teachers validate multiple Englishes, I ask them to consider how students will make sense of the linguistic landscape if they only learn Standardized English. The world is made up of multiple Englishes. American English is just one version of the many world Englishes. International students often have exposure to other world Englishes in addition to the dialects of American English (Canagarajah, 2006). As our ELs will experience multiple Englishes, it only makes sense to help them navigate those Englishes in ways that acknowledge the social meanings attached to different dialects. ELs, just like native English speakers, are
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better served by language teaching that accurately describes the way Englishes work in society, including the facts of various valid grammars, and the social prestige and stigma attached to the linguistically equal forms. ELs need to be able to understand multiple Englishes, as well as produce those Englishes to adeptly navigate American society.
The political and social histories of English in countries outside the USA give dialects of English in those contexts unique social meaning. Whatever the context, as students learn English as an additional language, they are best served by being taught that dialects followed patterned rules and are linguistically equal, and that different dialects serve as social markers within social and cultural groups.
What about my white students? “My students are all white, so this doesn’t really apply to my context.”
“My students speak Standard English already. I don’t need to talk about this with them.”
When I worked on the south side of Chicago, English variation was clearly racialized as a Black–White issue. In the schools I studied in California, students’ Englishes reflected a wide range of internationally influenced linguistic backgrounds: Spanish-influenced English, Mandarin-influenced English, Tagalog-influenced English, etc. The literature on language variation in schools often focuses on “urban” contexts, and suggests that teaching about language variation is best suited for students who speak historically stigmatized language varieties (Alim and Baugh, 2007; Ball et al., 2011; Paris, 2011). The goal in these cases is to help teachers and students find the value in the English varieties students bring to the classroom. The ultimate aim is to increase the engagement and attachment to school for students who have historically been marginalized, leading to successful school outcomes. But that goal is too limited. Knowledge of English language variation is not just for urban kids of color.
The election of Donald Trump in the USA has been seen by many as a backlash by White America against attention and resources devoted to a multi-cultural and urban population (Kellner, 2017). While the implications of Trump’s election just begin to play out, one result has been increased efforts to understand rural and white America. This makes it a particularly fruitful time to bring studies of language variation out of diverse urban contexts and into more homogeneous white spaces. Recently, I’ve begun work with English teachers in predominantly white contexts, both rural and suburban. In both spaces, the importance of teaching about English language variation has been clear.
In rural White contexts in the USA, teachers describe the same issues of language stigmatization that teachers describe on the south side of Chicago. They often view students coming to school with “poor language skills” speaking “bad English”. As a teacher in my course wrote on a discussion post, “One of my students has a very, what you call “redneck” accent, very low reading scores, needs constant support and rarely utters a sentence that is grammatically correct”. In rural white contexts, the social stigmatization tied to language use highlights class over race. It is often associated with the education level of particular families or geographic areas. Still, the principles tying together language, culture and power are the same. There is extensive research on southern English, and there are increasingly nuanced descriptions of the Englishes of distinct rural communities. (For teaching materials related to Southern English, see for example, Charity Hudley and Mallinson, 2010; Reaser and Wolfram, 2007). Many of the students in these communities have felt alienated from school because of the variety of English they speak in similar ways to the alienation felt by urban students of color.
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In contrast to the way work on language variation in schools has traditionally been framed, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that White suburban students who speak Standardized English need to be taught about language variation more than almost any other group. A prominent current book on language variation in schools, Dialects at School (Reaser et al., 2017) has the subtitle “Educating Linguistically Diverse Students”. While it is important that we educate “linguistically diverse students”, it is even more important that we educate mainstream, white, monolingual students about the validity of English varieties in the world around them. For these students, the goal is not improved schooling outcomes. Standardized tests, school funding systems and even textbooks are already designed to cater to this demographic. Rather than focusing on improved school outcomes, teaching these students about English variation would result in improved social outcomes.
The goal of teaching White middle-class, mainstream students about language variation is to help them understand language differently, to hear differently, to question and critique the stigma associated with marginalized Englishes. A shift from focusing on the speaker to focusing on the listener (Flores and Rosa, 2015) completely changes the dynamics of how we think about teaching dialects in school. Teaching white middle-class listeners to hear differently, to be aware of the discriminatory listening practices of mainstream society, is a step toward making significant social change. While past practices have emphasized teaching speakers and writers to produce language using a range of linguistic conventions, moving forward, English teachers should also emphasize teaching listeners and readers to consume a range of Englishes with the intention of understanding rather than judging.
The shared responsibility for understanding between the speaker and listener has been called the communicative burden (Lippi-Green, 2012). The approach to dialects in school to this point has placed an inordinate share of the communicative burden on speakers; hence, the focus on “educating linguistically diverse students”. To distribute the communicative burden more equally, we need to focus on “educating linguistically homogenous students”. We need to increase the linguistic repertoires of students who are constrained by a Standardized English mode of hearing/listening.
If, as I advocated earlier, the goal of literacy is justice, and we are using language teaching to work for social equality, then the students who benefit most from the current system need to learn that they’ve been taught half-truths that help them and harm others. The more that we teach White middle-class students the validity of other Englishes, particularly when those students otherwise would have limited exposure to those Englishes, the more we reduce the potential of future discrimination.
What else? There are manymore questions and concerns raised by the teachers I’ve worked with: White teachers often feel uncomfortable teaching and talking about African–American English. Black teachers are sometimes the harshest critics of African–American English. Parents raise a range of concerns. Members of English departments don’t see eye-to-eye. Administrators need convincing. And then there are always the standardized tests that assume, incorrectly, the grammar of Standardized English is the only English grammar.
So we arrive back at the question of politics. If every stance we take as teachers is a political stance, then let’s adopt a stance that’s aligned with accurate linguistic knowledge. Let’s adopt a stance that’s expands students’ linguistic repertoires. Let’s use language knowledge, in the same way we use literature and writing, to help our students learn more about themselves and the world around them. Let’s describe the grammar our students use and encounter in the world instead of trying to prescribe the grammar they should use. Let’s help students consider how different language choices are read by different audiences in
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different contexts. Let’s help them match their language use to their purposes, including the purpose of conveying their identity in ways that feel genuine.
