Conor Hilton: Blog 5

 

A, perhaps obvious, takeaway from this week’s materials is that it seems clearly good to be aware of cultural differences surrounding writing. This awareness ideally would motivate us all to expand our thinking and challenge our assumptions about the best ways to present various arguments. It seems to me that we should all learn more about different styles of writing and argumentation and some of the contexts in which these different styles are deployed. These considerations would enrich all of our writing—helping us disrupt the “standard, academic” essay form (if such a form even really exists!), and working to make a more inclusive, engaging, provocative world of writing. 

I do however worry about the ways that a Cultural Rhetoric approach to teaching ESL students could lead to generalizations that are untrue, inaccurate, and/or unhelpful. It seems to me that focusing too much on the ‘culture’ side of things will cause us to obscure the needs of the individual student (or students) that we are working with. Broad cultural awareness can be helpful in allowing us to recognize the value in a variety of approaches and styles, but we should probably in our interactions with students engage them as individuals and talk about what they want to accomplish and how we can best help them do so. 

I’m also uncomfortable with the racial/ethnic language used to describe the different forms (it feels simplistic and vaguely Orientalist?) and wonder if more precise labels would be beneficial (and work that sought to identify ways that these different fundamental forms are found across cultures, since it seems to me, almost inevitable that different communities developed similar narrative or essay structures). 


Comments

  1. Lucie BerjoanSeptember 29, 2020 at 10:23 AM

    I agree with this so much, Conor. I've worried about losing sight of the individual in favor of cultural stereotypes in other readings on this subject I've had for various classes. I think on paper it sounds like a lot to think of to have to think of cultural background (but not too much!) and each students individual need, but realistically, I think many teachers do this instinctually. Empathy goes a long way in these situations! As you say, I think it is most important to engage each student as individuals and discuss their own wants and needs with them rather than making assumptions.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dylan NiceSeptember 29, 2020 at 6:35 PM

    Thanks for this thoughtful and clear post, Conor. My ESL students, generally, have been very comfortable with the expectations of the kinds of writing I assign, so I don't really have a strong sense of how their home culture is "transferring" to their writing in English. I can note, however, somewhat different frameworks in terms of values and beliefs expressed. And cultural differences emerge in topic selection. As the video points out, international students can be uncomfortable being critical toward American institutions. I would love to develop strategies to help them select rich topics they're comfortable researching and writing about.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Andrew post 9

I think it's vitally important for writing center staff to keep abreast of writing center scholarship. Because students who visit writing centers vary widely in their proficiency, their motivations for seeking help, and economic/identity categories, and bring in work from disparate disciplines, staff need to be adaptable to multitudinous tutoring relationships and scenarios. Requiring staff to go through practicum courses (held on maybe a biennial basis) and holding regular department forums where tutors can present research or seek counsel would help keep everyone on the same page with regard to the latest findings and debates in writing center theory and practice. However, I don't think that it's reasonable expect that each member regularly conduct their own research, since many tutors are graduate students or full time instructors whose resources are often already stretched thin on account of pressures to produce writing/research in their own field of study. Asking too m...
Read more

Andrew blog post #10

 I'm usually fairly confident working with writers outside my discipline. I think part of that has to do with my own experience as an undergraduate, where I switched majors from political science to literature to philosophy then, finally, to psychology. To my mind, basic critical thinking skills--the kind that I teach my students in my rhetoric classes--apply just as much to qualitative analyses as they do to quantitative/empirical analyses. Questions of audience and purpose factor into effective writing and communication--approaching any paper, regardless of the class that it's for, I always push writers to ask themselves how much information is necessary for them to provide to contextualize an argument, and remind them that each item of evidence they introduce has to be accompanied by an explanation of its relevance to their overarching thesis. One of my writing center students' first assignment for his rhetoric class was to write a paper about his major (bio-medical engi...
Read more

Andrew blog post 4

Perhaps one way to promote appreciation of other "Englishes," as the CCCC statement (as much as they would disapprove of the use of the term) is to recalibrate considerations of style in writing pedagogy, one that demonstrates that what we call "standard English" is but one among many modes of expression that can be modulated according to varying purposes/audiences. Many people, I think, don't particularly enjoy reading academic English, which, besides imposing oppressive standards on marginalized people, is often a clumsy, bland, and inefficient means of expression; writing is most effective when it comes off as the work of a singular voice and intellect.  Students' general education in universities should also include critical studies of how languages are products of conquest. This, of course, has been a constant throughout history--consider how Spanish and Portuguese integrated Arabic vocabulary by virtue of Muslim rule over the Iberian Peninsula. However...
Read more