Multilingual writing across the curriculum: WAC and ESL collaborations

In addition to explaining the “L2 metaphor,” Matsuda and Jablonski (2000) discuss and critique its use in composition studies, providing readers with a clear understanding of the benefits of the metaphor as well as its drawbacks. In terms of benefits, it “gives WAC specialists a way of explaining to teachers across the disciplines…” (p. 2) the problems and difficulties student writers have when trying to create appropriate written text in a subject-area assignment.  In terms of drawbacks, the L2 metaphor can lead to a focus on sentence-level errors while at the same time minimizing the “complexity of second language learning” (p. 3). Matsuda and Jablonski also seem concerned that the two areas (WAC and ESL) have each kept to themselves for many years, aware of the other’s existence, and maintaining a healthy distance while acknowledging the importance of each other as separate entities. Their goal is to develop a model in which the faculty in both areas can work toward an interactive relationship of mutual collaboration, striving together to more effectively meet the needs of all students, and by doing so, to accomplish more (and conserve more resources) than either program could have achieved separately.

I can understand how both of the entities (WAC department and ESL department) involved in the proposed collaboration might be a bit nervous. Neither would want to give up their existing status or position, let alone any funding of programs. As Matsuda and Jablonski explain, “a thorough consideration of the consequences of such an interaction” (p.5) should be developed before any interaction between disciplines is attempted.

Writing almost a decade after Matsuda and Jablonski, Hall (2009) offers a “fresh” look at the efforts of WAC and ESL professionals to collaborate, in consideration of the current and constantly revising demographics of the university campus. Hall’s “Next America,” (p. 34) like Huxley’s Brave New World, is a very different place from the America of the 20^th century. Hall pictures the majority of inhabitants of the “Next America” as multi-lingual, and able to function and communicate in a multicultural society on a global level.

For this to happen and to work efficiently and effectively, institutions will have to provide faculty with adequate training and professional development to handle the changing needs of the multilingual students. Hall points out the fact that “our first task is to re-educate ourselves” (p. 42) so that we are ready to evaluate what changes need to be made in our course assignments and even in the way we approach the teaching of the content of our courses. Hall discusses the value of looking at techniques and strategies that have proven to be effective pedagogies in the K-12 context, such as particular models employed in bilingual education programs, mainstream programs, and content-based language instruction. He also discusses some of the beneficial aspects of the English for Academic Purposes movement, especially its focus on cross-cultural learning through the four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.

What Hall advocates overall, it seems, is the same goal that Matsuda and Jablonski wrote about nine years earlier: a collaborative effort between or among all disciplines to provide the best possible educational experience for all students, despite their language backgrounds, keeping in mind that the “Next America” will be a quite different environment, and that those who are charged with teaching will have a quite different task awaiting them.

Even though his article is less than two years old, I feel as if Hall’s “Next America” is already here in many ways. It seems as if his “new linguistic majority” (p. 34) has already taken that position, but many of the Americans from the “Previous America” haven’t caught on yet.

Hall makes the important point that in the “Next America” there will be “…undiminished—if anything increased—need for thorough mastery of advanced English language skills in writing, reading, and critical thinking for every undergraduate, because strong communication skills in English are more than ever a prerequisite for success in fields which involve interaction with global partners and competitors—i.e., every field” (pps. 34-35). This, to me, is good news. From many of the discussions we have had in class, I had begun to get the idea that while English language skills overall were increasing in value and importance, some areas of English were being seen as less important and not worthy of explicit instruction. Hall’s comment seems to counter some of the ideas that had slipped into my thoughts.

Another point that Hall makes is that “our students are way ahead of us” (p. 35) in respect to living in a world in which we daily encounter and communicate with speakers of multiple languages from multiple cultural backgrounds. He states that “[t]he pedagogical task before us, then, is to produce and test strategies for negotiating the gap between a system of higher education that was founded in the previous America, and the one that needs to work in the next America” (p. 36). In this regard, those who would presume to teach must be willing to adapt, by “[redefining]” our “professional identity” to the ‘new world’ in which we now live.

References:

Hall, J. (2009). WAC/WID in the next America: Redefining professional identity in the age of the multilingual majority. The WAC Journal. 20: 33-49. Web.

Matsuda, P. & Jablonski, J. (2000). Beyond the L2 metaphor. Towards a mutually transformative model of ESL/WAC collaboration. Academic Writing. Web.