cynthia kopp, writing arts instructor sharada krishnamurthy, director, rowan university writing...

From FLC to TLC: An Exploration of Linguistic

Differences & Student Experiences with Academic

Writing

Cynthia Kopp, Writing Arts Instructor

Sharada Krishnamurthy, Director, Rowan University Writing Center

Welcome & IntroductionsPresenters:

What is a Faculty Learning Community Origins and evolution of this FLC Theoretical framework Pedagogical Implications Question / Answer

Agenda

What are Faculty Learning Communities?

A “communit

y of practice (Wenger,

1998)

Trans-disciplinary

8 – 10 members

Topic-based

Sustained• 8 meetings over the course of a year

Informal; not focused extensively on negotiated timing or other formal structures at meetings

While including the efficiency of getting things done, have more focus on the social aspects of building community

Emphasis on the team aspect (while still consulting about and developing a project)

Emphasis on the ultimate beneficiaries of the community’s work: the students

They are also……

Motivation for starting our FLC Communication and collaboration between the campuses and

departments Identifying interested faculty and staff members which share

common needs and goals.

This FLC: Linguistic Differences and Student Experiences of Academic Writing

Multiple perspectives◦ Composition studies◦ Second language acquisition / ESL◦ Science (no background in teaching writing)◦ Education – K-12

◦ Theoretical framework evolved over time to incorporate combination of: Composition studies Transformative education Academic literacies

Theoretical framework

At the Intersection of SLA & Composition

Krashen, S. (2004) Explorations in Language Acquisition & Use. Portsmouth, NH: Heineman.

---(1982) Principles & Practice in Second Language Acquisition. NY: Prentice Hall MacMillan.

Comprehensible Input Hypothesis:

The learner can only acquire or learn language she can understand by connecting it to prior knowledge & known concept. Language is that not understood is just “L2 noise.”

I +1 or Input +1

Affective Filter Hypothesis

In SLA, input hypothesis presents viable alternative to immersion models, but where can they fit in a composition classroom?

i+1 model might make sense on a language learning class, but becomes problematic for composition classes in that it might boil activities down to the mere retrieval and transmission of information.

Krashen’s theories re-imagined for the field of Composition

Bartholomae suggests:“We want our students to learn to compose a response to their reading (and, in doing so, to learn to compose a reading) within the conventions of the highly conventional language of the university classroom. We are, then, teaching the language of the university and, if our course is a polemic, it is so because we believe that the language of the university can be shown to value

‘counterfactuality’ ‘individuation’ ‘potentiality’ ‘freedom’”

What are we teaching?

Bartholomae, D. & Petrosky, A. (1986)Facts, Artifacts, & Counterfacts: Theory & Method for a Reading & Writing Course. Boynton/Cook Publishers.

First year students don’t feel they have the status or authority to cast readings in their own terms.

“A classroom performance represents a moment in which, by speaking or writing, a student must enter a closed community, with its secrets, codes and rituals (8).”

The problem of authority

Bartholomae, D. & Petrosky, A. (1986)Facts, Artifacts, & Counterfacts: Theory & Method for a Reading & Writing Course. Boynton/Cook Publishers.

“A philosophy of writing instruction based on Bakhtinian precepts entails that educated language users ‘recognize and respond to’ the ideological implications of their own and others’ discourses” (7)

“the discourse of college writing classrooms,like the dialogized language of the novel, is interanimated ideologically and stylistically by the discourses of others” (7).

Ideological Implications

Halasek, K. (1999). A Pedagogy of Possibility: Bakhtinian Perspectives on Composition Studies. Southern Illinois University Press.

“Through the concept of dialogism, Bakhtin establishes the critical need to sustain dialogue in the unending quest to maintain difference and diversity, hallmarks of intellectual growth and health, or what de Man refers to as the ‘heterogeniety of one voice with regard to any other’” (8)

Dialogism & Heteroglossia


“In the end, alerting first-year writing students to the political power and cultural significance of language may be all we can manage in first-year writing classes” (34).

“Encountering new and strange discourses might not be dramatic or dangerous, but it can damaging, for a student’s survival in the university depends upon her ability to decipher and encode into her own discourse the language and rhetorical strategies of the academy” (36).

Student Voices & Power


According to Bizzell, basic writers suffer less from being ill-prepared and more from ideological disenfranchisement.

“Their difficulties are best understood as stemming from the initial distance between their world view and the academic world view, and perhaps also from the resistance to changing their own world-views that is caused by this distance” (36).

Ideology & Resistance


“It remains one of educations most ironic demands that a student who gains admission to the academy must lose, deny, or neglect her home knowledge in order to acquire the power to defend and argue for the validity of that same world view.”

In a Bakhtinian sense, the student must “become adept at producing centripetal discourse while simultaneously seeking to create centrifugal discourse.” (36-37)

Identity & the Centrifugal Force of Language


Students bring the discourse that they are most familiar with into their writing, for instance, parental and instructional voices, the discourse from their home and school, which are often moral in nature.

Halasek argues that instructors of basic writing include and validate these discourses as a starting point rather than resist them (41).

Identity & Student Voices


Halasek sees referring to our students as “writers” as a “colonizing gesture” we make in claiming the right to name them.

This gesture “necessarily subordinates students’ wishes, self representations, and other voices to the teachers’ expectations and demands” (48).

Naming students as writers protects our own self interest our privileged positions in the academy (50).



Halasek challenges the view of the writing class as a “community of writers” by suggesting that students often do see themselves as writers.

She suggests that we foreground the various communities to which students “(un)consciously and (c)overtly pledge allegiance” so that we may invite them to celebrate, investigate, and ultimately begin to question those communities (51).



Instead of “input + 1” we are suggesting:

Identity + 1

Or even…..

I2 + 1 (Identity + Ideology + 1)

Re-imagining Krashen and i+1

Writing centers can serve as valuable resources in language acquisition and development of academic writing

Writing Centers provide a supportive environment with peer tutors to help students with SLA

Writing Centers and SLA

Understanding the theories that inform SLA Incorporating this understanding in tutoring

techniques Serving as cultural informants

How can writing centers help?

Behaviorist – You learn by drill and practice Innatist – You are hardwired to learn a

language Cognitivist – Noticing is important Interactionist – It helps to talk with an

expert

Tseng, T.J. (2004) Theoretical perspectives on learning a second language. In S. Bruce & B. Rafoth (eds.), ESL Writers- A Guide for Writing Center Tutors. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook

Theoretical Approaches to SLA

Receiving input Imitating and practicing it repeatedly Getting encouragement (positive

reinforcement) Forming associations between words and

objects


Behaviorist

Innatist Includes Krashen’s theory

◦ Comprehensible input hypothesis Helping with simplifying and gesturing

◦ Affective filter hypothesis Providing a low-stress, judgement-free environment


Noticing Practicing Making the skill automaticWCs provide the space to practice in a safe, nurturing environment


Cognitivist

Interactional Tactics: Checking comprehension Requesting clarification Confirming meaning Self-repeating Paraphrasing


Interactionist

Contrastive rhetoric – language and writing are cultural phenomena

SLA cannot happen without understanding cultural contexts

Tutors serve as cultural informants

Tutors as Cultural Informants

“High schools can fully prepare students only for admission to college, not for the challenges of being a college student.”

Hjortshoj, K. (2009) The Transition to College Writing. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Transition from High School to College Writing

Pedagogical Implications…

cynthia kopp, writing arts instructor sharada krishnamurthy, director, rowan university writing...

Documents

year slide

dialogized language

language users

reading writing course

language acquisition

language learning class

teaching writing education

composition classroom