Archive | September 2015

ENGL 810 – Paper # 2: Intriguing Questions – What Do We Do With Placement Tests in Developmental/ESL English?

According to this article from Slate.com, between 2003-2013, community colleges only received an extra $1 per full time student. Community colleges have had to cut back, which leads to shortcuts such as placement testing over more proven multi-assessment measures to place students. Without increased funding, are community colleges doomed to continue misplacing and discriminating against English Language Learners?

The study of ESL/developmental English has one important question that has been asked now for close to twenty-five years. That question is: do placement tests work for placing students into developmental English, and if they don’t work, what can replace them to accurately place students in need into developmental English classes without placing everyone or no one in them?

The history of this question begins with the placement tests themselves. As I have mentioned in other posts, Harvard was the first school to pioneer the placement exam. These tests was meant to contain students who did not have “correct” English in separate courses from those students who did, suggesting that “language differences [could] be effectively removed from mainstream composition courses.” With an influx of immigrant students coming to study in the U.S. during the second part of the nineteenth century, most other schools began requiring language exams as well (Kei Matsuda 641-42). This practice continued on without question, according to Deborah Crusan, until approximately thirty-five years ago. Crusan notes that indirect measures of assessment, such as the Compass or ACCUPLACER, were used by schools because they resulted in less inter-reader unreliability that was traditionally associated with scoring of placement essays by independent raters. By the 1970s, however, academia started criticising such tests on the grounds that writing could not be assessed by a computer, and by the 1990s, the idea that writing can be tested indirectly “have not only been defeated but also chased from the battlefield” (18).

Despite the fact that the question of the accuracy of these exams seems to have been debunked, according to Hassel and Baird Giordano, over 92 percent of community colleges still use some form of placement exams. 62 percent use the ACCUPLACER and 42 percent use Compass; other schools use some combination of the two (30). These tests are still very much alive and being used although research by the TYCA Council shows that these tests have “severe error rates,’ misplacing approximately 3 out of every 10 students” (233). Worse yet, when students are placed into courses based on these standardized placement scores, it is found that their outcome on the exam is “weakly correlated with success in college-level courses,” resulting in students placed in courses for which they are “underprepared or over prepared” (Hodra, Jagger, and Karp). At Hassel and Baird Giordano’s community college, the retake rate of classes in which students are placed ends up being 20-30 percent for first semester composition, showing the extreme proportion of students testing into a class for which they are unprepared (34).

There has been a massive amount of research done on approaches to fix this problem. Typically these approaches involve using multiple methods for assessing student writing or re-considering how we use the placement exam. For example, Hassel and Baird Giordanao found greater student placement and success using a multi-pronged approach. This approach includes looking at ACT or SAT scores (37); asking students to complete a writing sample, with an assessment corresponding to the writing program’s learning outcomes (39); examining high school curriculum and grades (41); and student self-assessment for college English readiness (41-42). On the other hand, Hodra, Jaggers, and Karp suggest revamping the way we assess college placement exams by improving college placement accuracy. These methods include: aligning standards of college readiness with expectations of college-level coursework; using multiple measures of college readiness as part of the placement process; and preparing students for placement exams (6). They also recommend standardizing assessment and placement policies across an entire state’s community colleges, such as what Virginia has done with the Virginia Placement Test (VPT) (19).

Unfortunately, even redesigns of placement tests that become statewide are not always a good solution. These notes from a NOVA Administrative Council Meeting last April show that despite efforts to create a statewide standardized test, students were less successful in English than ever. Does this add to the data that standardized tests just don’t work?

These outcomes lead us to a final question that still remains: if we know how to “fix” the problem, why are colleges unable to implement the solution? This comes down to money. One administrator said that multiple measures sound “wonderful, but I cannot think about what measures could be implemented that would be practical, that you would have the personnel to implement” (Hodra, Jaggers, and Karp 23). Until we find a solution to the problem of funding and staffing, the placement test will remain.

If we acknowledge that the money for such a revamp at most big schools, such as NOVA (which has over 70,000 students), is not going to appear now (or likely ever), what other potential solutions remain? In thinking about such solutions, I began to consider the reading on the “Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” by the New London Group that we read for class. In this manifesto, the writers note that current literacy pedagogy is “restricted to formalized, monolingual, monocultural, and rule-governed forms of language” (61). The demands of the “new world,” however, require that teachers prepare students that can navigate and “negotiate regional, ethnic, or class-based dialects” as a way to reduce the “catastrophic conflicts about identities and spaces that now seem ever ready to flare up” (68). This means that colleges must focus on increasing diversity and connectedness between students and their many ways of speaking. To me, this acceptance of diversity of person and language inherently seems to be part of the solution. In recognizing that all students should have their own language, we start to break down the separation and therefore the tests that misplace and malign students.

