Posted: April 24th, 2025

discuss

Based on my discussion of important terminology related to Metz’s article in the podcast, what would you consider yourself literate in other than writing/speaking Standard English? Why?
Describe a moment when you experienced or recognized linguistic injustice. How would you explain what happened?
Choose a section from Sitler’s chapter. Write the title of the section you are choosing first. Then summarize the section and discuss your thoughts on it.
Choose a section from Metz’s article. Write the title of the section you are choosing first. Then summarize the section and discuss your thoughts on it.

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320545438

Addressing English teachers’ concerns about decentering Standard English

Article in English Teaching Practice & Critique · October 2017

DOI: 10.1108/ETPC-05-2017-0062

CITATIONS

16
READS

1,216

1 author:

Mike Metz

University of Missouri

17 PUBLICATIONS 256 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Mike Metz on 18 June 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320545438_Addressing_English_teachers%27_concerns_about_decentering_Standard_English?enrichId=rgreq-686742d489379f03f0c0ebda2bba9b0b-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyMDU0NTQzODtBUzo2Mzg4NzMwMDg4OTM5NjBAMTUyOTMzMDYwMzkxMA%3D%3D&el=1_x_2&_esc=publicationCoverPdf

https://www.researchgate.net/?enrichId=rgreq-686742d489379f03f0c0ebda2bba9b0b-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyMDU0NTQzODtBUzo2Mzg4NzMwMDg4OTM5NjBAMTUyOTMzMDYwMzkxMA%3D%3D&el=1_x_1&_esc=publicationCoverPdf

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mike-Metz?enrichId=rgreq-686742d489379f03f0c0ebda2bba9b0b-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyMDU0NTQzODtBUzo2Mzg4NzMwMDg4OTM5NjBAMTUyOTMzMDYwMzkxMA%3D%3D&el=1_x_4&_esc=publicationCoverPdf

https://www.researchgate.net/institution/University_of_Missouri?enrichId=rgreq-686742d489379f03f0c0ebda2bba9b0b-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyMDU0NTQzODtBUzo2Mzg4NzMwMDg4OTM5NjBAMTUyOTMzMDYwMzkxMA%3D%3D&el=1_x_6&_esc=publicationCoverPdf

Addressing English teachers’
concerns about decentering

Standard English
Mike Metz

Learning, Teaching and Curriculum, University of Missouri,
Columbia, Missouri, USA

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to address concerns of English teachers considering opening up their
classrooms to multiple varieties of English.
Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the author’s experience as a teacher educator and
professional developer in different regions of the USA, this narrative paper groups teachers’ concerns into
general categories and offers responses to themost common questions.
Findings – Teachers want to know why they should make room in their classrooms for multiple Englishes;
what they should teach differently; how they learn about English variation; how to balance Standardized
English and other Englishes; and how these apply to English Learners and/orWhite speakers of Standardized
English.
Practical implications – The study describes the author’s approach to teaching about language as a way
to promote social justice and equality, the value of increasing students’ linguistic repertoires and why it is
necessary to address listeners as well as speakers. As teachers attempt to adopt and adapt new approaches to
teaching English language suggested in the research literature, they need to know their challenges and
concerns are heard and addressed. Teacher educators working to support these teachers need ways to address
teachers’ concerns.
Social implications – This paper emphasizes the importance of teaching mainstream, White, Standard
English-speaking students about English language variation. By emphasizing the role of the listener and
teaching students to hear language through an expanded language repertoire, English teachers can reduce the
prejudice attached to historically stigmatized dialects of English.

Originality/value – This paper provides a needed perspective on how to work with teachers who express
legitimate concerns about what it means to decenter Standardized English in English classrooms.

Keywords English teaching, Literacy and identity, Critical language awareness, English dialects,
English language variation

Paper type Conceptual paper

One recent spring afternoon, on the blossoming campus of a university in the Midwestern
USA, faculty members in education engaged in earnest discussion of charged subject
matter. One senior scholar, face reddening as the debate unfolded, finally exclaimed, “It
makes me want to throw up!”.

What were we discussing to arouse such disgust? Was it blatant plagiarism from a
doctoral candidate? Failure of a cherished colleague to receive tenure? Budget cuts that
would eliminate valued programming? No. We were discussing grammar and usage in
student writing. In this particular case, we were discussing the Associated Press validating
the use of singular they as a gender-neutral pronoun in their style guide. While the APA,
MLA and CMS have not yet endorsed singular they, it is likely those changes are coming as
well.

