Matsuda and Valdés

Matsuda

The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in US College Composition

This is a theoretical/historical piece that argues that despite the known demographics of the United States, composition instructors expect that their students will be speakers of a privileged variety of English. As an example, most composition studies assume that the students are all monolingual English speakers. Some important ideas introduced in this paper:

·         Myth of linguistic homogeneity: the tacit and widespread acceptance of the dominant image of comp students as native speakers of a privileged variety of English

·         Linguistic containment: quarantining from higher education students who have not mastered this privileged variety of English

·         Long term implication of linguistic containment: perpetuation of the myth of linguistic homogeneity, as those students are not allowed in the classroom

Example: proficiency tests for composition placement; even if direct assessment of writing is used for placement, raters giving disproportionate weight to language differences. These placement practices reify the myth by making it seem as if language differences can be effectively removed from the comp classroom.

“Teachers overwhelmed by the presence of language differences tell students to “proofread more carefully” or “go to the writing center”; those who are not native speakers of dominant varieties of English are being held accountable for what is not being taught.” (640)

I have seen this happen even at SFSU!

Valdés

Bilingual Minorities and Language Issues in Writing

This is a theoretical piece that criticizes the composition field for not being sensitive to the needs of bilingual students, and especially for conflating all the different kinds of bilingual students into one category. Actually, there are at least 4 kinds of bilinguals, as defined by Valdés:

Incipient: ESL learners / Functional: can function in L2

Elective: learn an L2 for fun / Circumstantial: learn an L2 to live; they must learn it, for school or work

This study discusses all of them, but focuses on functional circumstantial bilinguals.

Adult functional learners may become native-like in several areas, especially verbally, but they will have some “learner like” abilities, or may have learned an “imperfect” variety of English in their home community.

Functional bilinguals may be put into ESL courses with the incipient learners, but this will likely not help, as functional bilinguals errors are probably fossilized. Also, they usually make idiomatic errors (preposition, word form errors in idioms)and have a  “non-phonological accent.”

“Bilinguals who are native-like in their fluency may be most unnative-like in their selection and in their use of conventionalized language. Problems of selection or idiomaticity are particularly salient in written language.” Otherwise, their language will be almost native-like. At the same time, they will probably make the same errors that native speaker basic skills students would make.

Learning how to write in a second language may involve much more than simply learning how to avoid interference from the first language

Writing of minority bilinguals should be studied independently of the writing of mainstream individuals

The author goes on to suggest areas where more study is needed, such as if there is such a thing as an expert bilingual writer, and if there is, how does s/he write? Is there  a certain length of exposure to a written language necessary (L1 or L2) before benefits are reflected in a student’s writing? How do bilinguals revise? What is the sequence in which their skills develop? What is the influence of background factors on their writing? Etc.