If we are to subscribe to the “Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” but find that we cannot afford to include multiple measures into our assessment of students, Peter Adams might come closest to having a good solution that brings together help for ESL/developmental students, does away with the placement exam as a site of discrimination, and make mainstream students more aware and respectful of multiliteracies. Adams suggests that schools should still have students take placement exams, yet if a student tested into developmental, they have the option to take mainstream English. The idea is that the weaker writers could be pulled up by the stronger writers and see good role models. In addition, developmental writers take an extra three-hour companion course after the regular course, which has about eight students, leading to an intimate space for students to ask questions and learn (56-57). This model was found to be very successful at Adams’ Community College of Baltimore County; students held each other accountable, were motivated by being part of the “real” college (60). They also avoided falling through the cracks as they passed their developmental course but never registered for English 101, which is a common problem in many community colleges (64).

I truly believe that such a method as Adams suggests is a great idea for NOVA. I teach developmental/ESL English courses in which all of our students are developmental, with no “regular” students. In the “regular” sections of first-semester composition I have students who are well-prepared as well as students who passed the newly deployed VPT exam, which has resulted in more students than ever placing into regular first-semester composition. From my experience, these weaker students in regular composition tend to be more resilient – they are perhaps pulled up by the stronger students, or maybe they know if they can pass this class they are done with half of their English requirement. I compare this to my developmental students, of which I will lose approximately 30-40 percent each semester to failure, attendance issues, disappearance, or language struggles. With the approach Adams suggests, I believe that NOVA could help pull our developmental students up to a higher level of achievement and we could also empower them to continue on with their studies. This would cost much less than a multi-measures approach proposed by those seeking to fully do away with placement exams. I believe this solution would be the best way to “meet in the middle” and solve both the financial and discriminatory practices that are frequently related to placement exams.

Works Cited

Adams, Peter, et al. “The Accelerated Learning Program:Throwing Open The Gates.” Journal Of Basic Writing 28.2 (2009): 50-69. Print.

Crusan, Deborah. “An Assessment of ESL Writing Placement Assessment.” Assessing Writing 8 (2002): 17-30. Print.

Hassel, Holly, and Joanne Baird Giordano. “First-Year Composition Placement at Open-Admission, Two-Year Campuses: Changing Campus Culture, Institutional Practice, and Student Success.” Open Words: Access and English Studies 5.2 (2011): 29–59. Web.

Hodara, Michelle, Shanna Smith Jaggars, and Melinda Mechur Karp. “Improving Developmental Education Assessment and Placement: Lessons From Community Colleges across the Country.” Community College Research Center. Teachers College, Columbia U CCRC Working Paper no. 51. Nov. 2012. Web. Accessed 23 Sept. 2015.

Kei Matsuda, Paul. “The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition.” College English 68.6 (2006): 637-651. Print.

The New London Group. “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures.” Harvard Educational Group 66.1 (1996): 1-32. Print.

Two Year College English Association. “TYCA White Paper on Developmental Education Reforms.” TYCA Council. 2013-2014. Accessed 18 Sept. 2015.

Engl 810 – PAB entry 4

Sep22

Two Year College English Association. “TYCA White Paper on Developmental Education Reforms.” TYCA Council. 2013-2014. Accessed 18 Sept. 2015.

In 2011, President Obama visited NOVA. He spoke about the importance of education for all of our citizens and the great challenge facing America to become number one in higher education again. He asked community colleges to face these challenges by working harder and helping get students through school. Yet with ever-decreasing budgets and increasing emphasis on placement tests and other “quantifiable” measures of success imposed by state legislatures, are these realistic goals?

This white paper discusses the impact of Obama’s push to make the U.S. number one in college graduates, and the impact that legislative efforts from this push are having on students (developmental students in particular) (229). It also suggests new methods for attempting to redesign developmental writing programs and make them more effective.

The authors first note the failure of placement exams such as the Compass and ACCUPLACER in putting students into the correct developmental classes. They note that these tests have “‘severe error rates,’ misplacing approximately 3 out of every 10 students” (233). They also note that many states have their own versions of these placement exams, often implemented by state legislatures in an effort to “reform” developmental education. For example, here in Virginia, the Virginia Placement Test (VPT) has been implemented statewide alongside Compass and ACCUPLACER. As a result of this exam, “the success rate in first-year writing has dropped significantly” and has caused part time and adjunct faculty to be reassigned or laid off, which “deprives developmental students of opportunities for personal contact with expert, caring practitioners … instrumental to their retention and success” (234-35). The writers of the white paper suggest that replacing these placement exams and replacing them with multiple modes of assessment, including a writing sample, is crucial (238).