Decentering
Standard
English

363

Received 12May 2017
Revised 7 August 2017

25 August 2017
Accepted 31 August 2017

English Teaching: Practice &
Critique

Vol. 16 No. 3, 2017
pp. 363-

374

DOI 10.1108/ETPC-05-2017-0062

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1175-8708.htm

D
ow

nl
oa

de
d

by
D

oc
to

r M
ik

e
M

et
z

A
t 0

6:
43

0
5

D
ec

em
be

r 2
01

7
(P

http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-05-2017-0062

For English teachers raised in a prescriptive grammar tradition – a tradition that
promotes one “correct” form of English usage (Curzan, 2014) – changes such as these, which
counter years of hard fought “error” correction, feel like betrayal. Many English teachers
have taken on the role of language guardians, advocating the grammar of Standardized
English[1] in students’ speech and upholding the writing conventions of historically
sanctioned style guides.

Debates about standards for grammar and usage have existed since the first efforts at
standardization (Wright, 2000), and these debates spill into English classrooms (take, for
example, the heated and unresolved battle about the Oxford comma). In our current,
polarized, political climate even grammar – the historically “objective” content of English
language arts (ELA) classrooms – takes on heightened social and political meaning. As we
witness a global rise in populist movements, demonstrated by the Brexit vote and the
election of Donald Trump, along with a growing wave of xenophobia, the role of language in
defining social insiders and outsiders carries significant weight. English teachers can play
an important role in countering social prejudice by teaching about English language
variation.

A growing body of sociolinguistic knowledge demonstrates connections between beliefs
about language usage and social identities (Alim and Smitherman, 2012; Bucholtz and Hall,
2004; Eckert, 2000). The linguistic fact that all dialects and varieties of English are
patterned, rule governed and linguistically equal, reveals that the concept of “correct”
English is a language ideology, not a linguistic truth (Wolfram and Schilling, 2015). The
emphasis on one version of English as “right” and others as “wrong” is based in social
hierarchies rather than inherent characteristics of particular grammatical constructions
(Lippi-Green, 2012). Increasing dissemination of these linguistic facts has begun to weaken
the reliance on romanticized tradition in how English norms are taught.

Since I stepped out of the classroom after 15 years of teaching, I’ve worked extensively
with new and veteran teachers exploring the relationship between language, culture and
power in English classrooms. While most teachers I work with support the idea of valuing
students’ cultural ways of being, they often balk at decentering Standardized English. By
decentering, I mean removing Standardized English as the central focus of language
teaching, and instead, including Standardized English as one, amongmany, Englishes at the
heart of language study.

The reluctance on the part of many English teachers to embrace the English varieties
their students bring to the classroom stands in contrast to the way these very English
teachers embrace other aspects of cultural pluralism. I’ve worked with English teachers who
eagerly adopt multicultural texts reflective of the students they serve, use young adult
literature to engage students as active readers and develop students’ literary analysis skills
through the integration of multi-modal texts; yet these very teachers hold tightly to
grammar instruction that marginalizes and stigmatizes all Englishes other than
Standardized English.

Perhaps more than any other content area, ELA teachers experience the importance of
the relationship between students’ identity and the subject matter being taught. We know
that students need to see themselves in the texts we study (Landt, 2006). We know that they
need opportunities to express their own understandings and life experiences as they develop
their skill as writers (Martin, 2003). Yet, we have been slow to take up the inclusion of
diverse English varieties as legitimate content in our study of the English language
(Mallinson and Charity Hudley, 2013). Over a decade ago, this journal devoted two complete
issues to the theme “Knowledge about language in the English/literacy classroom” (Locke,
2005, 2006) yet progress incorporating those ideas plods tediously. How do we account for

ETPC
16,3

364

D
ow

nl
oa

de
d

by
D

oc
to

r M
ik

e
M

et
z

A
t 0

6:
43

0
5

D
ec

em
be

r 2
01

7
(P

the slow pace of change in the way language is taught? My experience working with pre-
service and in-service teachers in various contexts across the USA shows that teachers
express similar, valid concerns as they wrestle with the idea of decentering Standardized
English.

