Mastuda, Paul Kei. “Composition Studies and ESL Writing: A Disciplinary Division of Labor.” CCC 50.4 (1999): 699-721.
Summary: Mastuda examines how the division between composition studies and Teaching of English as Second Language emerged specifically over the period of 1941 to 1966 due to the professionalization of TESL just when composition studies was also undergoing a revision of its own disciplinary identity that, according to him, inadvertently contributed to the creation of the disciplinary division of labor influencing the institutional practices in composition programs across the nation even today. Towards the end, he points out the need of some form of interdisciplinary collaboration between the Composition Studies and TESL to address the issue of writing in ESL since it falls under the ken of both the disciplines.
Most Valuable Citation: Allen, Bloomfield, Connor, Kaplan, Zamel.
Area Cluster: 107 Institutional and Professional
Methodology: Literature Review,
Provocative Quotes:
“Before the Michigan ELI (English Language Institute) was established in 1941, it was commonly believed that anyone whose native language was English was qualified to teach English to nonnative speakers-much as some thought any literate person could teach writing” (703).
“The creation of a professional organization (TESOL) that devoted itself entirely to ESL issues and the decline of interest in those issues among composition specialists led to the separation of writing issues into first-language and second-language components. The disciplinary division of labor was thus institutionalized” (713).
“…second-language writing should be seen as an integral part of both composition studies and second-language studies, and specialists in both professions should try to transform their institutional practices in ways that reflect the needs and characteristics of second-language writers in their own institutional contexts” (715).
Tags: Allen, Bloomfield, Connor, Kaplan, Zamel, TESL, professionalization, disciplinary identity, ESL Writing, interdisciplinary relationship, Disciplinary Division of Labor
Daniell, Beth. “Narratives of Literacy: Connecting Composition to Culture.” College Composition and Communication 50 (1999): 393-410.
Summary: Beth contends that various narratives of literacy-grand narratives, ethnographic, little narratives-over the years have influenced and continue to shape the images we in composition studies have of who we are, what we do, and how we do it. Using Lyotard as a terministic screen to examine these narratives she brings to light a number of issues: the conflicted politics of composition studies over the last two or three decades, the relationship of theory and ideology, the ethical questions of research, the problematics of separating the spiritual from academic study. And she finally maintains that literacy is a term that now "illuminates the ways that individual acts of writing are connected to larger cultural, historical, and social and political systems" (408).
Methodology: Archival, Bibliographic
Most Valuable Citation: Havelock, Ong, Berlin, Freire, Lyotard
Area Cluster: 112 Community, Civic & Public
Provocative quotes:
“Indeed the move in composition studies away from the individualistic and cognitive perspectives of the seventies and early eighties toward the social theories and political consciousness that prevail today was encouraged, pushed along, impelled by competing narratives of literacy. These days, literacy- the term and concept-connects composition, with its emphasis on students and classrooms, to the social, political, economic, historical, and cultural” (393).
“To see reading and writing as social practice mediated and regulated by institutions instead of as a free-standing, individual mental operation supplied composition with a different lens to use in looking at our students, their texts, and our own work. The idea that writing and writing instruction were deeply connected with power became, with Berlin's histories, a mainstream idea” (399).
“The problem with grand narratives is the unfortunate human tendency to overgeneralize from them: The Freire narrative has been used to support a discourse that sometimes seems to assume that all our students are oppressed” (400).
“Freire has shown that a "banking" pedagogy can support oppressive structures elsewhere in society and that literacy and literacy learning can be liberatory in some situations. But we have learned from experience that neither Freire's methods nor his critique will automatically bring critical consciousness to North America” (401).
“literacy is multiple, contextual, and ideological” (403).
Taken as a whole, the little narratives argue as well that the relationship between literacy and oppression or freedom is rarely as simple as we have thought” (403).
“…literacy, including instruction in writing, is woven into a society's structures of power” (405).