In addition to the legislative push for tests such as the VPT, many states are seeing state legislatures inserting themselves into the community college with little or no input from faculty (235). These efforts have frequently limited students by putting them into classes for which they are unprepared, has required them to co-enroll in community colleges for developmental education and four-year colleges for other courses, and has even removed developmental education from some four-year schools, forcing community colleges to turn away an influx of underprepared students (232-33). Because these legislature members have little or no experience with higher education, the negative ramifications for both faculty and students are stark.

Despite the bleak outlook, the authors do offer some suggestions for developmental education reform. These include: mainstreaming, or putting developmental students in class with nondevelopmental students with an additional lab session; studio courses, which allows all students in need to meet weekly with a writing instructor to support the work of the course; compression, which is taking 8-week classes to finish two semesters in a single semester; integration or contextualization, which offers developmental content within other general education courses; stretch courses, which stretches a one-semester class into a full year with the same teacher; and modules, which divides specific skills into modules in which the students focus only on their areas of weakness (236-37). The authors note that no matter what a school chooses to do, two-year college English educators must be trained to take part in conversations and insert themselves into legislative discussions to talk about these issues and how to best support students who are underprepared while preserving the mission of open access (238).

The problems that are facing developmental education, as part of both Obama’s push for the U.S. to be number one in higher education, is certainly a noble and important goal, but as it begins to increase legislative interference in a field of which lawmakers know nothing, it becomes more problematic. The issues that the authors of this paper bring up remind me of Ralph Cintron’s essay in the “Octolog III.” He notes: “Where I teach, state funding has plummeted over the decades until today it is about sixteen percent. The university is developing plans for consolidating departments and units” (126). This is happening across the country, particularly at publicly funded colleges; in the community college this hurts particularly badly. While we are getting an ever-increasing influx of students in colleges due to the push for increased societal higher education, we are also getting an ever-decreasing amount of funding from the government. Yet, the government still finds it appropriate to create tests and measures that assess our students and us, such as the VPT, which show how we and our students are failing. It is ultimately a catch-22. This movement towards Neoliberalism, as Cintron calls it, means that the government can continue to justify reducing spending while they are also forcing unrealistic expectations upon students and teachers.

One example of modifications the legislature has made is the requirement of exams such as the VPT. This has affected my own college, NOVA, very negatively. While the government sees such exam implementation as a cost- and time-saving measure, students are being placed into the wrong classes more than ever before. Studies show that other methods are more effective, yet with ever-reduced and ever-stretched full-time faculties, funding such initiatives would be impossible. These tests ultimately cause more frequent failure rates and, as a result, even more government spending as students get a small amount of government funding each time they take a class. In an ideal world, the government would work with educators to see the true needs of students, increase funding to schools for proper measures of assessment, and work with us rather than against us.

This leads us, inevitably, to the question: can these issues ever be solved? Can we move away from the testing model towards something better, and can we increase funding to improve these measures? While President Obama has positioned himself as a champion of free community college, I am skeptical. While such a tuition reduction might help students, I do not see it, ultimately, as an increasing revenue stream for the college. If anything, it will increase the number of students, and therefore, underpaid adjunct faculty, which is a whole separate major issue. Until such measures are passed, I must continue to ask: at what point will we stop sacrificing our student’s time and money and government money on what have been statistically proven to be failing methods? My attitude, while pessimistic, seems realistic.

In 2015, President Obama proposed the idea of free community college for up to two years. While this has not come to fruition yet, it is certainly a talking point up for debate. Unfortunately, while such a proposal sounds meaningful, ultimately, will it help more young people to succeed, or will it result in even greater legislative control at the college?

Works Cited

Cintron, Ralph. Lois Agnew, Laurie Gries, Zosha Stuckey, Vicki Tolar Burton, Jay Dolmage, Jessica Enoch, Ronald L. Jackson II, LuMing Mao, Malea Powell, Arthur E. Walzer, Ralph Cintron & Victor Vitanza. “Octalog III: The Politics of Historiography in 2010.” Rhetoric Review 30:2 (2011): 109-134. Print.

Two Year College English Association. “TYCA White Paper on Developmental Education Reforms.” TYCA Council. 2013-2014. Accessed 18 Sept. 2015.