In the remainder of this article, I make the case for embracing multiple Englishes and
teaching English language variation by addressing the thoughtful questions of concerned
teachers and administrators I’ve worked with over the years. My hope is that by
highlighting the political nature of choices to teach about English, and the resulting social
consequences, English teachers will consider the impact of teaching English “as they were
taught” and work toward integrating more linguistic research into their teaching and talk
about language.

What’s the point?
“Is justice the point of literacy? Are we supposed to build equality through our language? I’m not
sure I agree with that.” (A veteran English teacher)

During a recent course I taught, a veteran teacher asked the above question on a discussion
board in response to readings about language, culture and power. The question reveals that
some reluctance to teach about language variation goes back to beliefs about the
fundamental purposes of schooling. There are many English teachers who view language
diversity as a problem (Curzan, 2014; Hancock and Kolln, 2010). These English teachers
aspire to create a common culture that promotes national unity. This common culture takes
the form of a monolingual, mono-cultural society predicated on White middle-class norms.
This set of beliefs aligns with traditionally conservative views of what it means to be
American, and what knowledge should be taught in schools to preserve American culture
(Hirsch, 1988; Provenzo, 2006). For these teachers, Standardized English is a vehicle to create
this national unity. The teacher quoted above sees her role as an English teacher as helping
her students in gaining access to this national culture through language. I strive to help
these teachers unpack that understanding.

It is important that this teacher invoked the principles of justice and equality in her
question because historical efforts to promote a narrow view of national identity have led to
unjust and unequal treatment of many Americans. Americans who experience injustice and
inequality based on Standardized English ideologies in schooling practices are those who
experience discrimination in other aspects of society based on their skin color, cultural
practices and linguistic background (Alim et al., 2016; Hartman, 2003; Lash, 2017).
Continuing to teach English the way we always have perpetuates this injustice and
inequality for many Americans.

To this teacher and others who may wonder if we must politicize our teaching of
language and literacy I reply, “What is the alternative?” If the point of literacy is not justice,
what is it? If we are not building equality through teaching language, what are we building?
None of the teachers I’ve worked with over the years would advocate injustice. That is not
their goal. None want to hurt children. Teachers do what they think is best for their
students. But they often view literacy and language as neutral; standing outside of issues of
justice and equality. And that view is not sustainable in the middle of the twenty-first
century, in increasingly multicultural and multilingual societies, in a time where speakers of
world Englishes out-number speakers of American English (Canagarajah, 2006). Holding
onto a romanticized and inaccurate view of a single correct, and unchanging, English, that
follows uniform, rigid and persistent rules is not a neutral stance but rather a strongly
ideological set of beliefs that is ultimately political in nature.

Decentering
Standard
English

365

D
ow

nl
oa

de
d

by
D

oc
to

r M
ik

e
M

et
z

A
t 0

6:
43

0
5

D
ec

em
be

r 2
01

7
(P

As many before me have explained much more eloquently that I can (Appleman, 2015;
Cochran-Smith, 2010), there is no neutral position in teaching. Even support of the status
quo involves taking a position. The status quo for teaching about language in ELA
classrooms positions students who speak historically stigmatized language varieties as
deficient, uneducated and even immoral. (In their text for teachers, Dunn and Lindblom
(2011) powerfully demonstrate and critique the societal link between language and morality
through an analysis of “grammar rants”.) Continuing this practice contradicts established
research in linguistics and promotes injustice and inequality.

I am transparent about subscribing to a view of schooling, which embraces our
pluralistic society and values the diversity of languages, cultures and knowledge traditions
represented by the heritage cultures in our immigrant nation, as well as the continually
evolving hybrid cultural practices that result from the intermingling of those traditions.
From my point of view, this plurality is the strength of the USA. I show teachers examples
of people – Barak Obama being a prime example (Alim and Smitherman, 2012) – who
employ varied linguistic resources to move fluidly through wide-ranging cultural
communities. A goal of schooling should be to help students expand their repertoires of
linguistic and cultural ways of being so that they can communicate comfortably across
contexts. The goal of schooling is to give students more options, not fewer. Expanding the
number of Englishes taught in school allows students to access mainstream culture if they
choose, while validating and supporting the diverse cultures that make up the USA and
other countries in our increasingly intermixed global society.

What do I teach?
“So, you’re saying that when it comes to grammar and writing, anything goes?”

“If I can’t correct their mistakes, then I should just let them go?”