Our job as English teachers is to teach students about language as it really works in the world. This means teaching them that language is a gatekeeping tool used to exclude certain kinds of people from positions of power. It also means teaching them that all languages are valid, valuable and vivacious. We can teach our students to play the game of Standardized English, at the same time that we challenge policy makers to deepen their knowledge of Englishes. Understanding how language is used in political ways to shape (and perpetuate) social hierarchies should be taught alongside the (various) rules of subject-verb agreement. To return to the anecdote that began this essay, adopting “singular they” is not an abandonment of principles, but a lesson in how language works. Discussing “singular they” with students allows for understanding of how gendered language shapes our experience of the world, as well as demonstrating important and ongoing processes of language change.
By taking an inquiry stance toward language, by opening up the meaning of language use instead of focusing on one narrow form, we make space for our students to enter the English classroom as powerful contributors to our collective language knowledge. In our current political climate that sees renewed calls for nationalism, increased xenophobia and an emphasis on overly simple solutions to complex problems, promoting a nuanced and accurate view of language and identity is a hard sell. A clear-cut, restricted view of what counts as “correct” language is a much easier way to approach English teaching. But it is short-sighted and inaccurate. As the experts in our subject area, English teachers have a responsibility to acquire precise linguistic knowledge based in facts, not romanticized myths. We have a responsibility to hold up truths about language even when the political climate makes it unpopular. As English teachers, we can use our content area to demonstrate that there are many ways to be correct. Through the study of English dialects, we can demonstrate that when we pool our knowledge we are better off than when we divide it. By taking a repertoire approach to language knowledge, we model the power of a pluralistic society and take a stand against xenophobia and other forms of prejudice. That’s a political act.
Note
1. I use the term Standardized English in place of Standard English to highlight that standardization is an active social process, not an inherent characteristic of any particular variety of English.
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- Addressing English teachers’ concerns about decentering Standard English
- What’s the point?
- What do I teach?
- What do I need to know?
- What about the real world?
- What about my ELs?
- What about my white students?
- What else?
- References
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71DOI: https://doi.org/10.37514/PRA-B.2020.0308.2.04
Chapter 4. Becoming a Person Who Writes
Helen Collins Sitler Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Reflect Before Reading Think about your current or former students who struggle with writing. When a student calls herself a “bad writer” or another says he “hates writing,” how do you respond? What activities in your course allow students to build their confidence as writers?
~ ~ ~
The Writing Marathon was always my favorite day in Basic Writing. Usually on a portfolio turn-in day, a day when students’ energy would be low from working to finish a major project, we left the classroom just to go somewhere new and write. Students’ charge: Go with a couple classmates wherever you want. Take your notebooks. Write about what you see, hear, smell, taste—coffeehouses and fast food are often a part of a Writing Marathon. Let the place you’re in trigger your writing. If anyone asks what you’re doing, you have to reply “We’re writers. We’re writing.”
Before anyone left the room, we all rehearsed that line. Students had to repeat loudly and with enthusiasm: “I am a writer!” Students giggled, then dutifully cho- rused that sentence. Then off we went to write until time to return to the class- room to tell the stories of the day’s writing and for each student to share at least a small piece of what they had written. We rejoiced when sometimes students had had the chance to announce “I am a writer!” to curious passersby.
Students generally enjoyed Writing Marathon days as much as I did, but I doubt they took the “I am a writer!” routine seriously. It is serious, though, the idea of considering oneself a writer. For students in Basic Writing it is an espe- cially serious issue. So much of a student’s success in college depends on skill with words, as does much of a person’s success in a career. And here they were in Basic Writing, marked in their first semester of college as individuals whose words were somehow inadequate. It raises questions: Can a Basic Writing student become someone who says and believes that “I am a writer”?
Writing is tied to identity. Numerous composition scholars speak to this, ar- ticulating that students’ taking on a writer’s identity is an essential part of any composition course. Tom Romano argues that adolescents and college students
72 Sitler
need “to have opportunities to create their identities on the page” (175). Roz Ivanič argues for the teaching of writing to be focused above all else on “helping students to take an identity as a person who writes” (85). Taking this idea one step further, Robert Brooke insists that successful teaching of a composition course is marked by students’ “com[ing] to see that being a writer in their own way is a valid and exciting way of acting in the world” (40).
James Paul Gee discusses the identity-building process in terms of adopting a discourse: “Think of discourse as an ‘identity kit’ which comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act and talk so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize” (51). The role of someone who writes would entail ways of talking about writing and the ability to think of oneself as having something to say. This identity, however, would be just one of many. Both Gee and Ivanič discuss the multiple identities any individual si- multaneously maintains (Gee 56; Ivanič 11). Take, for example, Frankie, whom readers will meet in these pages. She arrived in Basic Writing with multiple identities that she made apparent in class and surely had others in addition. Her classmates and I knew that she was a business major, that she had been a student government leader in her high school, and that she was a multi-sport athlete. Each of these roles in her life demanded its own discourse, its own identity kit.
My course would challenge Frankie to add another identity, that of a person who writes. Given her life history including multiple identity kits already, add- ing this new one could create some clashes. Ivanič recognizes that taking on a writerly identity is a potentially tension-filled process (65). Further, Frankie and her peers were entering the world of higher education which would, according to Ivanič, “require [them] to extend their repertoire of literacy practices: to build and adapt existing ones and to engage in new ones” (70).
What conflicts of experience and expectation would emerge? Could being a writer sit comfortably beside being a new college student, a business major, an athlete? And so, I return to this question: Can a Basic Writing student become someone who says and believes that “I am a writer”?
Two Basic Writing students, Spike and Frankie, show that this process can occur. Both were part of an IRB-approved study of literacy development. Par- ticipants were volunteers who had taken my own Basic Writing classes during a four-year period designated for the study. Data used here come from students’ final exams and other papers they provided and from interviews conducted by my colleague Dr. Gloria Park and her graduate assistant, Ravyn McKee.
Spike and Frankie were among nine study participants. At the time my former students were invited to participate, they were the only two who were seniors, thus the two with the most experience to share. Their experiences with Basic Writing, with writing in courses for their majors, and their planning for jobs after graduation provide an interesting picture of coming to consider oneself a writer during and after their first college composition course.