Engl 810 – PAB Entry 3

Sep22

http://www.citruscollege.edu/lc/testing/PublishingImages/Accuplacer.jpg

A student takes the ACCUPLACER so he can be placed “effectively” into English and math courses that are right for him.

In this article, Holly Hassel and Joanne Baird Giordano address one of the enduring issues in the world of English studies, and in particular, ESL and developmental English classes. That issue is one of placement tests; exams meant to place students into a particular English class based on their skill and abilities as a writer and thinker. According to Hassel and Baird Giordano, over 92 percent of community colleges use some form of placement exams. 62 percent use the ACCUPLACER and 42 percent use Compass; many other schools use some combination of the two. These tests, then, become the primary method of assessing student readiness for first year composition (30). Unfortunately, these tests tend to measure outcomes that “do not reflect the complex demands of academic discourse in the first college year” (30); or are disconnected from the learning outcomes the college writing program sets for students (30-31). For example, while standardized tests are good at measuring sentence correction, reading comprehension, and other quantifiable data, they do not test these abilities in action or in problem-solving scenarios. Even more problematic is that these placement tests are very poor at correctly placing students. While only 1-3 percent of students at competitive universities ended up re-taking first year composition, 25-35 percent of community college students did. This outcome can lead us to only one conclusion: these tests only define a student’s “test-taking skills” (38).

Hassel and Baird Giordano note that at their own community college in Wisconsin, the data they researched matches nearly identically with their own experiences. Their school places students into English courses based on only one test score; as a result, somewhere between 20 and 35 percent of students ended up re-taking their first year English courses due to misplacement and later poor performance (34). They advocate that a better system will take a multipronged approach to assess student levels and placement (36). The multipronged approach that they suggest includes looking at ACT or SAT scores, which would assess which students (they say around 50 percent) are under-prepared (37); asking students to complete a writing sample, with an assessment corresponding to the writing program’s learning outcomes (39); examining high school curriculum and grades, particularly for students with “borderline placement profiles” (41); and survey and student self-assessment, which asks students to assess their own readiness for college reading and writing courses, which is particularly useful for older returning students. In this approach, students can meet with English faculty, learn about the courses, and make an educated decision (41-42).

Hassel and Baird Giordano note that undertaking this endeavor, while work intensive, is much more successful that the test model. They noted that “students who remained in good standing at the end of the fall semester significantly increased over the implementation of this approach” (44). While Hassel and Giordano note the difficulty and work that such an approach takes, particularly for large institutions, they recommend trying to increase multiple measures for placement over time (53).

Last week I wrote about the history of ESL students in the composition classroom, and one of the major issues and ways students were being oppressed was through placement tests that put them in/outside the “right” group. As Kai Matsuda noted, these tests were given to students under the assumption that “language differences can be effectively removed from mainstream composition courses” (642). Clearly, language differences cannot be removed or “fixed,” and perhaps should not be removed from the language class. As Janice Lauer noted in chapter 2 of English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline, in 1974, CCCC came out with the manifesto “Students Right to Their Own Language,” in which the organization affirmed that students should be able to use their own patterns, dialects, and varieties of speaking and writing in which they find their own style and identity (120). This was a huge turn for a discipline that was frequently non-inclusive to other language speakers. Placement testing, therefore, would seem to run directly counter to this recommendation – by asking students to read, think, and write in one particular way, those students who may have been excellent thinkers and writers are relegated to one part of the college, while those that are good test takers are relegated to another for which they may not be prepared. Placement testing, therefore, is not only ineffective as Hassel and Baird Giordano point out, but it ends up preventing students from having a right to their own language and misplaces them based on testable signs that say little about actual writing and thinking skill.

What Hassel and Baird Giordano have presented in this piece is particularly interesting and points out a major question that needs answering – do placement tests work? Their clear answer, based on the historical data is no. However, they have discovered that a multipronged approach can be effective. Yet, this leaves us with the question: how can we successfully facilitate their method over multiple colleges, big and small, when faculty are already overtaxed and often underpaid? While this clearly works well for a school with only 1400 students like the one these women teach at, how can this be applied to a very large school like NOVA, where thousands of students take composition 1 and 2 each semester? I do not think this paper leaves us with an answer that makes this feasible yet. From personal experience, even checking the prerequisite and developmental histories of each of my 100+ students is time-consuming, stressful, and riddled with error and discrepancies. The thought of having to look at multiple test scores, meeting with students, and examining writing samples seems insurmountable. The next question, then, is: if we get rid of the placement test, how do we quickly and more effectively replace them?

