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Carol Wittig

~ My PhD Journey…

Carol Wittig

Tag Archives: composition

Proposal: Object of Study (ENG 894)

22 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by Carol in ENG 894 Theories of Networks, ENG 894 Theory of Networks

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composition, dissertation, faculty, first year experience, FYS, networks, OoS, proposal, research, university, WAC, WID, writing

My object of study is the First-Year Seminar (FYS).  There are two types of typical first-year course offerings in colleges and universities: the first-year experience (FYE) course that is focused on social acclimatization of students that may or may not be required and the first-year seminar, a content-rich course that is required as part of the academic curriculum and is taken either in conjunction with or in lieu of an alternate freshman writing sequence. Both types of programs stress ways to improve the transition from high school and first-year experience for students through developing the holistic person, academically, socially, and through a combination of initiatives. These efforts encourage early bonding between students and professors in small group settings using common readings or themes of courses, often included under efforts to improve first-year retention with a larger first-year experience (FYE) setting. The National Resource Center for First-Year Experience and Students in Transition is one of the main research/resource sites. They point in their history to an over 35 year trajectory of work stemming from their initial University 101 concept to first-year seminars now required as part of a college or university’s curriculum across the United States.

This object of study is important to English studies, specifically writing studies because it is increasingly being offered as an alternative to a composition or writing sequence for freshmen, taught by faculty from across the curriculum in many cases, but who are expected to teach a  range of foundational skills, historically aligned with a FYW curriculum.  How FYS are being planned, taught and supported across an academic institution has the potential to impact curriculum, especially within Writing Studies.  Within my own institution, we have had a FYS program for five years and the combined expectations on faculty across the disciplines for teaching critical thinking, reading, writing, and research skills remains  challenging to support and maintain.

It is instructive to think of the multi-faceted ways that FY Seminars could be viewed and studied as a network. As integral courses within the curriculum, they have the potential to connect faculty from across campus, as well as a range of campus partners and support units that may/may not include teaching faculty (such as the writing, academic skills or speech centers, civic engagement, libraries, or technology).  As a cross-disciplinary, university-wide program the classes can impact all facets of student learning, through teaching for and encouraging transfer of skills/knowledge, relationship building, and introduction to the academic enterprise. FYS can offer support to students by including faculty as mentors, building awareness of campus resources or bonding between students in small and intensive discussion-based classes centered on a learning community approach. When successful, FYS can provide a multi-faceted, integral and inclusive initiative to foster community within a campus.  But, if not fully integrated into a university’s culture, curriculum and fabric, they offer the potential to alienate faculty, underserve students and become a burden to administer and retain.

For my dissertation research, I want to focus on faculty in the disciplines who teach writing within a first-year seminar, but for the purposes of this class, as you talked through Writing Centers with Kim during class, I saw benefit by starting with a broader approach, that of the first-year content seminar and how it does/could operate as a network on a campus through the above mentioned ways. My question is to what extent should I specifically bring in the teaching of writing or is it ok to start with the broader FYS concept, gain a deeper understanding and knowledge-base within FYS scholarship, then develop the faculty writing WAC and WID as applied to FYS through my continuing research outside this class?

Representative image of my object of study.

People in Circles -- Network Representative Image

Object of Study – FYS – Representation Image

Working Bibliography

Brent, Doug. “Using an Academic-Content Seminar to Engage Students with the Culture of Research.” Journal of the First-Year Experience & Students in Transition 18 (2006): 29-60.

Chapman, David W. “WAC and the First-Year Writing Course: Selling Ourselves Short.” Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, 1997.

Connors, Robert J. “The Abolition Debate in Composition: A Short History.” Composition in the Twenty-First Century: Crisis and Change. Eds. Lynn Z. Bloom, Donald A. Daiker, and Edward M. White. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP, 1996. 47-63.

Daniell, Beth. “FY-Comp, FY-Seminars, and WAC: A Response.” Language and Learning Across the Disciplines 2 (1998): 69-74.

Fernandez, Nancy Page, Sally Murphy, Jennifer Keup, and Ken O’Donnell. Intellectual Oomph in the First-Year Experience.

Keup, Jennifer. National Research and Trends on High Impact Practices in the First-Year Seminar.

Skipper, Tracy. First-Year Seminars and Senior Capstones: Bookending Writing Instruction and the Undergraduate Curriculum. 

—. Writing in the First-Year Seminar: A National Snapshot.

Teymuroglu, Zeynep. “Service-Learning Project in a First-Year Seminar: A Social Network Analysis. Primus : Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies, 23.10 (2014): 893-905.

Young, Dallin George,  and Jessica M. Hopp. 2012-2013 National Survey of First-Year Seminars: Exploring High-Impact Practices in the First College Year.

Paper #6: Being a Scholar Of . . .

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by Carol in ENG 810 Major Debates (Fall 2014), Papers (810)

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composition, English studies, epistemologies, genre, history, interdisciplinary, L2, labor, linguistics, matsuda, methodology, Objects of Study, praxis, research, second-language writing, teaching, TESOL, theories, transdisciplinary, writing, writing across the disciplines

Roman woman mulling book

Roman woman mulling book

A Scholar of… How I Got to Here

When I think about what it means to be a scholar within a discipline, I have to think about what discipline that actually is for me. I started to think about this last fall in my first ODU class and as a burgeoning scholar in English Studies and find I am thinking of myself as someone with research interests and a professional presence both in the library and the classroom.

In Paper #5, I looked at the final draft for the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, the main epistemological basis for library instruction. Information Literacy: what it is, its place in the curriculum, higher education, and how it guides what I do is fundamental to who I am as a professional librarian. Yet, where do I place myself within English Studies, Composition & Rhetoric and Second-Language Writing that I have spent this term investigating? How do librarianship and information literacy fit in this paradigm?

From Janice Lauer’s exploration of the discipline in “Rhetoric and Composition” and her article “Composition Studies: Dappled Discipline” to Paul K. Matsuda’s scholarship in second-language writing, there is a wide range of possible focus areas available to me as a scholar within Rhetoric and Writing Studies.  Looking a bit broader to Writing across the Curriculum (WAC), Transfer Theory- how first-year skills transfer into subsequent courses and knowledge, Social-Constructivism (Bizzell, Bartholomae, Berlin, Harris) – the “social turn” in writing, or Swales’ work in Discourse Communities and Genre Theory — I keep adding to the “these too are needed” part of my future scholarship. But can all of these be combined into being “a” single scholar? I hope so.

Paul K. Matsuda writes on the “disciplinary division of labor” within composition studies and second-language learning [PAB #1 and PAB #2], while Janice Lauer echoes similar concerns of “disciplinary status” and long-standing labor issues within English departments over the teaching of composition and writing in “Rhetoric and Composition.” Throughout the library profession, librarians too often see themselves and write about straddling similar “whose job is it” or “where do we fit within the curriculum” scenarios (Badke, Bewick, Elmborg, Fister, Elmborg, Weiner).

There are also similar questions within librarianship, much as in the early years of composition’s service and disciplinary status questions, as to whether librarianship can be considered a theoretical discipline. A recent chapter in Theories of Information, Communication and Knowledge looks at “Information Science and its Core Concepts: Levels of Disagreements” as author Birger Hjorland poses the question as to whether Library and Information Science can be considered an academic discipline – citing challenges that “it is not a monodiscipline, but rather an interdisciplinary field…as well as not being scholarly or scientific.  Rather it is a ‘professional’ field based on the teaching of some practical skills such as searching electronic databases and cataloging books according to certain norms” (208).

Hjorland also points to the necessity of a set of theories and “body of relatively accepted knowledge” that is considered part of a common “reference point” in being a discipline – but yet in all of his discussion, no mention is made to the instruction or pedagogy aspects of librarianship.

While libraries become more digital and students are exposed to technology at a younger age, many question what the future will hold for librarians and libraries.  As an academic librarian, I have faculty status, but not faculty rank.  I teach both credit and non-credit classes, but am not “really” considered teaching faculty. I am involved in research and concerned with pedagogy initiatives, but my involvement with student learning is most often only achieved through collaboration with individual classroom faculty.

On a broader scale, while some are unaware of the services that librarians offer to help students and faculty with their research and library needs, others do not see any benefit to librarian collaboration in courses or with individual students. What “is” an academic research librarian…what do I “do”?

There is often little acknowledgement for how much students do not know about research.  Yet, students do not inherently know how to research – how to think like a researcher or how to write using research and sources.  Where do they learn these abilities? As I work with students, I have fundamental questions about what students are doing with resources or how they are using the research they find?  Whose job is it to teach research skills, critical thinking, critical reading, evaluation of resources, “the” literacies: technology, digital, information? We saw how long the list could be in our Internet searches.

We hear all the time that students’ research abilities are not at the level that faculty expect and as librarians, we are often frustrated and question how to move beyond providing students with just a surface understanding of resources and the research process—often in one class session or a single assignment where we may be asked to help.  It is often as if we take students to the edge of the information cliff and then push them over without continued guidance.  But, whose role is it to provide continuing guidance:  Librarians, English Faculty, FYS Faculty?

Wardle and Downs remind us that writing tasks given to students are “flexible genres that serve various purposes in various contexts,” and change based on the discourse communities the students are writing in.  They suggest that we “give students the same frameworks for analysis and the same access to research about how texts work” that we use. There is a need to prepare students for different rhetorical situations by providing them with different rhetorical contexts for writing and research. There are no one or two composition classes that can “teach students to write” (as cited in Wittig, “Final Paper”).

We can teach “about” research as a process, focus on information literacy as part of the rhetorical canon and encourage critical thinking, exploration and growth. But we cannot expect that students at the end of a term will be versed to take part in specific discourse communities. Students are not able to join in the conversation; because they have difficulty understanding what the conversation is or that there even is a conversation. (Wittig 9)

How do I see myself contributing to the Major Debates?

One specific moment — a kairotic experience of sorts – that pointed me to the scholarship in areas aligned with my professional interests came when I met Rebecca Moore Howard and Sandra Jamieson at the Georgia Information Literacy (GIL) Conference in 2010 and they detailed the nationally scoped Citation Project. The Citation Project was responding to “educators’ concerns about plagiarism and the teaching of writing,” and addressing concerns that “little empirical data is available to describe what students are actually doing with their sources.”  They were English professors, speaking at an Information Literacy conference to both librarians and faculty, one of the few anomaly conferences that draws in a “mixed” audience.

Plagiarism, writing from sources, connections to English classes – what seemed like totally logical collaborations to me surprised disciplinary faculty when I expressed interest in collaboration: librarians “do” that? When I attended CCCC in 2012, I went to every session about research and writing – and asked questions in the sessions about collaborative efforts as so much of what was being said involved resources and libraries; but yet, no mention of librarians — kind of like the missing link. We found two other librarians there – out of all those attendees. I realized I had found my place and where I could make a difference within my profession.

As librarians refer to a writing assignment called a “research paper,” it often wrongly implies a one-size fits all, generic form. When scholars refer to their own writing, they rarely use that label. Excessively rules-based, the research “paper” is too often still taught as a “product,” what Jennie Nelson referred to as a “rhetoric of the finished word” rather than a “rhetoric of doing.” The result is that students are often “passive spectators,” outside of any academic discourse community (66). The benefits of research assignments are overshadowed by a focus on concerns about grammar, punctuation and appropriate types or numbers of sources.

“It is critical to dispel the ‘schoolmarmish’ (Nelson, ‘Scandalous’) and trivialized views associated with IL often found when library instruction is referred to in the literature, moving toward a ‘situated, process-oriented literacy relevant to a broad range of rhetorical and intellectual activities’ (Norgaard 125). Placed within a first-year writing curriculum which purports to teach students how to think critically, develop a sense of inquiry and write informative, well-researched academic prose, the research paper assignment often fails to teach, or even to assess, any of those skills” (Wittig and Ludovico 2).