Becoming a Person Who Writes 73
Spike and Frankie: Literacy Experiences before Basic Writing
Spike arrived at college with his criminology major firmly in mind. During his in- terview, he said: “It was probably around fourth grade. . . . One of my good friends that I went to elementary school with . . . his dad was a state trooper, and I always went over to his house and communicated with him on a regular basis and it kin- da influenced me to want to grow up and be a state trooper.” Spike’s older sister was the first in the family to hold a bachelor’s degree; Spike would be the second.
Graduating in a class of 150, Spike described reading and writing as some- thing he needed to do for school. He was diligent, but not enthused: “I always did my schoolwork and I always kept up with readings. If I had a paper, I . . . complet- ed the paper, but I never went above and beyond schoolwork to satisfy a reading habit or anything like that.” His writing experiences in school had consisted of reflections on readings for English classes, daily writes (which he did not further explain, but which I take to be short journal entries or responses to readings), and his senior paper, about the charity golf event he had helped to organize. Essay writing adhered to “the five-paragraph stance,” meaning “the fundamental intro- duction, body, and conclusion.” When asked about more writing in his classes, Spike responded that “I was never able to participate” in “classes that were for higher up students, above the normal average student.” In other words, he had not taken advanced or AP courses.
While he knew his writing skills were not especially strong—“I was a pretty weak writer before coming to college”—his placement into Basic Writing was “kinda like a bummer feeling . . . it’s not good.” However, Spike’s high school habits of diligence and persistence—“I always did my schoolwork”—carried him through the new learning curve.
Frankie arrived in college with 15 credits she had earned through joint high school/college credit classes offered through her high school. None of those courses, however, must have been in English, as she completed all of my uni- versity’s required English courses. Like Spike, she had already decided on her major: business. After a few courses, she refined that major to human resources management. Interestingly, college was not her original plan: “I didn’t want to come to college; I didn’t want to at all. I wanted to join the military.” Her parents’ fears about, at that time, an active war in Afghanistan changed her mind. Their agreement was that if Frankie finished college and then still wanted to join the military, they would not object. At the point of her interview, one summer course away from graduating, she was no longer planning military enlistment. Frankie’s older sister had already graduated college. Her parents’ college experience is un- clear; but her father owned his own business and her mother worked part-time while Frankie and her sister were growing up.
Frankie described her literacy background with positives and negatives. “I love to read.” Her extensive reading, in fact, created barriers for her writing. “I
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strongly disliked writing. . . . I think I had read so much and so many types of things, I couldn’t make my writing sound like something I would want to read. So like why do it?” Her placement in Basic Writing was not a great surprise to her: “I’ve never been a good test taker and when we did placement testing I probably just didn’t do very well.” Her high school experience, even with all those college credits, prepared her for college-level writing in limited ways. “In high school we didn’t write a lot. . . . We only wrote two papers my entire high school career.” For these two papers, the possibilities seem to have been minimal. When asked how she knew what to write, she said, “Normally, I was answering . . . a writing prompt or something like that. We had specific things we have to have in papers.” The key guideline was the standard five-paragraph theme: “Most of our writing base was based on what you had to know for PSSAs [the Pennsylvania Department of Ed- ucation mandated testing] to write those essays, like, brainstorm first, like have an introductory paragraph and something and filler stuff in middle and conclusion.”
Despite limited writing experience in high school, Frankie flourished in Basic Writing. Her work was so strong that near the end of the semester I approached her about submitting a portfolio to ask for exemption from College Writing, an option my department allowed. Frankie did submit a portfolio and was approved for exemption, her work in Basic Writing considered equivalent to what any student completing College Writing would have been able to produce. Frankie’s high expectations for herself allowed her to blossom when given assignments she could dig into and tools for making her writing sound like something she and others would want to read.
The Basic Writing Course as Spike and Frankie Experienced It
“I have to give you a little background because you won’t understand if I don’t give it to you,” Frankie said, in discussing her narrative essay with her interviewer. In that spirit, we will leave Spike and Frankie for a short time and look at the Basic Writing course they experienced. This course design is reflected in the writing that Spike and Frankie did and in their development of identities as writers.
During the semesters when Spike and Frankie were in my courses, students completed three formal writing assignments. Each assignment was submitted as a portfolio; a reflection on writing decisions made from drafts to final copy was part of each portfolio. Embedded within the three major assignments were nu- merous smaller ones, what Frankie called “annoying little exercises.” We used a writing workshop model. Students did a lot of writing in class; I used that time to provide individual feedback through conferences. I wrote scant notes on pa- pers. Most teacher feedback came through conversation. Feedback also came from peers; writing groups, in which talk also superseded writing on papers, met at least twice for each paper. Mentor texts, i.e., writing that offers models for writing tech-
Becoming a Person Who Writes 75
niques that students themselves might adopt, were an important course element. The assignment sequence worked as a spiral. Each new assignment built on skills practiced and honed in the previous assignment. New learning was layered in; stu- dents could always circle back to writing techniques they had already rehearsed.
The course design reflects elements that others in this collection have advo- cated for. Jo-Anne Kerr speaks to the development of a discourse important for transferring writerly habits to future contexts: reading in a writerly way, feedback from readers, moving beyond one format for writing. Kara Taczak, Liane Rob- ertson, and Kathleen Blake Yancey show that deliberate reflection on one’s work and active uptake of language to describe it are essential for transfer. All of these features were part of the course that Spike and Frankie experienced.
Table 4.1 presents the major assignments for the course, accompanying in- class exercises, and the mentor texts that Spike and Frankie reference.
As is apparent in biographical information for both Spike and Frankie, each entered his/her first university semester with limited writing experience. They re- semble the students that Mina Shaughnessy, the first composition scholar whose work was dedicated to basic writing, described as “have been writing infrequent- ly” and “in such artificial and strained situations that the communicative pur- pose of writing has rarely if ever seemed real” (14). Today’s testing culture in K-12 schools has, for many students, reduced writing to a formula in order to earn an acceptable test score. Ritter, in this collection, testifies to the pervasiveness of this practice. Thus, it is not surprising that university placement testing might reveal a limited writing repertoire among some incoming students if they do not engage in self-sponsored writing and if their writing for school has primarily focused on test preparation. Ivanič notes that “writers bring to any act of writing the literacy practices into which they have been acculturated through their past experience” (184). Test prep is the writing practice many high school students have become accustomed to. This had been the experience of both Spike and Frankie.
However, over many years of teaching Basic Writing, I have found that stu- dents assigned to my classes are capable, competent learners. Inexperience with writing is the issue, not capability. Given opportunities to write and to craft their writing, inexperienced student writers can accomplish things that surprise them.