Once teachers accept the validity of multiple Englishes, they often feel stuck. I get questions
like the two above from teachers at a summer institute I led in the San Francisco Bay Area.
These are valid questions that represent honest struggle with changing a long-held belief
about what counts as correct English, and the English teacher’s role in supporting it.

Error correction, in speech and writing, remains a staple of ELA classrooms
(Shaughnessy, 1979; Smith and Wilhelm, 2007). When I ask teachers to stop thinking in
terms of “errors” and “correction”, they’re not sure what to do instead. Many teachers
express frustration through questions similar to the one above, “If I can’t correct their
mistakes, then I should just let them go?” I tell these teachers there is a third option.

First, I emphasize getting rid of the terms “error” and “mistake”. Unless we are talking
about a typo (which is an error and a mistake), the errors and mistakes teachers usually
identify are not errors at all. They are alternative grammatical constructions or stylistic
options that come from Englishes or registers different than what the teacher expects or
accepts (Reaser et al., 2017). Using an alternative, and equally valid, language variety is a
fundamentally different concept than making an error. Because they are not errors, they do
not need to be, and should not be, corrected. That does not mean that students’ grammatical
usage should not be addressed.

Identifying features of different Englishes in students’ writing creates opportunities to
teach students about the English language (Chisholm and Godley, 2011; McBee Orzulak,
2013). Take, for example, the two variations of the sentence below.

(1) Ashley sing in the car.
(2) Ashley sings in the car.

ETPC
16,3

366

D
ow

nl
oa

de
d

by
D

oc
to

r M
ik

e
M

et
z

A
t 0

6:
43

0
5

D
ec

em
be

r 2
01

7
(P

Sentence (1) follows a rule in African–American English that regularizes verb forms by not
marking third-person singular verbs with an “s”. Linguist John Rickford describes the
grammar rule this way, “Thou shalt not treat present-tense verbs with third-person-singular
subjects any differently from verbs with other subjects” (Rickford and Rickford, 2000,
p. 112). This feature is increasingly used by a wide range of young people in urban schools
in America (Paris, 2011). In Standardized English, the third-person singular requires an “s”,
thus a Standardized English user would follow the pattern in sentence (2). Neither sentence
is right or wrong. Each follows a clear grammatical rule. Even so, teachers, for generations,
have “corrected” students “errors” like this in subject-verb agreement. Rather than
inaccurately “correcting” students, a more precise and productive approach would be to for
teachers to describe the different grammatical rules regarding subject-verb agreement.
Teachers can then explain when andwhy they expect students to follow each set of rules.

The alternative to “correcting” is not “anything goes”. The alternative to correcting is
teaching students accurate grammatical information that validates the patterned, rule-bound
nature of all dialects of English. Of course, few teachers have been taught this information
themselves, which puts them in a tough position.

What do I need to know?
“But I don’t have the language knowledge to pick out these moments and build on them. Are you
saying I need to go back to school to study linguistics?”

Many of the teachers I work with have fantastic content knowledge when it comes to
literature, writing and even Standardized English grammar, but few have much knowledge
of English language variation. Even fewer have studied sociolinguistics or linguistic
variation in ways that would prepare them to recognize and describe features of the many
varieties of English they will encounter in their classrooms. Clearly, schools of education
need to dedicate more time and attention to English language variation in teacher
preparation courses. At the same time, holding teachers responsible for knowledge they
were never exposed to is counterproductive. We can neither ask all English teachers to pick
up degrees in linguistics nor should we. We can, however, provide teachers with some
guiding principles and resources to help them navigate and learn as they wrestle
productively with multiple Englishes over the course of their careers.

The primary principle I ask teachers to adopt is that there are no errors in students’
language use. By its very nature, language is patterned and rule governed. Our job as
teachers of the English language is to help identify and describe the patterns we encounter.
When a distinct term, phrase, pronunciation or grammatical construction stands out as
being “marked” in some way, it presents an opportunity to learn something new about how
language works. I can do the investigation myself, or I can invite students to investigate
with me. Thanks to the wonderful community of sociolinguists and others studying
language variation, resources abound. (I’ve compiled a growing resource list on my website:
www.metzteaching.com/resources-for-teachers.html.)