Works Cited

Kei Matsuda, Paul. “The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition.” College English 68.6 (2006): 637-651. Print.

Lauer, Janice. “Rhetoric and Composition.” English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline. Ed. Bruce McComiskey. Urbana: NCTE, 2006. 106-152. Print.

ENGL 810 – Paper # 1: The History of ESL in the Regular and Developmental Composition Course

Sep16

The top image is Stanford University’s graduating class in 1895. The bottom is a photo from graduation in 2015. The differences in race and culture represented in these images highlights the changing face of college education in our country and the fears and missteps made in the addressing of this major educational issue. [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~npmelton/stan95.jpg https://commencement.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/styles/6-col-banner/public/students_6col_0.jpg?itok=Eggs_Tse]

The history of ESL speakers in the composition classroom has a long and fascinating history; as a topic of great debate, it does not start with English learners in the rhetoric/writing classroom, but rather with English speakers learning foreign languages. As Bruce Horner and John Trimbur note in their article “English Only and U.S. Composition,” most students studied Greek and Latin until the late nineteenth century as an integral part of their college education, with foreign language education frequently being a graduation requirement (598). A shift away from language learning in writing began when Harvard created their first year writing course in 1890, which focused on English writing rather than foreign language study (598). From here, the move away from studying foreign languages intensified, and studying other languages was frequently seen as unnecessary. The push towards monolingualism came even more into vogue in the early twentieth century and “English only” policies in college represented the “era’s patrician fears of race mixing, mongrelization, and a loss of vigor among the better classes” (606-08). In other words, xenophobia, or a fear of foreigners and foreign culture, became common not only in American life but in the academy as well.

Harvard, from which the first year writing course began, also pioneered the writing placement exam, which functioned as a way to judge the use of “correct” English. Though they were one of the first colleges to use such exams, by the second part of the nineteenth century, with an influx of immigrant students coming to study at research universities, many other schools began to require language exams for entry to the university, and they became a site of linguistic containment and discrimination (Kei Matsuda 641-42). Essentially, these exams existed and functioned to make it appear that “language differences could be effectively removed from mainstream composition courses” (642).

Along with these exams came remediation. Second-language speakers, particularly Asian students, from Ivy League schools, to research universities, to historically black colleges and universities, were being sent to remedial language schools until they were deemed ready to return to the college to study (Kei Matsuda 644). As Horner and Trimbur note, the effort to keep these students out of the mainstream courses was due to the fear that foreign students were a “threat to the culture, economy, and physical environment of the academy” (609).

Despite the efforts to contain these students in other schools or classes, after World War II, most schools began to offer English composition courses especially for ESL students (Kei Matsuda 647). The exigencies for the emergence of these ESL composition classes was the huge number of foreign students pouring into the U.S. to study. While the number of international students has grown and then subsequently shrunk since the twentieth century, at a given time, approximately a half million foreign students are in U.S. colleges studying (640). With this number, schools could no longer deny these students an opportunity to be educated both in developmental and mainstream courses alongside native speakers of English.

The relationship of ESL/developmental English to the rest of the university depends upon the school itself. While Kei Matsuda notes that some schools offer fully contained classes with just ESL speakers, others mix classes between native/nonnative to make them more “international” for both native speaking and nonnative speaking students (647).

While these readings have done a good job getting at where, when, and why the university started ESL or developmental English courses, it does not quite articulate how they are related to the rest of the university system. Kei Matsuda and Horner and Trimbur note how closely these courses (which are typically tied to the English department) rely upon placement tests. It is through these tests that the English department is tied heavily to the rest of the college because the placement practices are college-wide and inescapable by any incoming student. For example, at Northern Virginia Community College, all ESL students are required to take the ACCUPLACER exam. This exam places students either into ESL courses, or, if they “test out” of ESL, into a developmental English class. Because all students run through the testing center, and because NOVA enrolls approximately 2000 international students annually, the role of ESL and composition course are heavily connected to all other parts of the college. Students must complete developmental English sequences before moving on to other classes (in fact, at NOVA it is not recommended that students take any courses outside of ESL until they have reached the highest level, Level 5), and there is a strong recommendation on the part of the college that students must master English before they will be successful in many other courses outside of the English department.

One interesting note about the Accuplacer is that ESL students are evaluated in a similar way to the placement test of non-ESL students. If these tests are designed to measure relatively the same thing, why the different tests? Is this test in some way segregating ESL students when they might be served by the general college placement tests?