Boatwright Library – University of Richmond

From this first meeting at the GIL Conference and during subsequent follow-up workshops, I have initiated, with the librarians at Boatwright Library, a longitudinal study with our entering 2013 class, looking at student research papers and how IL instruction translates into the ways information is used.  Using the Citation Project as our inspiration, we have an opportunity to study the ways that students apply rhetorical knowledge, critical thinking, reading and writing abilities.  What we plan to address and a core area of my planned scholarship, is what was noted as absent in the Citation Project, that of “the entire discipline of library science and the sub-discipline of information literacy” (Veach 105).

Yet, there are philosophical questions that both faculty and librarians ask: whose role is it to teach students about appropriate citing and instill good research practices?  This represents a step beyond what some librarians are used to teaching and what classroom instructors recognize as “what librarians do” — as it moves into what to do “with” the resources, rather than just finding or evaluating the resources.

My moment at the GIL Conference eventually led me to my current PhD program at ODU. During my first ODU class in Fall 2013, Composition as Applied Rhetoric, I researched and wrote on the history of the research paper in first-year writing. This was my prelude to thinking about first-year writing and how librarians are/are not involved in student learning and writing from sources. More importantly, it points out the vast opportunities available for combined scholarship and collaboration in these areas. In my paper, “The History and Relationship of Information Literacy to the First-Year Research Paper,” I found that “[t]here have been calls over the last 20 years to improve librarians’ understanding of rhetoric and to better connect with a theory-based curriculum within the academy” (Wittig 10).

Only in the last few years have connections begun to show up in scholarship that join rhetoric, research and writing.  One of these is the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework, mentioned earlier and now in its final draft. It was previously known as the IL Standards; but the language change has the potential to align the scholarship in the fields of library instruction, rhetoric and writing studies more clearly. I outlined the framework and the “threshold concepts” that are being defined in Paper #5.

But what can my scholarship and study add to the field?  I see possibilities every time I search for library, librarians, information literacy + composition, second-language writing, writing across the curriculum, etc…there are very few crossovers in scholarship or in the literature.  IL is written about by librarians –writing is written about in the disciplines.  Theory is embedded in the disciplines — “how to” articles and practices illustrating how librarians teach the skills appear in library journals.

“Reading in the literature of composition and library science, I am struck by the fact that there have been very different assumptions and expectations for writing and research from librarians and faculty in the disciplines.  With little mention of rhetoric or composition theory in most library literature and even less of information literacy discussed in composition scholarship, it is critical for librarians and faculty to agree on a common praxis related to student research and writing practices (Townsend, 2011; Brent, 2012; Detmering, 2012; Veach, 2012; Walker, 2012; Donovan & O’Donnell, 2013; Zepke, 2013)” (Wittig 4).

What types of genre, theoretical, and professional knowledge does it take for me to be a scholar?

I looked through a very narrow lens this term as I surveyed second-language writing.  With a growing, diverse student population at UR, this is a necessary part of my scholarly identity. In Paper #5, I identified the theories within second-language writing as important to my entrance in the field.   Seeing not only second-language students, but all first-year students as my main Objects of Study, I look to Composition & Rhetoric theories and pedagogies, as well as Literacy Studies (critical, information, digital…the list is long, but the focus is all on student learning). There is also great interdisciplinarity within this knowledge base: English Studies, Education, Library Science, Psychology, and Philosophy.  While I joke that Foucault is mentioned in almost everything I read, the truth of it is that current literacy and writing studies are based on broad theoretical foundations, ones not included in library science education or studies.  These are areas of knowledge I need to acquire as a scholar.

During my fall reading, I discovered the scholarship of Rolf Norgaard  and Grace Veach.  Both wrote of the disconnects often found between librarians, information literacy efforts and theoretical knowledge within writing studies. Rolf Norgaard in companion articles called for improved connections between the writing classroom and information literacy (IL). He focused on composition classrooms and libraries “shared impulse for reform” as he examined what rhetoric and composition could provide to information literacy from theory; while in his second article, he explained how theory could be reflected in a pedagogy of practice for information literacy (220).

Norgaard expressed concern, writing “…it is nothing short of surprising how little that field [rhetoric/composition] has written about information literacy and library collaboration” (125), but he also stressed that it is not just a one-sided problem, as information literacy has paid “little attention to the theoretical foundations and pedagogical frameworks that inform rhetoric and composition”(125).

Norgaard placed the blame on both fields — due in part to libraries often representing nothing more than “images of the quick field trip, the scavenger hunt, the generic stand-alone tutorial, or the dreary research paper” to writing teachers and students (124). Norgaard’s articles were written in 2003 and 2004 in Reference Services Review. All cited references since have been in library or information literacy publications, except for Doug Brent’s in 2013, writing in Writing Program Administration. He is a visiting professor at ODU this year and will be teaching our 840 class next term; so I look forward to continuing the conversations and my research focus with him.

In his article, “The Research Paper and Why We Should Still Care,” he makes connections between information literacy as written about by librarians and the research paper as written about in composition scholarship. In his article, he draws from Activity, Genre and Transfer Theories, as well as Composition pedagogy and research. But, he is writing in a writing journal. How many librarians saw this?

“An important, and frequently overlooked, source of information on writing from sources can be found in the literature of our colleagues, the academic librarians who often must help our students navigate the tasks which we have assigned them. While much of the literature on information literacy concentrates on the narrow problem of how to help students locate and evaluate sources, other variants locate this problem in terms of how students approach the entire activity of writing from sources. In fact, much of the literature on information literacy calls explicitly for more rapprochement between the library and the disciplines, particularly the discipline of writing studies . . .

On the other hand, most of the writing studies literature seems blissfully unaware of this important source of cognate studies. Since the librarians frequently are the ones to clean up our messes when we create ill conceived research assignments, we would do well to listen more closely to what they are saying” (Brent 42-43).

Grace Veach, Dean of Library Services at Southeastern University, wrote her dissertation in 2013 on “Tracing Boundaries, Effacing Boundaries: Information Literacy as an Academic Discipline,” arguing that IL needs to have a disciplinary home. She puts forth that much like writing studies, it has often “been pushed to the outskirts of academia.”  Expanding on this, she expresses how “blissfully unaware” librarians have been of a great majority of the research paper criticism, as ‘a good part of their disciplinary identity derives from teaching information literacy as it relates to the research paper in composition classes.” Veach adds that “if the skills involved in information fluency represent both art and science, librarians tend to concern themselves more with the science, while compositionists try to teach the art” (110). Compositionists tend to see librarians and instruction as problematic, creating “at least part of the divide “when they teach research and citation techniques divorced from disciplinary (i.e. rhetorical) theory” (Veach 112). She goes so far as to argue, that when it comes to composition theory and rhetoric, “librarians have shown a tendency to be rhetorically tone-deaf” (113).

“Instructors may envision their students engrossed in the masters of the discipline while synthesizing their own new thesis, but this rarely matches the reality of the undergraduate research process, especially in general education courses. While graduate students do often allow their writing process to influence their topic choice, undergraduates rarely leave themselves enough breathing room to do this kind of exploration. When they start the paper twenty-four hours or less before its due date, reading, summarizing, and learning will be sacrificed to efficacy and word-count inflation” (Veach 114).

Hjorland’s earlier comments echo some of the same concerns as to where an appropriate disciplinary home might be for LIS; while Veach draws in potential connections to be made if only each knew of the other’s discussions. Those are just a few scholars, writing just a few articles; but they provide such great potential for future scholarship and work in the fields. What does it mean to be a scholar in these areas?  In some respects, it will be about creating new alliances and paths as evidenced from what is not found or written about in the literature.

Where does all this leave me as I finish my exploration this term and will eventually need to stop collecting research and actually begin articulating who I am and where I plan to place myself within the research fields? What does a scholar look like in the blended fields of Writing, Rhetoric, Literacy, and Librarianship? My lingering questions from Paper #5 deal with where I align myself . . . but I do not feel at all ready to answer those yet as with every text I read, I find more rabbit holes to explore.

My bibliography and reading list have grown all term and I have begun to align them into focus areas: Information Literacy, Libraries and Research; English Studies: Rhetoric, Writing and Literacy; and Second-Language Writing. Across each of these areas, I can make connections and see ways to draw from writing studies, first-year composition, transfer theory, writing across the disciplines, second-language writing, literacy studies and research/writing from sources. I look forward to establishing my voice within the field.

~The End~

My reminders – the definitions:

Epistemology:  the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry.

Methodology: a set of methods, rules, or ideas that are important in a science or art; a particular procedure or set of procedures.

Axiology: the study of value, or goodness, in its widest sense. The distinction is commonly made between intrinsic and extrinsic value—i.e., between that which is valuable for its own sake and that which is valuable only as a means to something else, which itself may be extrinsically or intrinsically valuable.

Theories:  an idea or set of ideas that is intended to explain facts or events; an idea that is suggested or presented as possibly true but that is not known or proven to be true; the general principles or ideas that relate to a particular subject.


Works Cited & Further Reading

 The articles listed below, many of which I have cited in previous posts, provide the intersections in scholarship that I am interesting in pursuing next. 

Information Literacy, Libraries and Research

Accardi, Maria T.  Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction. Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press, 2013.

Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Accessed: November 18, 2014.

Badke, William. “Why Information Literacy Is Invisible.” Communications in Information Literacy 4.2 (2010): 129-41.

Bewick, Laura, and Sheila Corrall. “Developing Librarians as Teachers: A Study of Their Pedagogical Knowledge.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 42.2 (2010): 97-110.

Bivens-Tatum, Wayne. Academic Librarian|On Libraries, Rhetoric, Poetry, History, & Moral Philosophy [blog]. Accessed December 5, 2014.

D’angelo, Barbara J., and Barry M. Maid. “Moving Beyond Definitions: Implementing Information Literacy across the Curriculum.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 30.3 (2004): 212-17.

Delaney, Geraldine and Jessica Bates. “Envisioning the Academic Library: A Reflection on Roles, Relevancy and Relationships.” New Review of Academic Librarianship (2014). [pre-pub online]. DOI: 10.1080/13614533.2014.911194

Drabinski, Emily. “Toward a Kairos of Library Instruction.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 40.5 (2014): 480-85.

Elmborg, James. “Critical Information Literacy: Implications for Instructional Practice.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 32.2 (2006): 192-199.

Fister, Barbara. “Teaching the Rhetorical Dimensions of Research.” Research Strategies 11.4 (Fall 1993): 211-219.

—. “The Library’s Role in Learning: Information Literacy Revisited.” Library Issues 33.4 (2013).

Georgas, Helen. “Google vs. The Library (Part Ii): Student Search Patterns and Behaviors When Using Google and a Federated Search Tool.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 14.4 (2014): 503-32.

Hattwig, Denise, Kaila Bussert, Ann Medaille, and Joanna Burgess. “Visual Literacy Standards in Higher Education: New Opportunities for Libraries and Student Learning.” Portal: Libraries and the Academy 13.1 (2013): 61-89.

Head, Allison J. et al. “What Information Competencies Matter in Today’s Workplace?” Library & Information Research 37.114 (2013): 74-104.

Hicks, Allison. “Cultural Shifts: Putting Critical Information Literacy into Practice.” Communications in Information Literacy 7.1 (2013): 50-65.

Hjorland, Birger. “Information Science and its Core Concepts: Levels of Disagreement.” Theories of Information Communication and Knowledge: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Eds. Fidelia Ibekwe-SanJuan and Thomas M. Dousa. London: Springer, 2014. 205-235.

Hofer, Amy R., Lori Townsend, and Korey Brunetti. “Troublesome Concepts and Information Literacy: Investigating Threshold Concepts for Il Instruction.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 12.4 (2012): 387-405.

Hofer, Amy R., Korey Brunetti and Lori Townsend. “A Thresholds Concepts Approach to the Standards Revision.” Communications in Information Literacy 7.2 (2013): 108-113.

Holliday, Wendy and Rogers, Jim. “Talking about Information Literacy: The Mediating Role of Discourse in a College Writing Classroom.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 13.3 (2013): 257-271.

“Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.” 2000. Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). Accessed: December 1, 2014.

Jacobs, Heidi L. M. “Information Literacy and Reflective Pedagogical Praxis.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 34.3 (2008): 256-62.