An example helps illustrate what this process might look like. The majority of students I
taught during my 15 years as a public-school teacher in Chicago spoke a variety of African
American English. One colleague of mine, a fellow English teacher, was very particular
about making sure students pronounced the word ask with the “k” sound at the end. When
students pronounced the word with the k sound in the middle (aks or ax), she would correct
them. The demeaning tone she would use, and the way she described the alternative
pronunciation as “wrong” or even “ignorant”, troubled me. I didn’t have the knowledge to
describe the linguistic process at play, and wasn’t able to articulate what bothered me about
her approach, so I did some digging.

Decentering
Standard
English

367

D
ow

nl
oa

de
d

by
D

oc
to

r M
ik

e
M

et
z

A
t 0

6:
43

0
5

D
ec

em
be

r 2
01

7
(P

http://www.metzteaching.com/resources-for-teachers.html

AGoogle search of “ask aks” returned over five hundred thousand results, but the top hit
was a very accessible newspaper article from the LA times that lays out the historical and
social journey of the word, with an eye to the impact of language on identity (McWhorter,
2014). Further research gave more detail. (Spoken Soul by Rickford and Rickford is an
accessible explanation of Black English, while American English: Dialects and Variation by
Wolfram & Schilling is a comprehensive tome.) It turns out that the inversion of the
consonant sounds in a word is part of a linguistic process called metathesis. It is common in
many words, but ask vs aks is one of the most socially marked forms. I learned that
Shakespeare used both forms in his plays. There is debate about whether aks or ask is the
original form and which version is the changed form. I found out that the same principle is
at play in pronunciation of nuclear as “nu-cu-lar” and comfortable as “comf-ter-ble.”
However, these examples are not socially marked in the same way as ask and aks.

As I read more, I learned that the reason certain features get stigmatized has less to do
with language andmore to do with the social identity of the speakers (Lippi-Green, 2012). As
educational linguist Jonathan Rosa recently remarked, “In reality, we are often not
correcting students’ language. We are correcting their identity. We are correcting their race”
(Rosa, 2017). The use of ax is as much about signaling racial identity as it is communicating
other content.

I didn’t know any of this when my colleague corrected our high school students years
ago. I did not need to take a linguistics class to learn it. When I started with the assumption
that my students were correct, but applying a different rule, I was able to find out aspects of
the rule with minimal investigation. And now I know. Like anything else in teaching, I
encourage teachers not to let their current knowledge limit what they teach their students.
Learn with them!.

What about the real world?
“My students need to learn Standard English for tests and job interviews.”

“What about the Delpit question?”

One day, after I delivered a research talk about teaching critical language awareness at
Stanford University, a prominent professor asked pointedly, “What about the Delpit
question?” By “the Delpit question”, this professor referred to the issue raised in Lisa
Delpit’s much cited article “The Silenced Dialogue” (Delpit, 1988). In this article, Delpit
interrogates an approach to language teaching summed up by the statement: “Children have
the right to their own language, their own culture. We must fight cultural hegemony and
fight the system by insisting that children be allowed to express themselves in their own
language style. It is not they, the children, who must change, but the schools. To push
children to do anything else is repressive and reactionary” (p. 291). Delpit critiques, not this
belief, but the teaching (or lack of teaching) she observed in response to this belief. For
Delpit, it is important that students who are not born into the culture of power are explicitly
taught the codes of power. She saw teachers using the belief in students’ right to their own
language as a tool to avoid taking responsibility for teaching students the codes of
Standardized English that are necessary cultural currency in mainstreamAmerica.

When the professor asked me to respond to “the Delpit question”, he wanted to know
how I address the tension inherent in asking teachers to teach the language of power, while
also asking them, “to fight cultural hegemony and fight the system by insisting that children
be allowed to express themselves in their own language style”.

I respond to this question in two ways. First, I clarify that this is not a case of “either
or [. . .]” but a case of “Yes, and [. . .]”. I advocate a repertoire approach that seeks to increase

ETPC
16,3

368

D
ow

nl
oa

de
d

by
D

oc
to

r M
ik

e
M

et
z

A
t 0

6:
43

0
5

D
ec

em
be

r 2
01

7
(P

the size of students’ linguistic repertoires – students’ linguistic toolkits (Orellana et al., 2010).
Students need to acquire Standardized English forms and features, while holding onto the
linguistic styles of their home and community. The more dialects and registers of English
they can incorporate into their repertoires themore power they have.