These placement practices represent possible discriminatory practices on the part of the college or individual teachers; however, there is no simple solution for this problem. As Horner and Trimbur note, they “are not quarreling with the fact that writing instruction in college composition courses takes place in English” (593); in 2015, English in the U.S. college is a certainty and a reality that we must deal with. However, a balance must be made between disenfranchising students from deserved education and making sure they have enough English to be successful in an American composition class.

As I mentioned in my PAB posts – the question I keep asking is “what do we do?” We know that English is a necessity, but we don’t want to inhibit students from success and we certainly don’t want to discriminate against them. The reading by Dell Hymes this week shed some insight on one possible solution. As Hymes describes a definition of communicative competence, I was struck by the definition of what makes language communicative. Hymes notes that communication is not only about functional competence – being able to use the words in a way that are understandable (57), but also an ability to both know what to say and how to say it (62). If this is the way we might judge language, in a sense, all of our students are ESL students. While those who are not “American” might make some grammatical mistakes and misuse words (a functional meaning), all of my students struggle with a cultural competence of language – saying something the right way that gets the intended message across to the audience. My point, then, is that if I read Hymes in a way that is particularly relevant to me as an English/ESL teacher, as long as these nonnative students are competent to communicate functionally, they exist on a nearly even playing field with their native classmates.

This breakthrough actually fits quite well with what I’ve discovered when I teach a developmental class followed by a “regular” section of writing. All of my students are building their communicative competence, and they often help each other along in the classroom setting. Typically, the “lower-level” students are carried up by the higher-level students and all of the students in the class do a little bit better. When I have a class of all ESL or developmental students, this progress is still there, but slightly more stagnant. While I could digress into a long analysis of the Zone of Proximal Development here, instead I believe that Hymes helped me to realize that a possible solution to these issues is to mix these students into regular classes instead of having them segregated, as all of the students will help each other with their cultural competence issues. Any extra language help that these students truly do need (to improve their functional communication) could be done in a smaller group session with me where I could focus on the students more individually. This would serve not only to desegregate these classes, but would help improve the communication of all of these students.

My next steps are to figure out how within the next several years I might use this information to consider how to make policy changes at NOVA, how to best serve nonnative students, and how to make their experience easier while not losing sight of their unique challenges.

Works Cited

Horner, Bruce and John Trimbur. “English Only and U.S. Composition.” College Composition and Communication 53.4 (2002): 594-630. Print.

Hymes, Dell. “On Communicative Competence.” Research Planning Conference on Language and Development Among Disadvantaged Children. Yeshiva University. Frankfurt Graduate School. 7 June 1966. Address.

Kei Matsuda, Paul. “The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition.” College English 68.6 (2006): 637-651. Print.

Engl 810 – PAB Entry 2

Sep10

Horner, Bruce and John Trimbur. “English Only and U.S. Composition.” College Composition and Communication 53.4 (2002): 594-630. Print.

In this article, Bruce Horner and John Trimbur follow the history of composition and the developmental shifts from seeing second languages as an integral part of rhetoric and composition in the college to the college as a segregated space in which ESL students are seen as lesser in the eyes of the academy.

Horner and Trimbur take us on a historical journey, which starts when Greek and Latin study were an integral part of the rhetoric curriculum until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. At that time, a shift began in which languages such as French, German, and Spanish became reading courses intended to study a national literature or culture, and “English alone was assigned the task of writing instruction” (595-6). By the time of the Civil War, major universities like Harvard and MIT had “dispensed with” language learning as a graduation requirement (598), and languages such as Greek and Latin were seen as a dull and mechanical translation exercise (599). In 1890, Adams Sherman Hill and the Harvard Committee on Composition and Rhetoric created the first year writing course at Harvard, which was entirely focused on the study of English writing (598). While some in the discipline still advocated for language study, such as Theodore W. Hunt (who hoped to divide language and literature curriculum between several major languages), this advice went unheeded in favor of English exceptionalism (602).

By the start of the twentieth century, there was little need seen to acquire multiple languages, as Americans were not forced by geographical location (unlike Europeans) to do so. This monolingualism represented the “era’s patrician fears of race mixing, mongrelization, and a loss of vigor among the better classes” (606-8). Horner and Trimbur note, then, that this movement towards monolingualism, or the accepting of only one language, was a response towards a fear of foreigners and other cultures, also known as xenophobia, which has continued into the 21st century (608). This has spilled into the college and the composition classroom; “Basic writers have commonly been described as immigrants or foreigners to the academy, those whose right to be there is suspect and whose presence is often seen as a threat to the culture, economy, and physical environment of the academy” (609). This xenophobia is further fueled in the academy by students who frequently move back and forth between the U.S. and their home countries and position themselves as “between worlds” (612).