Spike: Breaking Away from the Five-Paragraph Theme When interviewed, Spike said, “I was expecting to come in[to his first writing course in college] with my basic writing skills as the five-paragraph essay as that’s how you write.” Lorna Collier addresses this kind of mismatch between what high school seniors think college writing will be about and what actually occurs, noting that students “expect to do writing rather than engage in writing, both as a way of thinking and as a way of demonstrating knowledge” (11). Very quickly, Spike real- ized that writing would not be simply filling in a formula: “My professor she kinda told me that’s [the five-paragraph theme] not the way to go about the papers.”
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Table 4.1. Assignment sequence
First third of semester
Second third of semester
Final third of semester
End of semester
Assignment: Narrative Researched Essay Radical Revision Final Exam In-class exercises:
-quick writes -guided imagery
-collaborative topic development -quick write prompts -color coding to balance research, personal writing -bookless draft -Post-it organiz- ing and thesis
-write from a new point of view -found poem -rework previous writing
Skills learned:
-1st person -narrow focus -strong lead -develop evi- dence: anecdote, description -dialogue -organize for readability, interest -variations in paragraph length -aware of audi- ence -revise -monitor pat- terns of error
-research question -find sources -gain content expertise -develop evi- dence: sources -recognize multi- ple views -integrate others’ words -strong topic sentences -organize for reader needs -transitions -transition markers -monitor pat- terns of error
-re-envision topic -global revision -try out new form -provide reader adequate infor- mation -maintain reader interest
-provide evi- dence of learning -identify practic- es, behaviors that helped during semester -identify how to reproduce practices and be- haviors in future courses
Techniques that carry over from previous assignment:
-new view of topic -strong lead -nonlinear orga- nization -anecdote, de- scription -dialogue -1st person -variations in paragraph length
-any skills from previous papers -writing or proj- ects outside the course
-any skills from previous papers -writing or proj- ects outside the course
Becoming a Person Who Writes 77
The mentor texts the class read and discussed played a significant role in showing him new possibilities. “We started off by reading various stories . . . and we picked out the similar techniques they were using. . . . We were going to be able to try these techniques in our own writings.” While this shift felt somewhat uncomfortable to Spike, like learning “there’s actually another way to tie your shoe,” he did what he had always done in high school. He relied on his sense of responsibility to do the assignments. By the time he submitted his narrative portfolio, the first assignment of the semester, he was recognizing the benefits of trying out some new writing techniques.
One new technique that Spike used to his advantage was writing dialogue. In his final exam, in answer to a question about which mentor authors influ- enced him, he named Jimmy Baca: “Baca gave me the idea to use dialog” for “not just the words coming out of the characters [sic] mouth but the feeling being expressed as well.” Dialogue comprises much of his narrative and does, in fact, move the action forward more effectively than his expository sections. In the fol- lowing segment he has found a credit card that someone has dropped in a busy convenience store/gas station; as he ponders what to do with the card, he notices the car parked beside his:
The man was saying, “I do not know where it went. I had it in my hand and I went up to pay and it was gone.” I walked over to the man.
“Did you lose something?”
The man turned around and his face was as read [sic] as a toma- to. He looked like he was about to hit someone.
“Yeah, I had it and now it is gone.”
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“I lost my credit card. I don’t have any money on me. Some punk ass kid probably has it now and is running my bill sky high!” stated the man.
The dialogue continues until Spike establishes that the credit card he found and is still holding onto belongs to this upset man. He hands the man the card.
Spike also worked to make his speakers’ language more realistic, the way talking actually sounds. From draft to final copy, shopping becomes shoppin’. You cannot trust anyone anymore becomes You can’t trust no one anymore. These are tiny shifts, but they reflect a writer who has begun to understand that writers craft their work and that he, too, can craft his writing. This is a far cry from simply filling in a five-paragraph template.
Spike also tested out Baca’s single-sentence paragraphs. The following is a short excerpt in which he attempts to draw attention to important lines by creat-
78 Sitler
ing them as stand-alone paragraphs. The action occurs at a local mall where Spike has gone with his friend, Nick. Nick is the first speaker:
“Yeah I will go along.” As I looked into his eyes I could tell that what he was really thinking was no way, not after what we just went through in Pac Sun.
We walked over to Lids.
After purchasing a hat, we were done shopping at the mall. Therefore, I asked Nick if he wanted to go get something to eat before we headed [home]. With a firm yes to my question, we then began to decide on a place to eat.
We went to the Ponderosa Steak House.
Spike’s use of the single-sentence paragraph is not particularly successful. Ba- ca’s single-sentence paragraphs convey vital information. Spike just uses them to shift scenes. Still the attempt again shows a writer’s willingness to experiment with something new.
Spike’s final foray into new techniques in his narrative is something we de- cided to call sidetracking. We used the term to describe a digression he added in order to stretch and slow down time within the action of the piece. It serves the additional purpose of addressing a common issue with basic writers, lack of elaboration of ideas (Shaughnessy 227-32). In his cover letter, Spike identified sidetracking as a risk he took in the writing. It looked like this:
On my way into the store, I looked down and I saw a credit card lying between the two automatic doors.
“Should I keep it? How would I feel if this happened to me?” These questions raced through my head.
I was brought up by my mom and my dad. We live on the out- skirts of town and I have been there for as long as I can remem- ber. My dad, abandoned by his true father, is self-employed. He does concrete work, brick masonry, and his favorite, stone ma- sonry. My mom, on the other hand, works in an office for [name of her workplace]. I was raised with the idea that stealing was not acceptable. If an item was free and I wanted it my dad would push me to ask if it would be alright if I had it. If I would take something without asking and my dad would find out he made me take it back to where I got it and ask if it was alright to have it. Stealing, in my dad’s eyes, is for two types of people, people who are too lazy to get a job and those who are too lazy to pay.
I finished my business and walked out to my car.
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From here the essay continues with the dialogue about the upset man in the car nearby.
Nested between internal dialogue, marked by the italic font, and the actual dialogue noted earlier, the sidetrack, as noted by Spike in his portfolio reflection “really worked.” I agree. It added some depth to his paper, adding a deep motiva- tion for returning the credit card to the man who had lost it. Spike wrote, “I have seen this technique before, but I have never really given it the thought to add it in one of my own writings. This most definitely changed the way I usually write.”