Jacobson, Trudi E., and Thomas P. Mackey. “Proposing a Metaliteracy Model to Redefine Information Literacy.” Communications in Information Literacy 7.2 (2013): 84–91.

Koltay, Tibor, Sonja Špiranec, and László Z. Karvalics. “The Shift of Information Literacy towards Research 2.0.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship (2014). [prepub]

Leckie, Gloria J. “Desperately Seeking Citations: Uncovering Faculty Assumptions about the Undergraduate Research Process.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 22.3 (1996): 201-08.

Lloyd, Annemaree, Mary Anne Kennan, Kim M. Thompson, and Asim Qayyum. “Connecting with New Information Landscapes: Information Literacy Practices of Refugees.” Journal of Documentation 69.1 (2013): 121-44.

Lloyd, Annemaree. “Information Literacy as a Socially Enacted Practice: Sensitising Themes for an Emerging Perspective of People-in-practice.” Journal of Documentation 68.6 (2012): 772-83.

—. “Framing Information Literacy as Information Practice: Site Ontology and Practice Theory.” Journal of Documentation 66.2 (2010): 245-58.

Ludovico, Carrie and Carol Wittig. “A Universe of Information, One Citation at a Time: How Students Engage with Scholarly Sources.” Journal of Library & Information Services in Distance Learning (2015): [pending – http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1533290X.2014.946343

Mackey, Thomas P., and Trudi E. Jacobson. Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners. Chicago: Neal-Schuman, 2014.

Marcum, James W. “Rethinking Information Literacy.” The Library Quarterly 72.1 (2002): 1-26.

Martin, Justine. “Refreshing Information Literacy.” Communications in Information Literacy 7.2 (2013): 114–27.

McClure, Randall, and Kellian Clink. “How Do You Know That? An Investigation of Student Research Practices in the Digital Age.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 9.1 (2009): 115-132.

McCluskey, Clare. “Being an Embedded Research Librarian: Supporting Research by Being a Researcher.” Journal of Information Literacy, 7.2 (2013): 4-14. DOI: 10.11645/7.2.1815

Meulemans, Yvonne Nalani and Allison Carr. “Not at Your Service: Building Genuine Faculty‐Librarian Partnerships.” Reference Services Review 41.1: 80 – 90. DOI: 10.1108/00907321311300893

Meyer, Jan H.F., and Ray Land. Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge. New York: Routledge. 2006.

Mills, Kathy Ann. “A Review of the “Digital Turn” in the New Literacy Studies.” Review of Educational Research 80.2 (2010): 246-71.

Morgan, Patrick K. “Pausing at the Threshold.” Portal: Libraries and the Academy 15.1 (2015): prepub, n.p.

—. “Information Literacy Learning as Epistemological Process.” Reference Services Review 42.3 (2014): 403-413. DOI: 10.1108/RSR-04-2014-0005

Nazari, M., and S. Webber. “Loss of Faith in the Origins of Information Literacy in E-environments: Proposal of a Holistic Approach.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 44.2 (2012): 97-107.

Nelson, Jennie. “The Research Paper: A ‘Rhetoric of Doing’ or a ‘Rhetoric of the Finished Word?’” Composition Studies/Freshman English News 22.2 (1994): 65–75.

Ng, Wan. “Can We Teach Digital Natives Digital Literacy?” Computers & Education 59.3 (2012): 1065-078.

Norgaard, Rolf. “Writing Information Literacy: Contributions to a Concept.” Reference Services Review 43.2 (2003): 124–130.

—. “Writing Information Literacy in the Classroom: Pedagogical Enactments and Implications.” Reference Services Review 43.3 (2004): 220–226.

Nutefall, Jennifer E, and Phyllis Mentzell Ryder. “The Timing of the Research Question: First-Year Writing Faculty and Instruction Librarians’ Differing Perspectives.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 10.4 (2010): 437–449.

Oakleaf, Megan. “A Roadmap for Assessing Student Learning Using the New Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 40.5 (September 2014): 510–4.

O’Connor, Lisa, Melissa Bowles-Terry, Erin Davis, and Wendy Holliday. ““Writing Information Literacy” Revisited.” Reference & User Services Quarterly 49.3 (2010): 225-230.

Otto, Peter. “Librarians, Libraries, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.” New Directions for Teaching and Learning 2014.139 (2014): 77-93.

Rabinowitz, Celia. “Working in a Vacuum: A Study of the Literature of Student Research and Writing.” Research Strategies 17.4 (2000): 337-46.

Rosenblatt, Stephanie. “They Can Find It, But They Don’t Know What to Do With It: Describing the Use of Scholarly Literature by Undergraduate Students.” Journal of Information Literacy 4.2 (2010), 50-61.

Saunders, Laura. “Culture and Collaboration: Fostering Integration of Information Literacy by Speaking the Language of Faculty.” Association of College and Research Libraries National Conference. 2013.

Simmons, Michelle Holschuh. “Librarians as Disciplinary Discourse Mediators.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 5.3 (2005): 297-311.

Spiranec, Sonja, and Banek Zorica Mihaela. “Information Literacy 2.0: Hype or Discourse Refinement?” Journal of Documentation 66.1 (2010): 140-53.

Swanson, Troy. “A Radical Step: Implementing a Critical Information Literacy Model.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 4.2 (2004), 259-273.

Townsend, Lori, Korey Brunetti, and Amy R. Hofer. “Threshold Concepts and Information Literacy.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 11.3 (2011): 853-69.

Tucker, Virginia, Christine Bruce, Sylvia Edwards, and Judith Weedman. “Learning Portals: Analyzing Threshold Concept Theory for LIS Education.” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 55.2 (2014): 150–65.

Weiner, Sharon A. “Who Teaches Information Literacy Competencies? Report of a Study of Faculty.” College Teaching 62.1 (2014): 5-12.

Wittig, Carol. “The History and Relationship of Information Literacy to the First-Year Research Paper.” Final Paper. ENGL 721/821 Composition as Applied Rhetoric (Fall 2013). [Available in Google Shared Class Folder]

Veach, Grace L. “At the Intersection: Librarianship, Writing Studies, and Sources as Topoi.” Journal of Literacy and Technology 13.1 (2012): 102-129.

 English Studies: Rhetoric, Writing and Literacy

Adams, Katherine H., and John L. Adams. “The Paradox Within: Origins of the Current-Traditional Paradigm.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 17.4 (1987): 421-31.

Alexander, Jonathan, and Susan C. Jarratt. “Rhetorical Education and Student Activism.” College English 76.6 (2014): 525-44.

Baca, Damián. “Rethinking Composition, Five Hundred Years Later.” JAC 29.1/2 (2009): 229-42.

Baer, Andrea. “Why Do I Have to Write That?: Compositionists Identify Disconnects between Student and Instructor Conceptions of Research Writing that Can Inform Teaching.” Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 9.2 (2014): 37-44.

Bartholomae, David, and John Schlib. “Reconsiderations: ‘Inventing the University’ at 25: An Interview with David Bartholomae.” College English 73.3 (2011): 260-82.

Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” When a Writer Can’t Write: Research on Writer’s Block and other Writing Problems. Ed. Mike Rose. New York: Guilford, 1986. 134-166.

Beam, Joseph. “BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing.” Rhetoric Review 27.1 (2008): 72-86.

Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass, 2011.

Berlin, James. “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class.” College English 50.5 (1988): 477-94.

Brent, Doug. “The Research Paper, and Why We Should Still Care.” Writing Program Administration 37.1 (Fall 2013): 33-53.

—.“Transfer, Transformation, and Rhetorical Knowledge: Insights from Transfer Theory.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 25.4 (2011): 396-420. DOI: 10.1177/1050651911410951

—. “Reinventing WAC (Again): The First-Year Seminar and Academic Literacy.” College Composition and Communication 57.2 (2005): 253-276.

—. “Keeping the ‘Literacy’ in ‘Information Literacy.’” Inkshed: Newsletter of the Canadian Association for the Study of Language and Learning 17.3-4 (Autumn 1999).

Carr, Jean F. “Composition, English, and the University.” PMLA 129.3 (2014): 435-41.

The Citation Project: Preventing Plagiarism, Teaching Writing. Accessed:  November 18, 2014.

Dean, Deborah. “Shifting Perspectives about Grammar: Changing What and How We Teach.” English Journal 100.4 (2011): 20-26.

Dirk, Kerry. “‘The “Research Paper” Prompt: A Dialogic Opportunity for Transfer.’” Composition Forum 25 (2012).

Downs, Douglas and Elizabeth Wardle. “Teaching About Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning ‘First Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies.'” College Composition and Communication 58.4 (2007): 552–84.

Elbow, Peter. “Inviting the Mother Tongue: Beyond ‘Mistakes,’ ‘Bad English,’ and ‘Wrong Language.’” JAC 19.3 (1999): 359-88.

Faigley, Lester. “Competing Theories of Process: A Critique and a Proposal.” College English 48.6 (1986): 527-42.

Flower, Linda. “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.” College Composition and Communication 32.4 (1981): 365-87.

Howard, Rebecca Moore, Tricia Serviss, and Tanya K. Rodrigue. “Writing from Sources, Writing from Sentences.” Writing & Pedagogy 2.2 (2010): 177-92.

Howard, Rebecca Moore. “Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty.” College English 57.7 (1995): 788-806.

Johns, Ann M. Text, Role, and Context: Developing Academic Literacies. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Johnson, J. Paul, and Ethan Krase. “Coming to Learn: From First-Year Composition to Writing in the Disciplines.” Across the Disciplines 8 (2011): 1-30.

Kaiser Lee, Karen A. From Telling to Transforming: Rhetorical Invention and the Genre of the Research Paper. PhD Dissertation, Purdue University, 2011.

Kell, Catherine. “Ariadne’s Thread: Literacy, Scale and Meaning Making across Space and Time.” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 81 (2013): 1-24.

Kolb, Kenneth H., Kyle C. Longest, and Mollie J. Jensen. “Assessing the Writing Process: Do Writing-Intensive First-Year Seminars Change How Students Write?” Teaching Sociology 41.1 (2012): 20-31.

Krashen, Stephen. “The Composing Process.” Research Journal: Ecolint Institute of Teaching and Learning. International School of Geneva 2 (2014): 20-30.

Lauer, Janice M. “Rhetoric and Composition.” English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline(s). Ed. Bruce McComiskey. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2006. 106-52.

Löfström, Erika and Pauliina Kupila. “The Instructional Challenges of Student Plagiarism.” Journal of Academic Ethics 11 (2013): 231-242.

McClure, Randall. “WritingResearchWriting: The Semantic Web and the Future of the Research Project.” Computers and Composition 28.4 (2011): 315–326.

Mendenhall, Annie S. “The Composition Specialist as Flexible Expert: Identity and Labor in the History of Composition.” College English 77.1 (2014): 11-31.

Murray, Donald M. “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product.” Ed. Victor Villanueva. Cross-talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1997.

Panetta, Clayann Gilliam, ed. Contrastive Rhetoric Revisited and Redefined. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc., 2000.

Pierstorff, Don K. “Response to Linda Flower and John R. Hayes, ‘A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.’” College Composition and Communication 34.2 (1983): 217.

Porter, James E. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.” Rhetoric Review 5.1 (1986): 34-47.

Purdy, James P., and Joyce R. Walker. “Liminal Spaces and Research Identity: The Construction of Introductory Composition Students as Researchers.” Pedagogy 13.1 (2013): 9–41.

Romova, Zina, and Martin Andrew. “Teaching and Assessing Academic Writing via the Portfolio: Benefits for Learners of English as an Additional Language.” Assessing Writing 16.2 (2011): 111-22.

Royster, Jacqueline Jones, and Gesa E. Kirsch. Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies. Carbondale, IL: SIU Press, 2012.

Schneider, Barbara. “Ethical Research and Pedagogical Gaps.” College Composition and Communication 58.1 (2006): 70–88.

Schwegler, Robert A., and Kinda K. Shamoon. “The Aims and Process of the Research Paper.” College English 44.8 (1982): 817–824.