Second, I trouble the notion that Standardized English is the language of power.
Increasingly, monolingual speakers who only have access to Standardized English dialects
are limited in their linguistic power. The new language of power is a language of flexibility
and dexterity (Alim and Smitherman, 2012; Young et al., 2013; Canagarajah, 2017). It
accounts for the complexity of identities expressed through language. When teachers need
concrete examples, I show them Marc Lamont Hill. When Dr Hill speaks to large and
multifaceted audiences he moves fluidly between registers and dialects. He will quote
Foucault’s “insurrection of subjugated knowledges” in one breath, then in the next breath
invoke contemporary hip-hop culture or drop references to the black church. He uses a range
of linguistic codes to signal multiple aspects of his identity while meeting the diverse
expectations of complex audiences. His extensive linguistic repertoire gives him power he
would not have if he only spoke an academic register of Standardized English.

Delpit advocates teaching students the rules to the game of political and social power. In
the 20 years since her article was written, the rules of that game have evolved. Political
power in our society comes not from Standardized English, but from Standardized English
meshed with other language varieties (Young et al., 2013). This is as true for students as for
presidents (Alim and Smitherman, 2012).

We also need to be careful that we do not oversell students on the power of Standardized
English. While it is an invaluable tool to include in their linguistic toolkits, it does not erase
other forms of discrimination and prejudice (Flores and Rosa, 2015). Yes, our students need to
be prepared to meet the linguistic expectations of test-makers and gate-keepers so that they
can succeed in the political game if they desire. They also need to be able to recognize that the
game is rigged to favor Standardized English. Teaching students the validity of multiple
English varieties can help them change the rules of the game (Godley and Loretto, 2013).

What about my ELs?
“My students are ELs. Teaching them different Englishes will just confuse them.”

While much of my work with teachers focuses on dialects of English, the linguistically
complex classrooms many teachers serve necessitate an even wider vision of language. As
teachers weigh the benefits of teaching English language in ways that validate language
variation I’ve had many express reservations on behalf of students learning English as a
second or additional language. These students have needs that are distinct from students
who speak dialects of English. The concern teachers express in relation to their school
designated English Learners (ELs) often parallels concerns addressed above: ELs need
Standardized English to be successful on standardized tests and to enter the professional
world of work and school. My response to this concern is the same as described above. Yes,
and [. . .] Take a repertoire approach.

When teachers suggest that their EL students will be confused if teachers validate
multiple Englishes, I ask them to consider how students will make sense of the linguistic
landscape if they only learn Standardized English. The world is made up of multiple
Englishes. American English is just one version of the many world Englishes. International
students often have exposure to other world Englishes in addition to the dialects of
American English (Canagarajah, 2006). As our ELs will experience multiple Englishes, it
only makes sense to help them navigate those Englishes in ways that acknowledge the
social meanings attached to different dialects. ELs, just like native English speakers, are

Decentering
Standard
English

369

D
ow

nl
oa

de
d

by
D

oc
to

r M
ik

e
M

et
z

A
t 0

6:
43

0
5

D
ec

em
be

r 2
01

7
(P

better served by language teaching that accurately describes the way Englishes work in
society, including the facts of various valid grammars, and the social prestige and stigma
attached to the linguistically equal forms. ELs need to be able to understand multiple
Englishes, as well as produce those Englishes to adeptly navigate American society.

The political and social histories of English in countries outside the USA give dialects of
English in those contexts unique social meaning. Whatever the context, as students learn
English as an additional language, they are best served by being taught that dialects
followed patterned rules and are linguistically equal, and that different dialects serve as
social markers within social and cultural groups.

What about my white students?
“My students are all white, so this doesn’t really apply to my context.”

“My students speak Standard English already. I don’t need to talk about this with them.”

When I worked on the south side of Chicago, English variation was clearly racialized as a
Black–White issue. In the schools I studied in California, students’ Englishes reflected a
wide range of internationally influenced linguistic backgrounds: Spanish-influenced
English, Mandarin-influenced English, Tagalog-influenced English, etc. The literature on
language variation in schools often focuses on “urban” contexts, and suggests that teaching
about language variation is best suited for students who speak historically stigmatized
language varieties (Alim and Baugh, 2007; Ball et al., 2011; Paris, 2011). The goal in these
cases is to help teachers and students find the value in the English varieties students bring
to the classroom. The ultimate aim is to increase the engagement and attachment to school
for students who have historically been marginalized, leading to successful school outcomes.
But that goal is too limited. Knowledge of English language variation is not just for urban
kids of color.