Unfortunately, Spike did not provide his researched essay or his radical revi- sion for this study. His final exam, however, provides an excerpt and some com- mentary from the researched essay.
Spike identifies Deborah Tannen, writer of a mentor text for this assignment, as key to the progress of his researched piece. True to the creative nonfiction mentor texts we used, like Tannen’s, Spike “learned how to incorporate my own story into a research paper.” The following excerpt shows how he did this:
Criminals of identity theft are very seldom caught. . . . However the government has passed a law in 2004. . . . The government has also added the Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act, this Act states “IN GENERAL.—Whoever, during and in relation to any felony violation . . . imprisonment of 5 years.”
When I walked out of the gas station, and the credit card was still in my hand, I walked over to my car. . . . I asked him a few brief questions about the card in my possession and I handed the card over to the young man.
While the transition between researched and personal text is bumpy, Spike has again been willing to try something new. With growing audience awareness, he articulates why he has done this: “Instead of using strictly information this technique allowed me to add a personally [sic] experience that relates to the topic to make it sound more real.”
He attributed this awareness of how a writer might mix research and per- sonal information to a color-coding exercise (based on ideas drawn from Harry Noden’s Image Grammar) that we did with the Tannen essay. After using a high- lighter, each of a different color, to mark 1) exposition; 2) narration/description; 3) quotation (quotes from sources as well as use of dialogue), students discovered that Tannen’s integration of multiple writing techniques made the research she presented highly readable. Students then color-coded their own drafts, evaluated what the colors revealed to them, and revised accordingly.
Where do these examples of Spike’s writing lead us? In what ways do they demonstrate his developing an identity as a writer? As noted earlier, taking on this identity means acting and talking like a writer.
As a writer new to the college classroom, Spike’s incoming assumptions about
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writing, particularly about one-size-fits-all writing, were challenged. He respond- ed by trying new techniques. He developed vocabulary for articulating what he was doing and why he was making particular writerly choices. Perhaps the best example is his noting that he had seen writers do sidetracking before but never considered doing it himself. Now he was doing it. His final exam includes these lines, indicative of someone who has taken on some aspects of being a writer. Basic Writing, he writes, has “busted [boosted] my confidence to be able to write with integrity for my future writing courses.” Later in the same document he notes, “I am no longer afraid to try new things in my writing.” He was no longer filling in a predetermined template. He was crafting his writing with a reader in mind. In baby steps, his thinking about “I am a writer” was emerging.
Frankie: Shifting an Attitude About Writing Frankie arrived in Basic Writing having “dreaded everything I ever had to write.” Her strong reading background and high school/college courses gave her an ad- vantage. Her attitude about writing, however, was a challenge to her progress. Frankie needed to be convinced that she had some skill and that every writing experience was not dreadful.
In his study of basic writers, Josh Lederman found that teacher expectations played a key role in student performance: “The two clear success stories [stu- dents] in this study . . . both had teachers who truly believed in them, and in some deep ways, these teachers helped the students believe in themselves too” (199). Lederman’s finding echoes other research on the effects of teacher expectations on student performance. Susan McLeod cautions that a teacher’s negative expec- tations are particularly powerful; however, she also confirms that positive teacher expectations can lead to improved student performance (108-09). While Spike’s writing improved mostly through adopting new techniques from mentor texts, Frankie’s writing improved more in response to topic choice, in-class exercises, and supportive reader feedback.
Frankie’s first paper, her narrative, focused on a school consolidation that oc- curred during her senior year. Two high schools in her district were merged into one. She was from the smaller school that closed. She worked her way through this self-selected topic, one she cared about, as if she were constructing an intri- cate jigsaw puzzle. Her writing moves were sophisticated and intentional.
Her early draft began this way:
Senior year of high school, the year to remember, the year where you rule the school, the year you have waited for your entire life. The year for me that was turned upside down. . . . I went from a senior class of forty-six to a senior class of one hundred thir- ty-seven of which I knew no one but my original classmates.
She wrote of bullying, name-calling, eating lunch surrounded by strangers. Mid-
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way through the essay she briefly mentioned her Spanish teacher, Mrs. S., who had moved with the students to the larger high school:
I had her for eighth period everyday for Spanish IV. The end of the day which I had with eight other kids that I had been with since freshman year. Some days that class took years to get to, those seven periods before it were the longest ever experienced until I finally got to what I was used to, until I finally was famil- iar with everything around me.
Then she moved on to describe how “I wanted to be the one to change things; I wanted to make new friends, I wanted to say I was the first consolidated class and I benefited from it.”
That first draft provided much information but not much focus. The essay was moving in two opposing directions: 1) I’m an outsider; 2) I want to change things. Each idea was functioning without connection to the other. We confer- enced about this, and Frankie understood the disconnect but puzzled over how to resolve it.
Before students submitted their second draft, we did one of those “annoying little exercises,” an extended guided imagery prompt. Students made a quick list of snapshot moments, i.e., vivid individual scenes from the writing they were draft- ing. Then they selected one scene and responded to a series of sensory prompts, as if they were playing a movie in their minds: What did you hear? What did you see? What was the temperature?, etc.
Frankie’s completed guided imagery described Mrs. S: “never be one to need a microphone,” “always wore a skirt,” “hair never out of place.” It described her classroom: “vocab posters, the Spanish alphabet pictures of her and students from years past . . . maracas . . . spectacular bulletin boards. You could learn just from being in her room.” This short piece was filled with detail about how important this teacher and her classroom were to Frankie.
Through this in-class exercise, Frankie’s focal point emerged—her beloved Spanish teacher. In her portfolio reflective cover letter, Frankie wrote that com- pleting the guided imagery was significant for her writing “because after doing this exercise I realized what the main focus of my paper should be as well as what direction from that point on my paper needed to head. . . . It made my paper go from several separate pieces to one flowing work of writing.” She wanted to “focus more on my ‘safe haven’ . . . and not so much on the negative.” That safe haven was her Spanish teacher’s classroom.
The final copy of her essay began with some text that had been midway through her earlier draft, a nod to Mrs. S, and added new material:
Some days that class took years to get to, those seven periods before it were the longest ever experienced until I got what I was used to, until I finally was familiar with everything around
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me. Walking into that classroom seeing Mrs. S’s familiar face and all those familiar students around me, learning like I had been learning for the last three years was in a sense for me like going home.