Swales, John M. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.

Tate, Gary, Amy Rupiper Taggart, Kurt Schick, and H. Brooke Hessler, eds. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2014.

Wardle, Elizabeth, and Doug Downs. “Reflecting Back and Looking Forward: Revisiting  Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions Five Years On.” Composition Forum 27 (Spring 2013).

Welch, Barbara. “A Comment on “Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty”” College English 58.7 (1996): 855-58.

“WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition.” Council of Writing Program Administrators. 2014. Accessed: December 1, 2014.

Zwagerman, Sean. “The Scarlet P: Plagiarism, Panopticism, and the Rhetoric of Academic Integrity.” College Composition and Communication 59.4 (2008): 676–710.

Second-Language Writing

Atkinson, Dwight. “Between Theory with a Big T and Practice with a Small p: Why Theory Matters.” Practicing Theory in Second Language Writing. Eds. Tony Silva and Paul K. Matsuda. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2013. 5-18.

Belcher, Diane. “The Scope of L2 Writing: Why We Need a Wider Lens.” Journal of Second Language Writing 22.4 (2013): 438-39.

—. “Considering What We Know and Need to Know About Second Language Writing.” Applied Linguistics Review 3.1 (2012): 131-150.

Canagarajah, A. Suresh. “Negotiating Translingual Literacy: An Enactment.” Research in the Teaching of English 48.1 (2013): 40-67.

—. Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. New York: Routledge, 2013.

Costino, Kimberly A., and Sunny Hyon. “Sidestepping Our ‘Scare Words’: Genre as a Possible Bridge between L1 and L2 Compositionists.” Journal of Second Language Writing 20.1 (2011): 24-44.

Ferris, Dana and John S. Hedgcock. Teaching L2 Composition. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2014.

Gunderson, Lee. ESL (ELI) Literacy Instruction: A Guidebook to Theory and Practice. Routledge, 2008.

Hirvela, Alen. ““Why Am I Paraphrasing?”: Undergraduate ESL Writers’ Engagement with Source-Based Academic Writing and Reading.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 12 (2013): 87-98.

Horner, Bruce, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and John Trimbur. “Opinion: Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach.” College English 73.3 (2011): 303-321.

Huang, Kun and Diane Kelly. “The Daily Image Information Needs and Seeking Behavior of Chinese Undergraduate Students.” College & Research Libraries 74.3 (2013): 243-61.

Hyland, Ken. “Genre Pedagogy: Language, Literacy and L2 Writing Instruction.” Journal of Second Language Writing 16.3 (2007): 148-164.

—. “Genre-based Pedagogies: A Social Response to Process.” Journal of Second Language Writing 12.1 (2003): 17-29.

Iannuzzi, Patricia A. “Info Lit 2.0 or Deja Vu?” Communications in Information Literacy 7.2 (2013): 1-17.

Imai, Junko. “Review: Practicing Theory in Second Language Writing.” TESOL Quarterly 46.2 (2012): 430-33.

Ishimura, Yusuke and Joan C. Bartlett. “Uncovering the Research Process of International Students in North America: Are They Different from Domestic Students?” Information Research, 18.1 (2013): paper 564.

Johns, Ann  M.  “The Future of Genre in L2 Writing: Fundamental, but Contested, Instructional Decisions.” Journal of Second Language Writing 20.1 (2011): 56-68.

–. “Genre Awareness for the Novice Academic Student: An Ongoing Quest.” Language Teaching 41.2 (2008): 237-252.

Journal of Second Language Writing 22 (2013). “Disciplinary Dialogues.” and “Selected Bibliography of Recent Scholarship in Second Language Writing.” 425-459.

Keck, Casey. “Copying, Paraphrasing, and Academic Writing Development: A Re-Examination of L1 and L2 Summarization Practices.” Journal of Second Language Writing 25 (2014): 4-22.

Kubota,Ryuko. “Critical Approaches to Theory in Second Language Writing: A Case of Critical Contrastive Rhetoric.” Practicing Theory in Second Language Writing. Eds. Tony Silva and Paul K. Matsuda. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2013. 191-208.

Li, Yongyan and Christine Pearson Casanave. “Two First-Year Students’ Strategies for Writing from Sources: Patchwriting or Plagiarism?” Journal of Second Language Writing 21.2 (2012): 165-80.

Li, Yongyan. “Undergraduate Students Searching and Reading Web Sources for Writing.” Educational Media International 49.3 (2012): 201-15.

–. “Academic Staff’s Perspective upon Student Plagiarism: A Case Study at a University in Hong Kong.” Asia Pacific Journal of Education (2013): 1-14.

–. “First Year ESL Students Developing Critical Thinking: Challenging the Stereotypes.” Journal of Education and Training Studies 1.2 (2013): 186-96.

Liu, Pei-Hsun Emma, and Dan J. Tannacito. “Resistance by L2 Writers: The Role of Racial and Language Ideology in Imagined Community and Identity Investment.” Journal of Second Language Writing 22.4 (2013): 355-73.

Matsuda, Paul K. “The Lure of Translingual Writing.” PMLA 129.3 (2014): 478-483.

—. “Response: What Is Second Language Writing—and Why Does It Matter?” Journal of Second Language Writing 22.4 (2013): 448-50.

McCulloch, Sharon. “Citations in Search of a Purpose: Source Use and Authorial Voice in L2 Student Writing.” International Journal of Educational Integrity 8.1 (2012): 55-69.

Matalene, Carolyn. “Contrastive Rhetoric: An American Writing Teacher in China.” College English 47.8 (1985): 789-808.

Pecorari, Diane, and Bojana Petric. “Plagiarism in Second-Language Writing.” Language Teaching 47.3 (2014): 269-302. Web.

Pecorari, Diane. “Good and Original: Plagiarism and Patchwriting in Academic Second-Language Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing 12.4 (2003): 317-45.

Petrić, Bojana. “Legitimate Textual Borrowing: Direct Quotation in L2 Student Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing 21.2 (2012): 102-17.

Plakans, Lia, and Atta Gebril. “A Close Investigation into Source Use in Integrated Second Language Writing Tasks.” Assessing Writing 17.1 (2012): 18-34.

Polio, Charlene, and Ling Shi. “Perceptions and Beliefs about Textual Appropriation and Source Use in Second Language Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing 21.2 (2012): 95-101.

Racelis, Juval V., and Paul Kei Matsuda. “Integrating Process and Genre into the Second Language Writing Classroom: Research into Practice.” Language Teaching 46.03 (2013): 382-393.

Ray, Brian. “ESL Droids: Teacher Training and the Americanization Movement, 1919-1924.” Composition Studies 41.2 (2013): 15-39.

Ruecker, Todd. “Challenging the Native and Nonnative English Speaker Hierarchy in ELT: New Directions from Race Theory.” Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 8.4 (2011): 400-22.

Schneer, David. “Rethinking the Argumentative Essay.” TESOL Journal  (2013): online prepub, n.p.

Shi, Ling. “Rewriting and Paraphrasing Source Texts in Second Language Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing 21.2 (2012): 134-48.

Tardy, Christine M. “The History and Future of Genre in Second Language Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing 20.1 (2011): 1-5.

Thompson, Celia, Janne Morton, and Neomy Storch. “Where From, Who, Why and How? A Study of the Use of Sources by First Year L2 University Students.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 12.2 (2013): 99-109.

Thonus, Terese. “Tutoring Multilingual Students: Shattering the Myths.” Journal of College Reading and Learning 44.2 (2014): 200-13.

Van Beuningen, Catherine G, Nivja H De Jong, and Folkert Kuiken. “Evidence on the Effectiveness of Comprehensive Error Correction in Second Language Writing.” Language Learning 62.1 (2012): 1-41.

Yamagata-Lynch, Lisa C. “Chapter 2: Understanding Cultural Historical Activity Theory.” Activity Systems Analysis Methods: Understanding Complex Learning Environments. New York: Springer, 2010. 13-26.

Zhang, Jie. “Learner Agency, Motive, and Self-Regulated Learning in an Online ESL Writing Class.” IALLT Journal 43.2 (2013): 57-81.

Zhang, Lawrence Jun. “Second Language Writing as and for Second Language Learning.” Journal of Second Language Writing 22.4 (2013): 446-47.

Paper #5 Epistemological Alignment

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by Carol in ENG 810 Major Debates (Fall 2014), Papers (810)

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

composition, English studies, epistemologies, genre, matsuda, methodology, Objects of Study, second-language, second-language writing, theory

Faced with questions as I started to think about paper #5, I realized this paper has the potential to be my stream of consciousness post. It is not only about who I am and where I align myself within the field of English Studies, but also about what I am learning and what is out there in 2015 — the possibilities for scholarship, for aligning my various personal and professional objectives. As such, this paper will directly lead into my last Paper #6: Being a Scholar of . . .

How do I align myself theoretically and etymologically? This term, I have focused on second-language writing within composition studies for all of my readings and posts.  I did this because it was an area I was interested in, but knew nothing about.  I am only just beginning to explore how it aligns with who I am as a student, scholar, librarian and teacher. First, I need to explain the largest part of who I am as a professional librarian and educator for the past 25 years. I do this by providing background on my specialty area within information literacy, as this concept and its accompanying standards are the methodologies by which academic librarians base the majority of their epistemology related to library instruction. Within the library profession, the Information Literacy Competency Standards are the equivalent of the Council of Writing Program Administrators’ Outcomes Statement. Used as both a theoretical foundation and guide for practice within librarian instruction, the IL Standards were first adopted by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in 2000.

Julian’s Bower, Lincolnshire

Julian’s Bower, Lincolnshire

Now in the midst of a major revision, to be renamed the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, Information Literacy is defined by ACRL in this revised Framework as “a spectrum of abilities, practices, and habits of mind that extends and deepens learning through engagement with the information ecosystem. It includes

  •  understanding essential concepts about that ecosystem;
  • engaging in creative inquiry and critical reflection to develop questions and to find, evaluate, and manage information through an iterative process;
  • creating new knowledge through ethical participation in communities of learning, scholarship, and civic purpose; and
  • adopting a strategic view of the interests, biases, and assumptions present in the information ecosystem.

The Standards will be referred to in the revision as a Framework, as they will be “based on a cluster of interconnected core concepts, with flexible options for implementation” (1). In this revision, threshold concepts are introduced as those ideas within a discipline that are “passageways or portals to enlarged understanding of ways of thinking and practicing within that discipline.  Six are identified within the Framework[1]

  • Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
  • Information Creation as a Process
  • Information Has Value
  • Research as Inquiry
  • Scholarship Is a Conversation
  • Searching Is Strategic

Added to these are knowledge practices, “demonstrations of ways in which learners can increase their understanding” of information literacy concepts, and dispositions, “ways in which to address the affective, attitudinal, or valuing dimension of learning.” Finally metaliteracies are to be included as they offer “a renewed vision of information literacy as an overarching set of abilities in which students are both consumers and creators of information who can participate successfully in collaborative spaces” (ACRL 1).

How I align all of this with my growing interest and scholarship in First-Year and Second-Language  Writing are the current balls in the air. As I look to my posts and readings from the term, I see connecting threads amidst my interests, goals, and seeds…points I identify as areas for future study.

From PAB #1, I described how I came to my focus area of second-language writing for this term:

At my own university, as in many without a composition sequence in the first year, students all take first-year seminars and second-language students often face writing challenges during their first year, but only a small percentage of second-language students are enrolled in an additional course to support their second-language needs.

Much of the second-language writing research I have read so far is over 10 years old, but as I have no background in this area, it is informative to research and learn the history of the field, its relationship to composition studies and how best I can align myself within these two areas for my future research and study.

In PAB #3 and #4, the grammar debate both in L1 and L2 scholarship is of interest to me, as I began teaching English in 1985 as a staunch current-traditionalist amidst process composition frameworks.  I didn’t know that was what I was, but over the years, my focus on grammar, “correct” writing and formalist traditions now make me cringe as I see how much scholarship and pedagogy has been focused on alternatives…ouch.