Foreign students also take placement exams and these become “evidence of their language use as a whole, which is assumed to be fixed and uniform,” which means they are further positioned as outsiders in the academy, where their writing is seen as static rather than “shifting” (614). Teachers may also lump foreign students together into categories that may or may not exist, such as “all Chinese students make X mistake” or “all Arabic students write with flowery dialogue.” This is also, the authors state, troubling, “regressive, and limiting” (619). Finally, they note that composition teachers must examine their own pedagogy and assumptions about an English-only curriculum and stop identifying students by their language and language ability, even if it seems natural to do so (622).

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This really resonated for me particularly after reading Matsuda for my first PAB entry. This gave a somewhat older history of the field and showed how English-only became the model of choice based both on remediation, which is what Matsuda suggested, but also xenophobia and a fear of foreigners. I’m inclined to believe that the truth lies in both of these answers. Both pieces come to similar conclusions, however, which is that colleges must be inclusive of all types of students and be open to the variety of language and culture that they can bring into the class.

This piece reminded me of our class discussion on Fulkerson’s 1979 article discussing the four philosophies of composition. Under what Fulkerson outlines, the history of the field might spring from a formalist interpretation of good writing, in which good writing is primarily free of errors in spelling and grammar (344). The English-only movement would be primarily seen as a way to keep out of the academy those who could not meet a formalist model of composing. What is interesting, however, is that rhetorical is now the dominant model. The rhetorical model says “[G]ood writing is writing adapted to achieve the desired effect on the desired audience” (346). However, while this is the dominant model, the English-only movement struggles to allow other forms of argumentation other than the “American” style to dominate. Interestingly, because teachers here generally seem to favor a particular style of argument, it might seem that the rhetorical model might also be a source of exclusion for second-language speakers. Fulkerson might argue that teachers need to be careful how they assign and assess writing for second-language learners, as they must be aware of their biases and how they are judging the work.

This work also brings me back again to questions that I had with Matsuda about what is the best tactic for allowing students into particular composition classrooms. While these authors certainly acknowledge that English is here to stay and will always be the dominant language in the college classroom, what, again, is the solution to the “testing” dilemma that they bring up? Do we test students and pigeonhole them as being at a certain “level” or having a certain “ability,” or do we allow them to do what feels comfortable? As a teacher of developmental English, I often get a range of students (as does any teacher); some students really do not need developmental English and others I am surprised they are in credit-bearing English. I certainly see that their thoughts might be as strong as their higher-level classmates, but at what point do we wipe away the testing system completely and devise a new system to reduce discrimination? This is a conversation NOVA is having and more solutions need to be found.

Because I frequently teach developmental English (and am also a former ESL teacher), this might be a good place for dissertation work for me down the line as I am truly passionate about helping students get up to speed with their English work, as it is frequently the thing that holds them back from completing degree programs. In fact, I have been told by several students that they consider transferring to a for-profit college because they can skip the ESL and developmental sequence all together. This is a great disadvantage to students. I think we must somehow meet in the middle – unburden students yet offer a high-quality education. Below, I have shown two pieces of data from NOVA that highlight how many English classes (developmental, ESL, and otherwise) that the average NOVA student is taking. While good for business, we need to address how many students are in and are staying in our classes repeatedly and how this is affecting their chances for future success.

[Here is one example – this is often a typical sequence for foreign students to go through – taking many, many non-credit bearing courses before reaching developmental English. Are we helping or hindering this student from success?]

[Here is a second example – this comes from the 2013 NOVA factbook. Look how many students are taking English, developmental English, and ESL. Each column represents one year. They make the other courses at NOVA look paltry by comparison.]

Works Cited

Fulkerson, Richard. “Four Philosophies of Composition.” College Composition and Communication 30.4 (1979): 343-348. Print.

Horner, Bruce and John Trimbur. “English Only and U.S. Composition.” College Composition and Communication 53.4 (2002): 594-630. Print.

Engl 810 – PAB Entry 1

Sep9

Kei Matsuda, Paul. “The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition.” College English 68.6 (2006): 637-651. Print.

In this article, Paul Kei Matsuda defines the term “linguistic homogeneity,” which is the idea that all students in a given college writing classroom are going to linguistically be the same, and that students by default are native speakers of English. Kei Matsuda, as the title would suggest, notes that this idea is patently inaccurate (639). Instead, he argues that the traditional definition of “good writing” as that which has been “unmarked in the eyes of teachers who are the custodians of privileged varieties of English” has deeply historical roots that are entirely unrealistic in the higher education institutions of today (640).