“As the little narratives make clear, literacy can oppress or resist or liberate, and the best of these studies present the simultaneity of these ideological contradictions” (406)
Tags: Havelock, Ong, Berlin, Freire, Lyotard, little narratives, grand narratives, oppression, literacy, liberatory, orality
Willians, Bronwyn T. “Speak for Yourself? Power and Hybridity in the Cross-Cultural Classroom.” College Composition and Communication 54.4 (2003):586-609.
Summary: “In this article I use the lens of postcolonial theory to reflect on my uses of a varied series of writing pedagogies in cross-cultural classrooms at an international college. Such reflection helps reveal how relations of power between teacher and students and underlying ideological assumptions about knowledge and discourse often resulted in hybrid responses of mimicry, frustration, incomprehension, and resistance. A pedagogy constructed against the backdrop of postcolonial theory might provide both students and their teacher in such a cross-cultural setting with a more complex and useful way of understanding issues of power, discourse, identity, and the role of writing” (586).
Research Methodology: sampling, interviews
Most Valuable Citation: Bhabha, Appadurai, Spivak, Pratt, Newkirk
Area Cluster: 103 Theory
Provocative Quotes:
“Though the pursuit of writing as a fundamental part of the liberal education was the goal of the course, the underlying ideological assumptions about knowledge and discourse often led to mutual frustration, resistance, incomprehension, and aporia” (587).
“To teach in a cross-cultural classroom with such terms as originality and analysis as an unexamined foundation perpetuates a disruptive epistemic violence for the students trying to come to terms with these unstated assumptions of power and the dominant culture” (589).
“Any writing about experiences that the student in a cross-cultural classroom might do is necessarily done in ways that serve the interpolation of that student into the dominant culture no less than the overt assimilation attempted through the current-traditional assignments” (594).
“For postcolonial students in a Western classroom, this presence of the Other in the dominant culture as "somewhere between the too visible and the not visible enough," (Bhabha, "Culture's" 56, author's emphasis) is a site of ambivalence and resistance to the attempts of the dominant culture's inscription and control” (603).
“Rather than either trying to assimilate students into the dominant culture's discourse or helping them seek an ahistorical, apolitical synthesis from cultural differences, we should instead engage with them in an exploration of the cultural conflicts and power struggles often hidden in a cross-cultural writing classroom” (607).
Tags: Bhabha, Appadurai, Spivak, Pratt, Newkirk , Postcolonial, Hybridity, Resistance, mimicry, assimilation, dominant discourse, gaze, contact zone, multicultural, ideology, power, fractals
Horner, Bruce and John Trimbur. “English Only and U.S. College Composition.” College Composition and Communication 53.4 (2002): 594-630.
Summary:
Bruce Horner and John Trimbur trace the pedagogical and cultural developments that have led to the conception of English writing in the United States as a unidirectional and monolingual acquisition of literate competence. While these assumptions have been motivated by the modernist ideology of "one language/one nation," the authors envision that postmodern globalization may require us to develop in our students a multilingual and polyliterate orientation to writing. They outline the shifts in curriculum, policy, and research that will promote such a broadened pedagogical orientation in the future.”
Most Valuable Citation: Canagarajah, Crawford, Lu, Kachru, Zamel
Area Cluster: 108 Language
Provocative Quotes:
“We argue that a tacit language policy of unidirectional English monolingualism has shaped the historical formation of U.S. writing instruction and continues to influence its theory and practice in shadowy, largely unexamined ways” (594-5)
“As we have argued, this tacit language policy weighs heavily on our work studying and teaching writing. This largely unexamined language policy has made it difficult to see that U.S. college composition, from its
formation to the present day, operates for the most part within national borders…The task…is to develop an internationalist perspective capable of understanding the study and teaching of written English in relation to other languages and to the dynamics of globalization”(623-4).
Tags: Canagarajah, Crawford, Lu, Kachru, Zame, English Only, Global English, Monolingualism, Internationalist perspective, bilingualism, language policy, multilingualism, nationhood, ESL
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