With the death of George Hillocks this week, my post discussing his 1984 article that Janice Lauer argued “discredited the full-frontal teaching of grammar” (128) begs for a reread in his memory.

How do my identified objects of study fit in? Moving to PAB #5 and #6, I identified students as objects of study within second-language writing. Looking ahead, I plan to expand to both second-language and L1 students, examining how they approach writing from sources and move into research-based writing.

I looked to the section I wrote on students’ identities – how they are

“negotiated in text formation,” citing additional scholarship[2] on language use within “situated context and community” and “notions of imagined community”– all of which lead to students “affective roles of investment and belongingness in generating writing characteristic[s] of discourse communities” [my emphases] (114). There are very different student reactions to writing, research and citing conventions in Western academic writing, and students’ first-language knowledge is often at odds with academic English.

As I thought about my own agendas and professional/personal objectives, I looked to  PAB #7 and #8 and my reading in Process, Post-Process, Translingualism and Genre Theories within writing studies as these opened up yet more areas for potential exploration. Genre theory, as Hyland’s 2003 article points out, can align itself with social contexts and “complement process views” even as post-process theories have now displaced the areas of process-based pedagogies,

While process methods in writing have had “a major impact,” Hyland maintains that they have not resulted in improved writing due to approaches “rich amalgam of methods [that] collect around a discovery-oriented, ego-centered core which lacks a well-formulated theory of how language works in human interaction” (17).

There are also many trans- theories I potentially see myself aligned with.

  • Transdisciplinary–Matsuda’s call moving second-language learning from an interdisciplinary area of concentration.
  • Transfer—looking at how writing and first-year skills can be better aligned to demonstrate movement from the first-year to subsequent classes and learning. This can include both the WID (Writing in the Disciplines) and WAC (Writing across the Curriculum) movements.
  • Translingualism – the move from multilingual to a wider acceptance of the diversity in languages is a rising area of scholarship; but I am more interested in watching this – as Dr. DePew said – to see how it all plays out in practice.

In reading Matsuda and Horner et al for PAB #8, I realized how translingual approaches can provide me with ways to think differently about the writing classroom, tying together my growing discomfort for how Standardized English and its accompanying rules privilege a minority of students in the 21st century educational environment.

By arguing for the fluidity of languages, translingual approaches “question language practices,” asking “what produces the appearance of conformity, as well as what that appearance might and might not do, for whom, and how” (Horner et al. 304). With translingualism, there is no “standard” English, described as a “bankrupt concept” by the authors. Rather the varieties of English, as well as other languages, are looked at by way of what “writers are doing with language and why” (Horner et al. 305).

I find that the more I read Matsuda’s scholarship, the more I am interested in aligning my professional work as a librarian and teacher, with continued scholarship and study in the field of second-language writing, concurring with Matsuda as he recommends that scholars learn “more about language—its nature, structure, and function as well as users and uses” and to “develop a broader understanding of various conversations that are taking place—inside and outside the field” (483).

library palace

William Randolph Heart’s San Simeon Library

As I continue to review my posts and readings for the term, thinking about these last few weeks of class and how I might align myself within the discipline, I return  to Fulkerson’s, “Four Philosophies of Composition” (1979),  and “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century” (2005).  He discusses the landscape of composition theory, in what he refers to as his “every ten years frustration” in trying to make sense of where composition studies has been, but also where it is going. Throughout his 2005 article, he looks at the “social turn” of composition (655) and I see myself most aligned with this latest social-constructivist approach to pedagogy and teaching as I move forward. The text that I have begun to look more closely at A Guide to Composition Pedagogies is helping me more clearly delineate the varied areas of focus within the field. I am really just beginning to return to this area of scholarship, since first teaching in the mid-1980s, having aligned myself with library research and instruction until this past year.  Much has happened in the last 30 years! guide to composition pedagogies book cover A Guide to Composition Pedagogies

Lingering questions of alignment to be explored in Paper #6…

  •  Composition Theories – Am I a latent current-traditionalist or have I moved to post-process? What is next?
  • Social Constructivism – The social turn in composition (Bizzell, Bartholomae, Berlin, Harris) appeals in some ways to me, as to how the language and mind work together to construct meaning – and how the various discourse communities align with my current teaching methods.
  • Critical pedagogy – The ideas surrounding power in the classroom (Delpit, Freire) – the socioeconomic and cultural conditions of students and teachers – how does this apply to my beliefs and teaching style?
  • Post-structuralism – Bringing rhetoric back into composition and exploring how invention can persuade within an argument (Crowley). How can I apply this to my own teaching and scholarship?

While Matsuda’s work in 2L scholarship has opened up my eyes and interest to continue exploring in this area, I have three paths that are converging – first year writing (including how these skills transfer – and the connections to writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines), how students research and use sources (which includes the ugly P word, plagiarism), and from the library instruction and critical literacy lens, I include issues of English as a second language in writing/research in the first year. How these will ultimately align and play themselves out in my study and scholarship, I honestly have no idea at this point.  I will look at this more in Paper #6 as I examine how I can contribute to the Major Debates in English and Library/Information Literacy Studies, as I plan to keep moving all three paths forward, adding theory, scholarship, new insights and knowledge.  I am  in a collection/learning mode for a little while more.

 §

Notes:

[1] Threshold Concept Theory is noted by Ann Johns as “a relatively new framework that deepens our understanding of critical learning experiences.  The theory provides a framework of characteristics for identifying crucial conceptual knowledge that represents learning portals within a subject area of discipline” (150).

Jan Meyer and Ray Land’s Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (2006) and Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines (2008) provide additional background and establish their Meyer and Land’s ground-breaking scholarship in this area.

 §

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Tony DiTerlizzi | Digital Artwork |Books Gallery

Works Cited & Further Reading

A Work in Progress…Staring at the Labyrinth

 As I start looking through all of my accumulated articles related to my posts, as well as those I have identified as “must reads,” I put them here in my blog as my growing learning path…

Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Accessed: November 18, 2014.

Adams, Katherine H., and John L. Adams. “The Paradox Within: Origins of the Current-Traditional Paradigm.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 17.4 (1987): 421-31.

Baca, Damián. “Rethinking Composition, Five Hundred Years Later.” JAC 29.1/2 (2009): 229-42.

Baer, Andrea. “Why Do I Have to Write That?: Compositionists Identify Disconnects between Student and Instructor Conceptions of Research Writing that Can Inform Teaching.” Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 9.2 (2014): 37-44.

Bartholomae, David, and John Schlib. “Reconsiderations: ‘Inventing the University’ at 25: An Interview with David Bartholomae.” College English 73.3 (2011): 260-82.

Beam, Joseph. “BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing.” Rhetoric Review 27.1 (2008): 72-86.

Berlin, James. “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class.” College English 50.5 (1988): 477-94

Bewick, Laura, and Sheila Corrall. “Developing Librarians as Teachers: A Study of Their Pedagogical Knowledge.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 42.2 (2010): 97-110.

Brent, Doug. “The Research Paper, and Why We Should Still Care.” Writing Program Administration 37.1 (Fall 2013: 33-53.

—.“Transfer, Transformation, and Rhetorical Knowledge: Insights from Transfer Theory.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 25.4 (2011): 396-420. DOI: 10.1177/1050651911410951

—. “Reinventing WAC (Again): The First-Year Seminar and Academic Literacy.” College Composition and Communication 57.2 (2005): 253-276.

Carr, Jean F. “Composition, English, and the University.” PMLA 129.3 (2014): 435-41.

The Citation Project: Preventing Plagiarism, Teaching Writing. Accessed:  November 18, 2014.

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Pecorari, Diane, and Bojana Petric. “Plagiarism in Second-Language Writing.” Language Teaching 47.3 (2014): 269-302. Web.

Pecorari, Diane. “Good and Original: Plagiarism and Patchwriting in Academic Second-Language Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing 12.4 (2003): 317-45.

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Paper #3: Objects of Study in Second-Language Learning ~ Portfolios & Student Identity

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by Carol in ENG 810 Major Debates (Fall 2014), Papers (810)

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2L, composition, L2, Objects of Study, second-language, second-language writing

Self-Identity

Identity

“Any discussion of ‘‘identity’’ in writing presents a slippery slope. Identity can be defined in terms of how we define ourselves, how others define us, and how we represent ourselves to others. In its singular usage, the term identity represents a monolithic, fixed category of ‘’being’’ (i.e., we are who we are because that is who we consistently are), a view that necessitates further philosophical encounters with Aristotle, Locke, Durkheim, Freud and Barthes, among other such eminent framers of western intellectual heritage. More concretely, however, identity can be seen as plural and dynamic—as an act of ‘‘doing’’ in the process of constructing social identity.” (Oullette 259)

Initially, as I thought about objects of study within second-language writing, I focused on students’ writing as the product of writing instruction and looked to portfolio assessment. However, after my interview with Dr. Kevin DePew[1], I realized I had missed the most important object of study of all in second-language writing, the students themselves. He pointed out that the writer was the primary object of study and that his/her writing was secondary. The goal, he emphasized, was to “help the writer communicate in English” as well as help him/her negotiate to the “expectations of the audience” and the forms that may take. In some instances, this is work to change the expectations of the audience, regarding the potential for language discrimination or language reduction.  He asked how, as writing instructors, can we help the writer, as well as be advocates for the writer? This was my aha moment in reframing my thoughts about objects of study withsocionic-identity-coverin second-language writing.

“The author’s explicit appearance in a text, or its absence, works to create a plausible academic identity and a voice with which to present an argument.  Creating such an identity, however is generally very difficult for second language students.” (Hyland 352)

While portfolio assessment is a popular way to provide feedback both in second-language and composition classrooms, Selami Aydin notes how studies examining portfolio assessment have been “mainly concerned with the decisions of language teachers rather than students’ perceptions” (195). However, she also points to prior research that shows how portfolios can “improve students’ self-confidence, help them learn actively…and motive students” (196). Descriptive words used throughout many of the articles on second-language writing reflect students’ emotional well-being, looking at ways to encourage their individual identities — who they are, as well as how they write.

Scriptorium monk at work

“Understanding of the ways learners give the symbolic meaning to themselves, to their perceptions, reactions, and thoughts that orient their relationship to others provides teachers with critical perspectives of viewing language learners not as L2 learners but as multilingual subjects.” (Kramsch, 18) [6]

One of the major questions in second-language writing is how to provide useful and constructive corrective feedback to students (paper #2). Recognizing how different forms of interaction and feedback affect students’ formation of their writing identity is essential if the goal is encouraging learning and students’ multi-literate capabilities, over viewing their writing as needing to be fixed. Throughout  the relatively short history of second-language writing, moving the focus away from debating grammar (examined in Paper #2) gave room for research to addressed second-language students as individuals, whose perceptions, reactions to feedback and identities were worthy of study.

Xuemei Li points to four “strands of studies” within second-language writing research, with a focus on students’ identities as the fourth strand, noting that they have become integrated only in recent research.[2]  She posits that “research on writing processes has mostly focused on the strategies of writing and learning to write. Writing processes where we can see the evolution of the writer’s identity and beliefs have been less adequately addressed.” Her research examines the “relationship of culture, identity, and beliefs with regard to the writing process” as a way to understand how a learner “reshapes” and “reconstructs” his/her identity “in terms of education and writing” (41). Fan Shen describes how he reconciled his Chinese and English identities in “Identities and Beliefs in ESL Writing: From Product to Processes,” the article that Li views as initiating the discussion for fourth strand research (46). Shen writes that his writing in English was helped through “becoming aware of the process of redefinition” of his identities (94).

Thai storytelling with puppets

Thai storytelling with puppets

“the process by which a non-native speaker learns to write academic text in English at a Western university involves creating a new identity that meets the expectations of the professors or teachers representing the discipline of which the student is becoming a new member. Writer identity in the text inevitably references the author’s cultural heritage, as well as his or her understanding of the ideologies in the host culture” (Shen as cited in Li 46)

 Using social networking sites as a way of exploring how multilingual writers create their “multiple identities” as writers, Hsin-I Chen of Tunghai University argues that better understanding of these practices can inform pedagogy in the classroom by assisting instructors with discovering the “learners’ language learning journey.”[3] Chen points to Lam’s literacy research as it places literary practices within a broader “social process in which language learners/users actively participate, enacting particular social roles and negotiating their situated identities”[4] and stresses that the “identity of the language learner indicates the ways in which language learners understand their relationship to the target language and to the social world” (143).