Kei Matsuda goes into a fairly in-depth history of the nonnative speaker rise and segregation in U.S. colleges. He notes that because most college students were homogenous and truly did have similar upbringings and linguistic backgrounds before the mid-nineteenth century (641). By mid-century, the first international students began to come to the U.S. to study in newly created research universities. Many of these students, particularly Asian students, were sent to remedial language schools with young children while they got their language up to college level (644). Many schools, ranging from Harvard to historically black colleges and universities had language proficiency exams that were the site of linguistic containment and discrimination (641-2). These exams placed students into noncredit or developmental course that made it appear that student “language differences can be effectively removed from mainstream composition courses” (642).

While some schools began offering English courses for international students as early as 1911, this was a full-scale movement following World War II (645, 647). Noncredit courses and classes for nonnative speakers were also required at Tulane, Michigan, Washington, and other major universities (647). Today, despite there being over a half million foreign students in U.S. colleges (640), many of the containment and developmental practices that segregate students exist today.

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Kei Matsuda’s definition of linguistic homogeneity and the lingering historical effects are something I see each day at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA). This term has helped me to learn about the historical precedent for why such a expectation for our students might be present. When students at colleges were only elite, white, and came from educated backgrounds, there would be a strong assumption that they would fit a non-diverse pattern of language use. However, discovering that this is not a new issue (in fact, Kei Matsuda highlights that it has existed for at least 150 years) makes me wonder what new methods have been developed to deal with international students and what methods are lingering on with little perceived benefit.

This semester I am teaching two sections of developmental English at NOVA, which are comprised of at least 75 percent nonnative speakers or generation 1.5 students. In addition to these predominantly mixed-language classes, statistics show that the general population of the school is made up of only approximately 50 percent students classified as “white,” leaving many international and minority students accounting for approximately half the student body. At NOVA, we continue to have developmental classes that are contained as well as remedial English and noncredit ESL courses which students must pass to get up to regular credit-bearing English. After reading Kei Matsuda’s account of the history of ESL English, I wonder whether or not the school is making the right decisions with the developmental sequence, as he notes that such a sequence is cause for racist containment practices.

In addition to teaching developmental English courses, I am also part of the composition assessment committee, in which we study the class outcomes of developmental versus “regular” composition courses.

ENG-111-Data4

[This data shows classes that were assessed by the Composition Resources Committee of which I am a member. The data is from Fall 2014 and was assessed in summer 2015. It shows that in some categories, developmental students (many of whom are ESL speakers) eventually make gains that students placed into regular sections of ENG 111 (first semester composition) do not.]

A chart of our recent findings above shows that students who take a developmental track of English eventually have greater success on several of the proscribed course outcomes. Does this then argue for why we should separate them? Do they actually do better in contained courses? While NOVA has fully contained courses, another local university, George Mason, has had success with courses that are partially contained: they are mixed during the three-credit portion of the class, but the developmental students get extra work in a smaller class (perhaps 7 out of 25 students) which gives further one-on-one time with a qualified teacher. Is this the solution?

While this article helps me frame the history and the biases that second language speaking students have faced in the composition classroom, it does not get me closer to an answer about a reasonable solution to the biases or the best practice. One of my research interests, then, lies in finding out how to best teach ESL students in a composition classroom; how they are different and how they can best be reached by the “mainstream” composition instructor needs more investigation. This brings me back to our classroom discussion on Louise Phelps’ “Practical Wisdom and the Geography of Knowledge in Composition.“ There, she highlights the frequent disconnect between theory and practice and the value of the lived experience of practice as helping to inform theory (864-5). I see some good connections to be made between what I see as an educator on the ground and using that lived experience to help me inform my own theories that can be made testable. More research surely needs to be done on this topic, and my own theories as well as the educational community I am situated in make me suitable to consider this issue further.

Works Cited

Kei Matsuda, Paul. “The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition.” College English 68.6 (2006): 637-651. Print.

Phelps, Louise Wetherbee. “Practical Wisdom and the Geography of Knowledge in Composition.“ College English 53.8 (1991): 863885. Print.

Scholar Blog ODU

Amy Flessert – English 810

Archive | September 2015

ENGL 810 – Paper # 2: Intriguing Questions – What Do We Do With Placement Tests in Developmental/ESL English?

Engl 810 – PAB entry 4

Engl 810 – PAB Entry 3

ENGL 810 – Paper # 1: The History of ESL in the Regular and Developmental Composition Course

Engl 810 – PAB Entry 2

Engl 810 – PAB Entry 1