This textbook is edited by Samantha Looker-Koenigs, an associate professor of English and Director of First-Year Writing at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and is ideal for a first-year writing course on linguistic difference and academic writing. The first first
Reading: Vershawn Ashanti Young’s “Should Writer’s Use They Own English?”
During our interview, Dr. Steve Sherwood of the W.L. Adams Center of Writing at TCU claimed that Vershawn Ashanti Young’s “Should Writers Use They Own English?” made the single most convincing argument for non-standardized English in academic writing that he
Activity: Writing in a Second Language
This is an exercise that I originally experienced in a professional development workshop for writing instructors. Before we began discussing the experiences of multilingual students in college composition courses, the workshop leaders gave us this prompt: “Write one paragraph about
Assignment: Literacy Narratives
Literacy narratives are a commonly used genre in first-year writing courses. This is principally an academic genre—or what Elizabeth Wardle would criticize as a “mutt genre”—but there are plenty of examples of literacy narratives in personal essays. Typically, the genre is
Reading: Marjorie Agosin’s “Always Living in Spanish” and “English”
Marjorie Agosin is a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College as well as an essayist, poet, and human rights activist. In the essay “Always Living in Spanish,” translated by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman, and the poem “English,” translated by Monic Bruno, Agosin
Reading: Min-Zhan Lu’s “From Silence to Words”
“My mother withdrew into silence two months before she died. A few nights before she fell silent, she told me she regretted the way she had raised me and my sisters. I knew she was referring to the way he
Reading: James Baldwin’s “If Black English Isn’t a Language”
In this opinion piece, James Baldwin makes a cogent, well-reasoned, and passionate argument that Black English, or African American Vernacular English, is a language. Not a dialect, but a language. He begins by chronicling various reasons for languages to arise—the need
Textbook: What’s Language Got to Do with It?
This textbook comes from two applied linguists, Keith Walters of Portland State University and Michal Brody of Sonoma State University, and focuses on linguistic diversity, the politics of language difference, and how language influences identity. I used selections from this
Reading: Nancy Sommers’ “I Stand Here Writing”
While “I Stand Here Writing,” might not immediately jump out as a translingual text—the entire article is written in Standard Edited American English—Nancy Sommers fluidly moves between different registers and discourse communities. At times, she writes very personally and informally,
Reading: Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior
Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is a modern classic and one of the most frequently taught memoirs. And for good reason. Kingston recounts memories from her early childhood as a first generation, Chinese American