Viewing identity more broadly within composition studies, Mark Oullette, discusses how plagiarism has been recognized by scholars as “part of literacy practices governing identity construction” in “Weaving Strands of Writer Identity: Self as Author and the NNES Plagiarist” (255). Problematic in non-native speakers however is the established view of plagiarism as a “binary” – asserting that students plagiarize either because of “an absence of ethics or an ignorance of citation conventions” (Howard 788). As second-language students are negotiating identity as they write in English, positioning plagiarism as a breach of ethics is yet another instance in which second-language learners can be challenged. “For NNES writers, [this can] situate them in a double bind, challenged by their developing linguistic proficiency and differing cultural ideologies” (Oullette 256).

Rethinking how plagiarism is taught is certainly a bigger topic outside the scope of this paper and of just second-language writing, but as a hotbed issue within writing studies, it does raise concerns and questions both through the historical ethical binary, as well as application in a digital age of mashups and collaboration. Oullette asks for NNES in a writing classroom, “whether such an ethical discourse provides for a learning environment sensitive to the principles academic communities espouse” (269).

Why is identity as an object of study important within second-language learning? Chen asserts that it is students’ development of identity within their multilingual discourse that helps “foster their personal growth as multilingual subjects, and engages their real life practices and purposes” (163). She sees further study of online literacy practices necessary, as “these practices provide insights into how [students] present themselves in relation to others in Internet-based discourses and how they engage online, linguistically, socially, culturally, and historically” (164).

As objects of study, recognizing the differences in students’ cultural and social backgrounds and how these are reflected in their writing in English can be of benefit, as Shen stresses that “the process of learning to write in English is in fact a process of creating and defining a new identity and balancing it with the old identity” (101). Not only acknowledging, but appreciating these differences is essential in helping the student navigate his/her multilingual identities and I wonder how thinking more about identity could impact all writing classrooms, as there continues to be more diversity across higher education.[5]

old-map “In the contexts of global English language learning, the ability to use Standard Written English usually symbolizes affluence, good education, and high social class—important social capital (Bourdieu). As a result, in these contexts language learners desire to acquire such a powerful discourse. This desire to belong to an imagined community (Norton) of prestige usually encourages L2 students to invest in forms of writing in a second language that reconstruct their identities in the pursuit of symbolic value in U.S. classrooms.” (Liu & Tannacito 355)

**šš

Works Cited & Further Reading

Aydin, Selami. “EFL Writers’ Attitudes and Perceptions toward F-Portfolio Use.” TechTrends 28.2 (2014): 59-77.

—. “EFL Writers’ Perceptions of Portfolio Keeping.” Assessing Writing 15.3 (2010): 194-203.

Chen, Hsin I. “Identity Practices of Multilingual Writers in Social Networking Spaces.” Language, Learning & Technology 17.2 (2013): 143-70.

DePew, Kevin E., & Miller-Cochran, Susan K. (2010). “Social Networking in a Second Language: Engaging Multiple Literate Practices through Identity Composition.”  Reinventing Identities in Second Language Writing. Eds. Michelle Cox, Jay Jordan, Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, & Gwen Gray Schwartz. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2010: 273–295.

Hyland, Ken. “Options of Identity in Academic Writing.” ELT Journal 56.4 (2002): 351-358.

Lam, Ricky. “Promoting Self-regulated Learning through Portfolio Assessment: Testimony and Recommendations.” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education (2013): 1-16. Web.

Li, Xuemi. “Identities and Beliefs in ESL Writing: From Product to Processes.” TESL Canada Journal/Flevue TESL du Canada 25.1 (2007): 41-64.

Liu, Pei-Hsun Emma, and Dan J. Tannacito. “Resistance by L2 Writers: The Role of Racial and Language Ideology in Imagined Community and Identity Investment.” Journal of Second Language Writing 22.4 (2013): 355-73.

Ortmeier-Hooper, Christina. “English May Be My Second Language, but I’m not ‘ESL’.” College Composition and Communication 59.3 (2008): 389-419.

Ouellette, Mark A. “Weaving Strands of Writer Identity: Self as Author and the NNES ‘Plagiarist’.” Journal of Second Language Writing 17.4 (2008): 255-73.

Shen, Fan. “The Classroom and the Wider Culture: Identity as a Key to Learning English Composition.” College Composition and Communication 40.4 (1989): 459-466.

Romova, Zina, and Martin Andrew. “Teaching and Assessing Academic Writing via the Portfolio: Benefits for Learners of English as an Additional Language.” Assessing Writing 16.2 (2011): 111-22.

Ruecker, Todd. “Challenging the Native and Nonnative English Speaker Hierarchy in ELT: New Directions from Race Theory.” Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 8.4 (2011): 400-22.

**

Notes

[1] Interview, September 24, 2014, Dr. Kevin E. DePew, Associate Professor of English, Old Dominion University.

[2] The four strands, according to Li are 1) Studies on comparative rhetoric; 2) Studies of the writing processes and strategies of ESL writers; 3) Studies of beliefs about language learning, education and writing; and 4) Studies involving the notion of identities in ESL writing.

[3] Chen cites numerous other scholars who have written on second-language students’ formation of identity in face-to-face communities but notes that how students form their identity in online communities has not been as widely explored as of yet: Pavlenko & Norton (2007), Norton (2000), Kramsch (2000), Greenhow & Robelia (2009), DePew & Miller-Cochran (2010)

[4] Wan Shun Eva Lam. “Second Language Literacy and the Design of the Self: A Case Study of a Teenager Writing on the Internet. TESOL Quarterly, 34 (2000): 457–483.

[5] Christina Ortmeier-Hooper’s article “English May Be My Second Language, but I’m not ESL” addresses the resident ESL student, often identified as “Generation 1.5” – those students who had some U.S. secondary schooling, but speak a second language at home. She posits that all of the terms, “ESL,” “ELL” and “Generation 1.5” are “fraught with all kinds of complications for resident students and for us as compositionists” (390).  She draws from the work of Robert Brooke and identity negotiation; Erving Goffman and theories on performance and social identity; as well as Linda Harklau and her case studies involving Generation 1.5 students and their “ambivalent identities as immigrants.”

[6] Claire Kramsch. The Multilingual Subject. What Language Learners Say about Their Experience and Why it Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

PAB Posts #5-6: Portfolio Assessment and Student Identity ~ Objects of Study (OoS) in Second-Language Writing

06 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Carol in ENG 810 Major Debates (Fall 2014), PAB

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

2L, composition, e-portfolios, English studies, facebook, portfolios, second-language, second-language writing

world map

World Map

Selami Aydin, of Balikesir University, Turkey, Zina Romova, of Unitec, Auckland, New Zealand, and Martin Andrew, Victoria University, New Zealand teach English as a second-language at their respective universities and have written on portfolio use in second-language writing classes. Aydin’s focus in both of her articles selected for this week is on students’ attitudes and reactions to portfolios, balanced against their use as a means of assessment. Of interest is that these authors are writing on students outside of the U.S., providing an opportunity to compare pedagogical practices in a broader setting than just U.S. institutions.

Portfolio

Portfolio

Aydin points out that while portfolio use has been studied and determined that they “make considerable contributions to foreign language writing,” that rarely have students’ perceptions been studied or addressed, despite that “use of portfolios creates an interactive assessment process that involves both teachers and students and forges a partnership in the learning process” (195). Asking 39 EFL first-year teaching students in the English Language Teaching Department (ELT) at Balikesir University, Turkey, she discovered that while the portfolio ”contributes considerably to vocabulary and grammar knowledge, reading, research, and writing skills” and that students recognize this, they also “complain that portfolio keeping is boring, tiring, and takes too much time.” Students also felt that checklists, as a part of portfolio-keeping were confusing, and that it was “difficult to study with a peer,” but they did not “experience anxiety” as part of the process (198-200). Concluding that while beneficial, there is also room for improvement in informing teachers “about motivational issues and autonomous learning” as a method to solve some of the problems; she further expanded her examination in her second article, by studying Facebook portfolios, noting, “in general, existing research reveals primarily positive effects of Facebook on educational activities, and research on portfolio keeping in EFL writing shows both benefits and problem areas” (60).

Facebook Portfolio App

Facebook Portfolio App

How can the two areas of portfolios and social media be combined for better student engagement while maintaining the benefits of portfolios’ learning elements? By using e-portfolios within Facebook, she attempted to see if this could alleviate problems of understanding of directions, or of students being bored, since “Facebook is a social network that, for many, is commonly used in daily life” and offers a “fresh environment for portfolio keeping in the writing process” (60). Citing numerous studies[1], she offers that there is value in using Facebook as a learning tool “about different cultures and languages” as well as for improving reading and writing in foreign languages. What she sees as lacking in the research to date is anything related to Facebook as a “portfolio tool” (61).

Students responding to this study felt “comfortable and excited with the idea of using Facebook as a tool for writing in English” and thought it had “considerable effect on the way they write in English” (67). They again demonstrated improvements in language, writing and reading. But, as in her earlier study, they still felt the portfolios were “boring, time-consuming and tiring” and that feedback was difficult to give, as well as revising and drafting (68). Students with computers responded with more satisfaction than student without computers, while overall those who were more familiar with Facebook faced increased fear of “negative evaluation from their peers” (70).

Interesting in this study, was that Aydin found that her male students felt “more comfortable with F-Portfolios” while female students exhibited more “fear of negative evaluations” (70). That in itself would be worthy of further exploration, as students perhaps recognized the breadth of social media’s visibility and gendered reactions to feedback in a web space vs. a written portfolio seen by only their class. While F-Portfolios were useful in writing instruction for improving vocabulary, reading, and writing skills, Aydin recognizes that this is still not a “tool that presents solutions to all problems encountered during the portfolio keeping process” (71).

While Romova and Andrew’s article, addresses basically the same pedagogical impact of portfolios, they also identify how students’ identities are “negotiated in text formation,” citing additional scholarship[2] on language use within “situated context and community” and “notions of imagined community”– all of which leads to students “affective roles of investment and belongingness in generating writing characteristic[s] of discourse communities” [my emphases] (114). They discuss students’ reactions to writing, research and citing conventions in Western academic writing, seeing vast differences in how students’ first-language knowledge is often at odds with academic English, noting that “academic literacy factors can be enhanced by increasing learner awareness of cross-cultural contrasts” (117).

oracle bone inscription

Oracle Bone Inscription – Jiaguwen refers to animal’s shell and bone writing, they form one of the most ancient written languages in Chinese history.

As Romova and Andrew provide insight into students’ reflective practices, they observe that the portfolios provide “a retrospectively and holistically reflective function” as a way students came to know themselves (119). I selected this article because of Romova and Andrew’s attention to student identity in the process of portfolio creation and feedback as I am interested in exploring how the students’ themselves are an object of study within second-language writing. In my interview with Dr. Kevin DePew, he discussed the importance of seeing the student as a recognized object of study and I plan to further research how students’ identities are established and exhibited through their writing and in response to feedback. I will expand on students’ identity and feedback via portfolios and other means as objects of study within second-language writing studies in Paper #3.

 Works Cited:

Aydin, Selami. “EFL Writers’ Attitudes and Perceptions toward F-Portfolio Use.” TechTrends 28.2 (2014): 59-77.

—. “EFL Writers’ Perceptions of Portfolio Keeping.” Assessing Writing 15.3 (2010): 194-203.

Romova, Zina, and Martin Andrew. “Teaching and Assessing Academic Writing via the Portfolio: Benefits for Learners of English as an Additional Language.” Assessing Writing 16.2 (2011): 111-22.

