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: 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
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,
Textbook: Reading Culture
Reading Culture, edited by Diana George and John Trimbur, was the first textbook I used and is used throughout Emerson College’s First-Year Writing Program. Based on George and Trimbur’s backgrounds in rhetoric and composition, the reader comes from a social-epistemic
Activity: SEAE Freewrite and Discussion
Often, translingual courses will critically engage with genres of academic writing by complicating the idea that “Standard Edited American English” is a neutral, unmarked discourse. While undergraduate students probably haven’t been asked to consider the conventions and underlying assumptions of
Presentation: Discourse Communities
For any course dealing with language difference, I like to start by introducing definitions of language and discourse communities. While this presentation isn’t the most visually engaging, it is packed with information about common beliefs about language. I start by