The new draft and later the final copy included pages about Mrs. S., her meth- ods of teaching, and her ability to personally connect with students. In thinking about this teacher, Frankie also found the rhetorical link she needed in order to connect being an outsider with wanting to change that status. This sentence from her second draft bridged the competing ideas: “I wanted to change things, and when I began to try it started right back there in Spanish IV, with Ms. S. leading the way.” It was Mrs. S’ response to consolidation, Mrs. S’ “courageous lead,” that pushed Frankie to ask “students sitting alone in the cafeteria to come and eat with my friends and me. On the volleyball team we made a point to have one team-bonding event a week. I quickly made new friends ‘from the other side.’”
In Frankie’s jigsaw of revision, each draft rearranged or layered in new infor- mation. In her interview, Frankie described herself as being “really big on organi- zation.” In high school, she had been an honor student while on multiple sports teams and active in student government. In college, she was “involved in like 4-5 organizations” while carrying 18 credits. “I’ve always like had a lot on my plate.” Her approach to revising her paper was the same as her general approach to life: How do all these pieces fit together? How can I manage them so they all make sense? For her paper, she “needed to decide what direction it needed to take . . . Mrs. S. or Consolidation. I chose Mrs. S.” This decision allowed Frankie to “focus . . . on her as a person and what she did for me during the consolidation.” With this as her goal, Frankie found ways for the parts of her essay to intersect, rather than cast parts off. In Frankie’s words, the paper “was a lot different than what I planned on as my original topic,” which had been a much more negative report- ing on the consolidation.
One thing she was willing to cast off was the five-paragraph format she was fa- miliar with. Brief nods to it appear in individual sentences in drafts. For instance, in one late draft, this appeared: “She has high standards, an amazing story and the drive to make you a better human being.” In no cases, though, did she follow up by addressing each of the items in the sequence. Mentor texts appear to have had minimal effect. The one noticeable technique that was borrowed from the course readings appeared in her final copy of the paper. It came from Annie Dillard, an extra-large space between paragraphs at a place where the topic shifts. Frankie did this only once in her four-page essay.
Frankie’s portfolio cover letter for her narrative spoke to the attitude noted at the beginning: “Something I have learned about myself as a writer would be that I can write. . . . I was dreading this project but with much surprise it came easily to me. I felt confident reading my work to my writing group and to you [the in- structor]. . . . I liked what I was doing.”
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Frankie’s researched essay, her second assignment of the semester, focused on another topic of great personal significance, the experiences of her sister and her mother with skin cancer. It mattered to Frankie that in Basic Writing she was asked “to write about something that we were passionate about.” “She [instruc- tor] didn’t give us a prompt I didn’t care about and was like blah blah blah write something on this. It was like whatever we wanted to write about so that really helped.” The topic for this second piece had actually emerged many weeks before she began the paper. It had been on the list of snapshot moments she had gener- ated for the guided composing exercise.
The creative nonfiction approach we used to writing this essay allowed Frankie to personalize the writing. She bookended two researched pages with the story of her mother and sister. In her portfolio reflection she noted that now she is “able to more comfortably write. Not every sentence is a struggle. Also I feel much more confident as a writer.” She was no longer writing “because I had to for a grade.”
As with the narrative, Frankie identified an in-class exercise as most helpful for her writing. Before their second draft, students used Post-it notes, one idea per note, to list key points they wanted to make in their essays. Then, in one sentence, they were to write their “So what?”—what is it that you want a reader to understand when they finish your essay? Finally, they arranged the Post-its in the order in which they thought they needed to write; thus, they left class with an outline for a revised draft. Frankie’s Post-it page included seven notes, arranged in this order:
-Does artificial tanning cause skin cancer
-Mom and Angela having skin cancer
-Why they got it
-The real truth from studies
-Vitamin D
-How it affected Angela
-Would tan again?
Frankie noted that this exercise was significant because “I knew . . . where I wanted my paper to go and what things I was going to make my most important points. It also made me realize that I was going to need at least two more topics to meet the length requirement for this paper.”
Indeed, she adjusted her text in her final copy. She had had some trouble with a researched section about Vitamin D. The writing was awkward and didn’t fit well with surrounding text. For the final copy, she abandoned that information. Then she added segments on additional causes of skin cancer—beyond tanning beds, the specific focus of this writing—and on advancements in knowledge of how to treat skin cancer.
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Her portfolio cover letter indicated that Frankie understood what she was executing well in this writing: “the detail I use to explain things” and “putting feeling into my paper.” The detail she mentions arose from two factors: her abil- ity as a researcher and her ability to make that research readable. Frankie was a skilled researcher, something she must have been taught in high school. Her bibliography included recent issues of Gerontology, British Journal of Dermatolo- gy, and Dermatologic Therapy along with several consumer editions of the more readable Health Source. She made this heavy material readable while carefully ac- knowledging each source and prepping readers with strong topic sentences. One paragraph shows how she included research throughout the essay:
Multiple tanning regulars would argue that some people just get skin cancer. They would say it is not caused specifically from tanning. That is only because it never happened to them. Denise K. Woo and Melody J. Eide from the Department of Dermatol- ogy and Biostatistics Research Epidemiology, out of The Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan would disagree. Their most recent study provides the most extensive evidence to date of the risk of melanoma associated with tanning beds. They recom- mend discouraging teenagers from using tanning beds and oth- er tanning equipment.
We had talked about strong topic sentences, looking at Tannen’s essay and some student essays as models. Frankie understood quickly how to manage her topic sentences. We also talked about selecting credible sources and about ac- knowledging them. Her scientific articles generally included multiple authors. She was unhappy with the lengthy, sometimes awkward method of naming them, but diligently did so. In later years, with her permission, I used her paper as a mentor text to help newer writers understand how they, too, could acknowledge the resources they had tapped.
Frankie’s final paper for the semester was her radical revision. Toby Fulwiler’s essay “A Lesson in Revision” provides the basis for this assignment. It asks stu- dents to play with form and language. Shaughnessy identifies absence of “play” with ideas as an issue with basic writers (236). I, too, find that my students have rarely been invited to play with language in the ways the radical revision asks of them. The assignment requires students to rethink an earlier completed essay by radically changing its form, its purpose, or its audience.