Notes:

[1] Just to name a few, Aydin (2012); Boon & Sinclair (2009); Bowers-Campbell (2008); Mills (2011); West, Lewis & Currie (2009); DePew (2011) and Dippold (2009).

[2] Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger 1998; Swales, 1988; Flowerdew, 2000; and Johns, 1995, 1997

PAB #3 & #4: Major Questions–The Grammar Debate in L2 Writing

22 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Carol in ENG 810 Major Debates (Fall 2014), PAB

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

2L, composition, error correction, grammar, linguistics, second-language writing, WCF, writing, written corrective feedback

Hand writing with a quill. Photograph: Stephen Johnson/Getty

Within second-language writing studies, one question that has been debated for over 20 years and still lacks consensus is whether grammar correction has benefit in second-language writing feedback. In articles by John Truscott (1996) and Dana Ferris (2004) for this week’s post, how much of the practices of written corrective feedback (WCF) depended on teacher lore was startling.

“Teachers and researchers hold a widespread, deeply entrenched belief that grammar correction should, even must, be part of writing courses.” (Truscott 327)

Truscott in, “The Case Against Grammar Correction in L2 Writing Classes” took on this “entrenched belief,” by arguing that it was not just “ineffective,” but that it has no place in writing courses and should be abandoned. . . . and that “given the nature of the correction process and the nature of language learning” that “grammar correction has significant harmful effects…” (328).

Examining the numerous research studies pre-1996 and breaking down individual arguments by citing researchers’ failure in examining the “nature of the correction process” or the many “practical problems involved in grammar correction,” Truscott began what Dana Ferris calls “The Grammar Correction Debate in L2 Writing” in her 2004 article (328). Countering Truscott’s claims, Ferris writes “Error treatment, including error feedback by teachers, is a necessary component of L2 writing instruction” (49). While acknowledging that “the research base on error correction in L2 writing is indeed insufficient…” (50), she points out three observations:

  1. Research to date has not “adequately addressed” whether error feedback helps L2 students. Studies are lacking that are both controlled and that provide longitudinal results.
  2. Studies are “fundamentally incomparable” as they are different in almost every variable.
  3. Research that does exist “predicts” that there may be positive effects with written error correction, encourages “developing linguistic competence” and wards off students “fossilizing” at certain language competency levels.
Puzzle parts of speech

Parts of Speech

Truscott however, in positing that students risk damage by corrective feedback focuses on incomplete language development, stressing that students will improve based on “extensive experience with the target language” through reading and writing (360) instead of through correction that may inhibit their attempting more complex writing structures. While students may think they want corrective feedback, in truth, giving students what is good for them, not what they may actually want is teacher lore…Truscott would not resort to supplying it, even as he writes “students obviously do think correction is helpful—and even necessary…” (355) and Ferris reiterates this, pointing out that “students are likely to attend to and appreciate feedback on their errors” (56).

Ferris does offer “best guesses” at how error treatment should be approached in a classroom with 6 suggestions

  1. While error treatment is necessary, it must be done competently, faithfully and consistently.
  2. Feedback should be indirect most of the time and engage students in “cognitive problem solving.”
  3. Not all errors can be treated the same as students may not understand lexical and/or global problems.
  4. Revision has to be part of the process.
  5. Supplemental grammar instruction is beneficial.
  6. Error charts created by students can make students more aware of weaknesses.

From Dr Zareva’s lecture on world Englishes and English as a world language movement, I do question Ferris’ offerings in her article of ways of “correcting weaknesses” without any mention of how Standard English and its monocentricity privileging the Inner Circle of English may affect how English, Standard English and with it Standard English grammar, is inherently taught. Looking at points from last week’s discussion on what is the “norm” even for native speakers of English, I do wonder about L1 grammar research and its efficacy on student writing.

While Truscott points to L1 research (Knoblauch and Brannon 1981; Hillocks 1986; Krashen 1984 and Leki 1990) that demonstrates the lack of effect that grammar correction has on students’ writing ability, this is an area that still necessitates further reading as I question what is current pedagogy and theory in L1 research, if it has changed and been debated as much as in L2 and how changing views on Standard English have changed the conversation? Janice Lauer addresses this to some extent in Chapter 2 “Rhetoric and Composition” in English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline(s), noting, “One of the most controversial aspects of the work in rhetoric and composition in the eyes of the public is the field’s teaching of grammar, spelling, and punctuation” (128). She goes on to emphasize that George Hillock, in his 1984 article, “discredited the full-frontal teaching of grammar,” but it nevertheless remains as part of “formalist pedagogy” in classrooms.

inner circle

Kachru’s three-circle-model. Figure adapted from Crystal, D. (1999), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP, p.107.

One thing stood out from this week’s readings, there is no lack of questions in L2 writing research as in any other area of English Studies. Each of the articles points to many holes in the literature that offer opportunities for new studies and research in the field.  Good news for those of us interested in future research!

Definitions

  • Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) – Providing written correction on a student’s writing through a variety of means, including:
  •  Indirect WCF – Noting errors on a student’s writing without providing the corrections. This could be through underlining, circling, or otherwise singling out the error.
  •  Direct WCF – Providing the correct form on a student’s writing by crossing out, writing the correction, or adding missing terms.
  •  Focused WCF – Correcting errors selectively on a student’s writing by addressing only a specific or limited range of error types, such as articles, tense, or agreement.
  •  Unfocused WCF – Correcting all errors on a student’s writing.

 Works Cited

Ferris, Dana R. “The ‘Grammar Correction’ Debate in L2 Writing: Where Are We and Where Do We Go from Here? (and What Do We Do in the Meantime..?” Journal of Second Language Writing 13 (2004): 49-62.

Lauer, Janice M. “Rhetoric and Composition.” English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline(s). Ed. Bruce McComiskey. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2006. 106-52

Truscott, John. “The Case against Grammar Correction in L2 Writing Classes.” Language Learning 46.2 (1996): 327-69.

Paper #1 (ENG 810): History of Second-Language Writing within Composition Studies

15 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Carol in ENG 810 Major Debates (Fall 2014), Papers (810)

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

2L, composition, English studies, history, interdisciplinary, linguistics, second-language, TESL, TESOL, transdisciplinary

Second language writing in its common usage has two distinct functions. On the one hand, it is a catchall term that encompasses writing in any language other than the writer’s “native” language (a problematic term in itself, I realize). On the other hand, it also means writing that is done in contexts where the target language is the dominant language outside the classroom, especially when it is contrasted with “foreign” language writing. (Matsuda 450, 2013)

Before the 1940s, teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) was not considered a profession in itself, although teaching English to Native American students occurred as early as the 19th century (if not earlier!). Paul Matsuda, Professor of English and the Director of Second Language Writing at Arizona State points to the 20th century and J. Raleigh Nelson at the University of Michigan in 1911 as offering the first class in English specifically for international students. While a few of the major universities offered ESL classes; many did not, using instead what Matsuda terms a “sink-or-swim approach to language learning” in the classroom (1999, 702).

In reviewing the work of composition historians in the field,[1] Matsuda sees no second-language “component” in their work, positing that “ESL writing has not been considered as part of composition studies since it began to move toward the status of a profession during the 1960s” (700). This references the separation of teaching ESL from teaching composition as a “disciplinary division of labor,” occurring as a result of the belief that “teaching writing to ESL students falls upon professionals in another intellectual formation, second-language studies, or more specifically, Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL)”(700).

In the early 1900s, “letter writing” was viewed as the most advanced writing that second-language learners would need. However, with Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy in 1933, and a subsequent conference in 1939, the focus of teaching English to second-language students become more prominent and led to the establishment of the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan in 1941. Matsuda points to this opening as “one of the most significant events in the history of TESL in the United States” (702). Prior to the ELI’s opening, “it was commonly believed that anyone whose native language was English was qualified to teach English to nonnative speakers” (Matsuda 702, 1999).

Tony Silva calls the time period after 1945, “the beginning of the modern era of second language teaching in the United States” (11). It was during the 1940s to 1960s, that the “language of speech” view became dominant through the work of Leonard Bloomfield and Charles C. Fries with second-language learning interest resulting from national security interests as totalitarianism moved into Latin America (Matsuda 15, 2006). There were early assumptions by both Charles Fries and Leonard Bloomfield that “students would be able to write once they mastered the structure and sounds of a language” (Matsuda 16, 2006). Bloomfield drew from both Fries and Otto Jespersen, but still focused on spoken, not written language, with his publication of Outline Guide for the Practical Study of Foreign Languages in 1942. From these early methods came the audiolingual approach to teaching students in ESL and foreign language classrooms (Matsuda 16, 2006).

Silva references “controlled composition” as having its roots in this time period (12). Second-language writing became part of ESL programs in the 1960s, but few teachers were trained for second-language learners, as it was often viewed as remedial instruction as spoken instruction was what had been the focus. Silva sees this time as being “filled by the ESL version of current-traditional rhetoric”[2] by bringing grammar and Kaplan’s contrastive rhetoric into the ESL classroom (13). ESL moved to process-oriented teaching in the classroom, mirroring L1 composition pedagogy, but this too had its drawbacks, as Silva recognizes that critics of this approach see an “omission of approach” and wish for more focus on ESL composition within an “academic discourse community (16).

Differences between applied and structural linguistics related to the professionalism of the field during the 1940s-1970s, provided disagreements as to “how” ESL was taught. From the applied linguists of the 1940s, professionalism was a group concern and elicited a sense of belonging.  For Fries and structural linguists at UM, professionalism was the “application of the principles of linguistics” – the beginning of the use of applied linguistics in referencing the teaching of language (Matsuda 704, 1999). Fries saw applied linguistics as “hierarchical,” with linguists at the top – focusing on the production of teaching materials that used “scientific linguistic research” (704). With the creation of Language Learning: A Quarterly Journal of Applied Linguistics in 1948 by Michigan ELI, “Michigan professionalism” became the tacit teaching methodology in ESL development.

While histories of second-language writing appeared in the 1960s, it was not until the 1990s that second-language writing recognition “emerged as an interdisciplinary field situated at the crossroads between second-language acquisition and composition studies” (Matsuda 7, 2006) and became an integrated part of the [second-language writing] curriculum in higher education. (Matsuda 15, 2006). Composition and ESL studies began to align more closely as it became apparent that second-language writers did not become fluent with just a few semesters of instruction and that student writing was a concern throughout the curriculum (Matsuda 23, 2006). Early Basic Writing instructors and publications focused on “traditionally excluded students” and how to improve their access to higher education, aligning with ESL in discussions and research. Matsuda cites early recommendations that included using the Michigan ELI[3] materials focusing on spoken language, since no other materials were being used at that time (17, 2006).

While the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” Committee was formed in 1971 and passed by the Executive Committee of CCCC that same year (Smitherman 22), it wasn’t until 2001 when the Conference in College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) adopted the “CCCC Statement on Second-Language Writing and Writers.” This was also endorsed by Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Since that time, it has been revised (2009) and is now a part of the Committee on Second Language Writing’s 2016 Charge 3 for “Distributing and helping members use the revised (2009) Statement on Second Language Writing and Writers.” In their 2014 Spring, the committee update notes, “[t]he linguistic diversity of our students is further intensifying” and “[t]he Committee on Second Language Writing plays an important role in raising the awareness of the issue of linguistic diversity in the writing classroom, providing insights into the internationalization of writing studies, and in providing resources for writing teachers and scholars.”

English as a Second Language (ESL) and first-year composition are still frequently administered separately by different departments and with “different sets of objectives, teaching practices, and research” (Matsuda 26, 2006). Pointing to continuing needs within the classroom, Matsuda writes that “Second-language students in first-year composition continue to encounter curricula, assignments, and assessment practices that are not designed with their needs and abilities in mind, and even the most conscientious of composition teachers often have not been given access to the background or resources to make their instructional practices more compatible with their students” (2, 2006).