Frankie returned to her tanning bed essay for this project. She revised the re- searched essay into a children’s story in two forms: a printed and bound copy and the Power Point presentation she had done in order to create the printed pages of the bound copy. Slides were illustrated with colorful clip art drawings. Text from the first three slides gives a feel for how her children’s story proceeded:
Slide 1: One day my Mommy my big sister and I all went to the
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doctor. Mommy told me it wasn’t the doctor for when you’re sick. It was the doctor for your skin. She said he was called a Dermatologist.
Slide 2: The doctor ran lots and lots of tests on my Mommy. Then he ran lots and lots more tests on my sister. The doctor was really nice and told me I could ask as many questions as I wanted.
Slide 3: After waiting for forever the doctor came out to see us. He told us that there was something wrong with my Mommy’s back and something really wrong with the back of my Sister’s leg.
Frankie noted in her portfolio reflection that in order to make her radical revision effective, “I needed to keep [different elements of the essay] in order and keep the detail in them, but still take out a lot of my writing”; this time the illustrations would carry meaning as well. Her awareness of her audience was a key factor in this decision; children’s books need “an easier reading level.” She was also purposeful in her decision about why to revise this essay in this way: “I think this [skin cancer] is something kids should be educated about even at a young age.” She was so determined to assure that her writing reached her in- tended audience that “I tried it out on a first grader and he paid attention the whole time.”
As with Spike, readers might now ask what this shows us about Frankie’s development of an identity as a writer. Like Spike, Frankie easily adopted the discourse of a writer. She was able to articulate what she changed from draft to final copy and, more important, why she made those changes. Primary to those changes was Frankie’s knowing she needed to focus her writing for a particular audience. This, in turn, gave her writing purpose; it was not just for a grade. Also, like Spike, she distanced herself from formula writing, opting instead to craft writing to her own purposes.
In the cover letter for her portfolio asking for exemption from College Writ- ing, she wrote this: “After learning multiple writing techniques I know so much more and am able to more comfortably write. I feel that what I produce is worth reading.” Her key reason for dreading writing had disappeared. A surprise sur- faced in her interview. When asked if she had any advice for incoming first-year students, she said, “You’re not gonna get better [as a writer] unless you’re writing. After I took [Basic Writing], I had a journal that I wrote in religiously every single night no matter what until about last winter break. I didn’t do that before.” Some- times the journal recorded events of the day, sometimes personal things. Still, this student who had dreaded any kind of writing began and continued self-sponsored writing for several years after her first college composition course. She had not only adopted the discourse of a writer; she was, as writers do, regularly writing.
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We know that students’ progress in writing is idiosyncratic; thus, course de- sign needs to reach students in multiple ways. Mentor texts and the in-class ex- ercises we did mattered in general to writers in my classes, but Spike and Frankie show how that work mattered differently to each. Conversations with them about their writing were important. The course focus on process, including draft after draft and supported challenges to try new things, was important. Spike noted in his narrative portfolio reflection that “no copy that u [sic] make is your final copy. . . . A paper is always a work in progress.” Three years later in his interview, he maintained that process still mattered: “I feel that even for a final draft I feel that there is always something that you can add or change and just you can always take a different view on a paper.” All of this leads me to conclude that course design needs to be deliberate. Nothing can happen by accident.
Composition courses are often thought of as service courses. The question be- comes this: Service to whom? To the institution and its various constituents? To the student? To both? In her work on identity and writing, Ivanič references Lev Vy- gotsky’s and Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of the social and dialogic nature of learning and of language use. Ivanič points to the necessity of teaching writing as a social act, through authentic tasks in which writers have a sense of purpose and of audience (339). She argues that in order for students to take on an identity of someone who writes, tasks, assignments, and outcomes need first to serve the writer (338-39).
In her discussion of teaching English language learners, Gloria Park argues for “the importance of writing in constructing identity,” (336) in and outside of aca- demic settings, and raises another issue about teaching writing as well, the need for student writers to benefit in personal ways from their experiences in writing courses. She outlines how she accomplished this in a course. One course goal was “to remind my students as well as myself of how academic writing was, and could be, seen as a form of writing to understand the world around us and not just as a conduit to mastering the linguistic code of the US educational context” (338). While my Basic Writers were not English language learners, I subscribe to the same philosophy as Park. Students should not write only traditional academic prose in Basic Writing. It is just as effective to expand writing opportunities so that students can discover themselves as people who can write and who can, in addition, write in an academic setting.
Of course, these students-becoming-writers who have had opportunities to write about subjects that matter to them in ways that challenge and stretch them leave our classrooms where their writing has been nurtured. They move into courses where we can only hope they will continue the habits and behaviors they have developed in our classes. What happens to them as writers outside the con- fines of a carefully crafted writing setting?
Spike and Frankie: Writing in Future Careers Helping our students to apply ways of thinking used by the professionals they
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will become needs to be a goal of all writing instruction (Taczak, Robertson, and Yancey, this collection). Indeed, Spike and Frankie found some footing with a writing identity in Basic Writing and, as their college experiences continued, grew that identity into a more professional view of themselves as writers.
Spike majored in criminology, intending even from his first college semester, to become a state trooper. His major required him to write frequently, for in- stance “look[ing] at a report of a crime or a study” then writing a personal reflec- tion or applying criminological theories. By the “beginning of junior year,” Spike was recognizing “how powerful writing can be and how important it is in current and future society.” By that time, he had written papers for various classes, in- cluding one about racial overtones in laws guiding sentencing for cocaine users. He recognized that someone had written those laws and that, indeed, words had life-altering effects. He recognized, too, that his own words on the job would matter, especially in offering a point of view: “If I’m working with a fellow officer and he’s on the same crime or something . . . and he says something but I believe another, I . . . want my part to be heard. I don’t want the judge to go solely off his [the other officer’s] things.”
Spike expected that his future writing would be comprised largely of accident reports and investigation reports, “like first-hand accounts.” He was aware of the weight his own words would carry: “If an arrest happens and you’re there, you’re a first-hand account, and it’s important because that’s what judges are gonna read . . . [in order to decide] if he’s guilty or not guilty.” Essentially, Spike will spend much of his career writing detail-filled narratives so that authorities beyond him- self can make appropriate decisions. As a senior, Spike no longer spoke about trying new things in his writing. He spoke of writing not as a separate thing he would do but as an element at the very heart of his professional life. His words would have the heft of affecting individuals’ futures.