From the time of Silva’s 1990 article, pedagogy has moved both the L1 and ESL classrooms toward critical discourse communities and English for specific purposes as evidenced by initiatives in Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) and Writing within the Disciplines (WID) throughout academic curricula. As second-language writing has not had its own “instructional domain,” as part of applied linguistics and other disciplines, it is sometimes viewed as the “evolving discourse community” where perspectives are shared (Matsuda 26, 2006). Belcher points out that there are research gaps studying how EAL writers fare in their many content-area classes in English at medium universities and how they grow as they move through their programs of study” (135).

What has the history of ESL brought us in 2014 and where do we go now, looking ahead? Belcher sees “far less attention paid…helping novice L2 academic writers learn to independently analyze varying context-specific genre expectations” and recognizing adult L2 learners that have needs beyond academic writing (428). Pointing out that there is still “surprisingly little …known about what actually happens in classroom with L2 writing students,” Belcher stresses “learner autonomy” as a way to move students’ writing outside just a writing classroom, echoing L1 writing concerns as current research explores ways to engage students and encourage writing for different discourse communities and in different “writing contexts” (as cited in Belcher 131, 134; 2012).

Finally, Matsuda proposes second language writing as a “transdisciplinary field” with “a proactive call for continued advocacy and activism on behalf of students” (450). Looking at second-language writing in this way, thinking of how the field transcends individual fields, instead of intersecting them  is worthy of further discussion. What differences can transdisciplinary offer second-language writing within Linguistics, Composition, and other areas of English Studies? Or is it just interdisciplinary with a different name?

Works Cited

Belcher, Diane. “The Scope of L2 Writing: Why We Need a Wider Lens.” Journal of Second Language Writing 22 (2013): 438-439.

—. “Considering What We Know and Need to Know About Second Language Writing.” Applied Linguistics Review 3.1 (2012): 131-150.

“CCCC Statement on Second-Language Writing and Writers.” NCTE: CCCC. Jan. 2001, Revised Nov. 2009. <www.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/secondlangwriting>. 15 September 13, 2014.

Matsuda, Paul K., Michelle Cox, Jay Jordan, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, eds. Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Bedford/St. Martin’s: Boston, 2006. 14-30.

—. “Response: What is Second Language Writing—and Why Does it Matter?” Journal of Second Language Writing 22 (2013): 448-450.

Silva, Tony. “Second Language Composition Instruction: Developments, Issues, and Directions in ESL.” Second Language Writing: Research Insights for the Classroom. Ed. Barbara Kroll. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. 11-23.

Smitherman, Geneva. “Students’ Right to Their Own Language: A Retrospective.” The English Journal 84.1 (January 1995): 21-27.

For Further Reading on the History

Journal of Second Language Writing 22 (2013). “Disciplinary Dialogues.” and “Selected Bibliography of Recent Scholarship in Second Language Writing.” 425-459.

Matsuda, Paul K. “Second-Language Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Situated Historical Perspective.” Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Paul K. Matsuda, Michelle Cox, Jay Jordan, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper. Bedford/St. Martin’s: Boston, 2006. 14-30.

Silva, Tony J. and Paul Kei Matsuda. Landmark Essays on ESL Writing. Mahwah, NJ: Hermagoras, 2001.

About the Field

Journals:

Journal of Second Language Writing

TESL-EJ

TESOL Quarterly

 

Associations:

Second Language Writing Interest Section, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) International Association

Committee on Second Language Writing and the Second Language Writing Interest Group at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC)

American Association for Applied Linguistics

More…

TESOL’s Second Language Writing Interest Section

Symposium on Second Language Writing 2014

OWL @ Purdue – ESL Teacher Resources

~ ~

[1] Composition’s influential historians mentioned by Matsuda include James Berlin, Robert Connors, Susan Miller and David Russell.

[2] Current-traditional rhetoric developed in the late 19th century and emphasized product over process writing, stressing grammar and usage (punctuation, spelling and syntax). While still used in many schools, it has been replaced with more process and user-focused methods of pedagogy. For a summary overview of CTR, see James Berlin and Robert P. Inkster. “Current-Traditional Rhetoric: Paradigm and Practice.” Freshman English News 8.3 (1980): 1–14.

[3] Charles C. Fries became the director of the first intensive language program at the University of Michigan in 1941.

PAB-ENG 810: #2: The Division of Labor within the ESL / Composition Classsrooms

09 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by Carol in ENG 810 Major Debates (Fall 2014), PAB

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

composition, history, labor, research, second-language writing, teaching

For both entries this week, I have focused on articles by Paul K. Matsuda. In this second post, I selected another article that is frequently mentioned in second-language scholarship, “Composition Studies and ESL Writing: A Disciplinary Division of Labor.” In his 1999 article, written while he was still a doctoral student at Purdue, Matsuda notes that “few composition theorists include second-language perspectives in their discussions” (699) and points to the growing presence of international students and ESL students within composition classes without adequate consideration in research and specializations.

There is a likelihood if you teach composition in higher education, that you will encounter second-language students and Matsuda writes that there are “linguistic and cultural differences they bring to the classroom” that can “pose a unique set of challenges to writing teachers” (700). Citing Tony Silva, from his chapter in Writing in Multicultural Settings and Joy Reid’s Teaching ESL Writing, Matsuda notes that there is a “need for writing instructors to become more sensitive to the unique needs of ESL writers” (700).

Matsuda discusses some of the same composition and second-language events during the mid-20th century as mentioned in his later article (PAB #1) and notes that “one of the central topics of discussion at this workshop was the question of how to deal with international ESL students in the regular composition course at institutions where neither ESL specialists nor separate ESL courses were available-a question that continues to be relevant today” (708). Mentioning early practices that included placing ESL students in “speech clinics where speech therapists treated them as suffering from speech defects,” or in basic writing classes with native speakers “without making any adjustments or proving sufficient linguistic support” (709), Matsuda points to the focus on the oral practice and tradition of teaching English as a result of Fries’ earlier work.

The division of labor for teaching ESL was argued “on the basis of the need for a specially trained ESL instructor” (710), with early programs established to insure that those who taught had linguistic training, but as Matsuda writes, “were also motivated by the need to release composition specialists from the extra ‘burden’ of teaching ESL students in their classes” (710).

In this article, Matsuda does not argue for a merging of composition and second-language studies, but outlines ways that “second-language writing should be seen as an integral part of both composition studies and second-language studies” with both groups integrating the pedagogy and practices that would help both groups (715). Offering suggestions that composition specialists learn more about ESL writing and adopt second-language perspectives in their work and theories, Matsuda sees second-language readings and research as requisite for graduate programs in composition[1].  He lists prominent names and areas of focus to explore further.  Looking finally at writing program administration, he examines ways in which ESL students can be offered as many options as resources as possible (717).

Perhaps because this was Matsuda’s earlier article, I saw this more reflective of Ostergaard and Nugent’s “Preservation and Transformation” discussion from our reading in Transforming English Studies (“Introduction,” 13-15) of a transformative response– than did his later article I reviewed. How much did moving into the academic community as a professor affect his outlook – and his ability to work within the institution’s bureaucracy to influence second-language learning within the curriculum?  While he certainly would be an example of Gallagher, Gray and Stenberg’s discussion of the need for a student to be a “troublemaker” once they graduate by working to effect change in their academic institutions, it seems that Matsuda also recognizes the need for collaboration and “relational work” as a necessary compromise within a system that has been working “for more than 30 years…to improve the institutional practices for ELS writers in second-language classrooms” (Ostergaard 26-40, Matsuda 718).

  * * *

[1] In a list of readings focusing on second-language writing, Matsuda mentioned these topic areas with authors that I note for my own further study: Writing in the disciplines (Belcher and Braine; Johns, Zamel and Spack; Literacy (McKay, Rodby); Assessment (Hamp-Lyons); Reading and Writing (Carson and Leki); Writing Program Administration (Braine, Kroll, Roy, Silva and Williams); and Written Discourse Analysis (Connor, Connor, Connor and Kaplan, Purves)

   * * *

Works Cited

Matsuda, Paul K. “Composition Studies and ESL Writing: A Disciplinary Division of Labor.” College Composition and Communication 50.4 (1999): 699-721. JSTOR.

Ostergaard, Lori, Jeff Ludwig, and Jim Nugent. Transforming English Studies: New Voices in an Emerging Genre. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2009.

PAB – ENG 810: #1: Selections from Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook

08 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Carol in ENG 810 Major Debates (Fall 2014), PAB

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

composition, history, interdisciplinary, linguistics, lore, meta-disciplinary discourse, methodology, phonetics, praxis, research, second-language writing, teacher-lore, theory

[Take my Survey]

Paul Kei Matsuda, a Professor of English at Arizona State University, in his widely anthologized article, “Second-Language Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Situated Historical Perspective,”[1] examines how second-language studies[2] developed as part of an interdisciplinary relationship within composition studies. Noting that “composition scholarship overall has been rather slow to reflect the influx of second-language writers in composition classroom” (2), he points out that while histories of second-language writing appeared in the 1960s, it was not until the 1990s that second-language writing recognition “emerged as an interdisciplinary field situated at the crossroads between second-language acquisition and composition studies” (7).

Part of what Matsuda cites as a “disciplinary division of labor” (1999), he sees “disciplinary gaps” between composition and second-language learning in their historical perspectives, as well as in how students have been labeled and divided within composition classrooms (8). Matsuda outlines how early second-language instruction focused on speech, using the applied linguistic theories of phoneticians Henry Sweet and Paul Passy, based on the belief that “phonetics should be the basis of both theoretical and practical studies of language” and “take precedence over the written form.”

Matsuda writes that it was in the late 1950s that second-language studies began to become professionalized as second-language writing started to move away from composition (16). Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) was formed in 1966 and Matsuda points to this time as when the disciplines divided the labor of teaching L1 and L2 students. It was later, through need that second-language writing courses became a “sub-discipline” of TESL (Matsuda 21).

Drawing on Stephen North’s use of “teacher lore,” as did Louise Wetherbee Phelps in our reading from last week (“Practical Wisdom and the Geography of Knowledge in Composition,” 1991), Matsuda echoes Phelps’ concerns with how theory does (or often does not) provide adequate or timely connections with practice. Recognizing that both fields are multidisciplinary in nature –echoing in this instance, our reading for this week as the many theories and disciplines come together within English Studies (“Composition Studies: Dappled Discipline,” Lauer, 1984). By 2000, research areas and programs grew as second-language writing was “recognized as a legitimate field” (Matsuda 23). Matsuda closes his article stressing that interdisciplinarity is a must and that “second-language writing should be seen as a symbiotic field” (26).

From this article, I have a number of questions and areas to explore further. What are the current pedagogical methods used in composition for second-language writers? At my own university, as in many without a composition sequence in the first year, students all take first-year seminars and second-language students often face writing challenges during their first year, but only a small percentage of second-language students are enrolled in an additional course to support their second-language needs.

Much of the second-language writing research I have read so far is over 10 years old, but as I have no background in this area, it is informative to research and learn the history of the field, its relationship to composition studies and how best I can align myself within these two areas for my future research and study.

*

šWorks Cited:

Matsuda, Paul K., Michelle Cox, Jay Jordan, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, eds. Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Bedford/St. Martin’s: Boston, 2006. 14-30.

Selected Readings from text for PAB #1:

“CCCC Statement on Second-Language Writing and Writers.” Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Paul K. Matsuda, Michelle Cox, Jay Jordan, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper. Bedford/St. Martin’s: Boston, 2006. 10-13.

“Introduction.” Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Paul K. Matsuda, Michelle Cox, Jay Jordan, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper. Bedford/St. Martin’s: Boston, 2006. 1-4.

Matsuda, Paul K. “Second-Language Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Situated Historical Perspective.” Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Paul K. Matsuda, Michelle Cox, Jay Jordan, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper. Bedford/St. Martin’s: Boston, 2006. 14-30.

————————

[1] This article appears not only in the text I have cited, but in numerous other second-language texts, as a single article, and reflects his dissertation focus, ESL Writing in Twentieth-Century US higher Education: The Formation of an Interdisciplinary Field (2000).

[2] Matsuda lists a number of terms used to describe second-language writers and learners, but uses these two terms as they are used within the “CCCC Statement on Second-Language Writing and Writers.”

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