Frankie, a human resources management major, had also expanded her identity as a writer. When asked how important writing was in her life, she an- swered, “Way more important than I thought it would be. I do a ton of writing.” As with Spike, Frankie’s major required significant writing. Her management courses demanded that she write case studies and short essays of two to five pages.
Her future in human resources management, she said, would involve writ- ing emails, memos, letters related to hiring and firing, and reports. The sense of audience Frankie had expressed in Basic Writing three years earlier was further honed. She recognized that her written words needed to be succinct and mean- ingful if she wanted employees to read them. It was her job as writer, not the employees’, to assure that messages were read: “If I’m writing an email or memo . . . if you make the first five or six lines about stupid things that don’t matter . . . they’ll stop reading.”
Five to ten years in her future, Frankie expected to continue her workplace writing. By that time, she hoped to have expanded her audience, saying she want-
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ed to be “comfortable with writing things that people higher up in the organiza- tion would be okay with reading, okay with presenting to executives. . . . I never want my writing to just stick with emails.” The first-semester student who dread- ed any writing foresaw a future in which her words would be “worthwhile, like making a difference.”
Closing Thoughts James Paul Gee (in this collection) argues that FYC, if it is to be continued at all, must attend to students’ subject positions and social engagement with literacy in the world beyond academic disciplines and certainly beyond the classroom. Intentionality of course design, as shown by numerous writers in this collection, can usher student writers into that larger world of writing. It can foster not only transfer of skills but of dispositions and of one’s view of oneself as a writer. Stu- dents who emerge from such classrooms can discover what Jane, a first-year par- ticipant in the study with Spike and Frankie discovered: “It [her Basic Writing course] . . . made me realize that there are many different ways you can write a paper and different techniques you can use when writing and not to stick to just one thing. . . . Everyone can be a writer; they just have to find it.”
Works Cited Baca, Jimmy Santiago. “Sign Language, Convict Style.” Adolescents on the Edge,
edited by Jimmy Santiago Baca and ReLeah Cossett Lent, Heinemann, 2010, pp. 113-18.
Brooke, Robert. “Modeling a Writer’s Identity: Reading and Imitation in the Writing Classroom.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 39, no. 1, 1988, pp. 24-41.
Collier, Lorna. “Listening to Students: New Insights on Their College-Writing Ex- pectations.” Council Chronicle, March 2014, pp. 10-12.
Dillard, Annie. An American Childhood. Harper Collins, 1987. Frankie. Interview. Conducted by Gloria Park and Ravyn McKee, 24 Feb. 2014. Fulwiler, Toby. “A Lesson in Revision.” The Subject is Writing, 2nd ed., edited by Wen-
dy Bishop, Boynton/Cook, 1999, pp. 73-88. Gee, James Paul. (this collection). “Foreword.” Gee, James Paul. “What is Literacy?” Negotiating Academic Literacies, edited by Vivi-
an Zamel and Ruth Spack, Erlbaum, 1998, pp. 51-59. Ivanič, Roz. Writing and Identity: The Discoursal Construction of Identity in Academ-
ic Writing. John Benjamins, 1998. Kerr, Jo-Anne. (this collection). “Teaching for Transfer in the First-year Composi-
tion Course: Fostering the Development of Dispositions.” Lederman, Josh. Critical, Third-Space Phenomenology as a Framework for Vali-
dating College Composition Placement. 2011. Indiana U of Pennsylvania, PhD dissertation.
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McLeod, Susan H. Notes on the Heart: Affective Issues in the Writing Classroom. Southern Illinois UP, 1997.
Noden, Harry. Image Grammar. Heinemann, 1999. Park, Gloria. “‘Writing is a Way of Knowing’: Writing and Identity.” ELT Journal, vol.
67, 2013, pp. 336-45. Ritter, Ashley M. (this collection). “A Transition.” Romano, Tom. “Teaching Writing from the Inside.” Adolescent Literacy, edited by
Kylene Beers et al., Heinemann, 2007, pp. 167-78. Shaughnessy, Mina P. Errors & Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writ-
ing. Oxford UP, 1977. Spike. Interview. Conducted by Ravyn McKee, 13 March 2014. Taczak, Kara, et al. (this collection). “A Framework for Transfer: Students’ Develop-
ment of a ‘Theory of Writing.’” Tannen, Deborah. “Sex, Lies, and Conversation.” The Thomson Reader: Conversations
in Context, edited by Robert P. Yagelski and Thomson Wadsworth, 2007, pp. 306-10.
Questions for Reflection and Discussion After Chapter 4
1. During the Writing Marathon activity Helen describes, students write on campus and respond “I am a writer” if someone asks what they are doing. In what other ways can you prompt students to enact the role of “writer” during class, outside of the classroom? In what other ways can you prompt students to own the label of “writer” in the process?
2. What are the mentor texts you have in mind when writing? You might consider the “mentor texts” that you borrow discourse from in any type of writing that you do, including writing course materials.
3. How can you implement the writing activities Helen describes to foster your students’ building of confidence as writers? Consider how you may adapt these activities to fit your students’ levels of academic preparedness and their language and cultural backgrounds.
Writing Activity After Chapter 4 Choose a current student who you know of who struggles as a writer, or imagine a hypothetical student in FYC. Write a few sentences to describe this student’s struggles with writing. Now, dream big: If this student could become a highly confident, highly skilled writer, what would that look like? Dreaming big, write a description of this student in the future that includes what he or she can do as a writer and what attitude he or she has toward writing. Now, dream a little smaller: In what reasonable ways can this student grow as a writer within a one semester course? Dreaming smaller, write a description of this student at the end of an FYC course that includes the few new (or newly refined) abilities he or she has acquired as a writer and the attitude he or she now has toward writing.
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Further Reading Corkery, Caleb. “Literacy Narratives and Confidence Building in the Writing Class-
room.” Journal of Basic Writing, vol. 24, no. 1, 2005, pp. 48-67. Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achieve-
ments of America’s Educationally Underprepared. Penguin, 2005. Williams, Bonnie J. “Students’ ‘Write’ to Their Own Language: Teaching the African
American Verbal Tradition as a Rhetorically Effective Writing Skill.” Equity & Excellence in Education, vol. 46, no. 3, 2013, pp. 411-29.