The election of Donald Trump in the USA has been seen by many as a backlash by
White America against attention and resources devoted to a multi-cultural and urban
population (Kellner, 2017). While the implications of Trump’s election just begin to play out,
one result has been increased efforts to understand rural and white America. This makes it a
particularly fruitful time to bring studies of language variation out of diverse urban contexts
and into more homogeneous white spaces. Recently, I’ve begun work with English teachers
in predominantly white contexts, both rural and suburban. In both spaces, the importance of
teaching about English language variation has been clear.

In rural White contexts in the USA, teachers describe the same issues of language
stigmatization that teachers describe on the south side of Chicago. They often view students
coming to school with “poor language skills” speaking “bad English”. As a teacher in my
course wrote on a discussion post, “One of my students has a very, what you call “redneck”
accent, very low reading scores, needs constant support and rarely utters a sentence that is
grammatically correct”. In rural white contexts, the social stigmatization tied to language
use highlights class over race. It is often associated with the education level of particular
families or geographic areas. Still, the principles tying together language, culture and power
are the same. There is extensive research on southern English, and there are increasingly
nuanced descriptions of the Englishes of distinct rural communities. (For teaching materials
related to Southern English, see for example, Charity Hudley and Mallinson, 2010; Reaser
and Wolfram, 2007). Many of the students in these communities have felt alienated from
school because of the variety of English they speak in similar ways to the alienation felt by
urban students of color.

ETPC
16,3

370

D
ow

nl
oa

de
d

by
D

oc
to

r M
ik

e
M

et
z

A
t 0

6:
43

0
5

D
ec

em
be

r 2
01

7
(P

In contrast to the way work on language variation in schools has traditionally been
framed, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that White suburban students who speak
Standardized English need to be taught about language variation more than almost any
other group. A prominent current book on language variation in schools, Dialects at School
(Reaser et al., 2017) has the subtitle “Educating Linguistically Diverse Students”. While it is
important that we educate “linguistically diverse students”, it is even more important that
we educate mainstream, white, monolingual students about the validity of English varieties
in the world around them. For these students, the goal is not improved schooling outcomes.
Standardized tests, school funding systems and even textbooks are already designed to
cater to this demographic. Rather than focusing on improved school outcomes, teaching
these students about English variation would result in improved social outcomes.

The goal of teaching White middle-class, mainstream students about language variation
is to help them understand language differently, to hear differently, to question and critique
the stigma associated with marginalized Englishes. A shift from focusing on the speaker to
focusing on the listener (Flores and Rosa, 2015) completely changes the dynamics of how we
think about teaching dialects in school. Teaching white middle-class listeners to hear
differently, to be aware of the discriminatory listening practices of mainstream society, is a
step toward making significant social change. While past practices have emphasized
teaching speakers and writers to produce language using a range of linguistic conventions,
moving forward, English teachers should also emphasize teaching listeners and readers to
consume a range of Englishes with the intention of understanding rather than judging.

The shared responsibility for understanding between the speaker and listener has been
called the communicative burden (Lippi-Green, 2012). The approach to dialects in school to
this point has placed an inordinate share of the communicative burden on speakers; hence,
the focus on “educating linguistically diverse students”. To distribute the communicative
burden more equally, we need to focus on “educating linguistically homogenous students”.
We need to increase the linguistic repertoires of students who are constrained by a
Standardized English mode of hearing/listening.

If, as I advocated earlier, the goal of literacy is justice, and we are using language
teaching to work for social equality, then the students who benefit most from the current
system need to learn that they’ve been taught half-truths that help them and harm others.
The more that we teach White middle-class students the validity of other Englishes,
particularly when those students otherwise would have limited exposure to those Englishes,
the more we reduce the potential of future discrimination.

What else?
There are manymore questions and concerns raised by the teachers I’ve worked with: White
teachers often feel uncomfortable teaching and talking about African–American English.
Black teachers are sometimes the harshest critics of African–American English. Parents
raise a range of concerns. Members of English departments don’t see eye-to-eye.
Administrators need convincing. And then there are always the standardized tests that
assume, incorrectly, the grammar of Standardized English is the only English grammar.

So we arrive back at the question of politics. If every stance we take as teachers is a
political stance, then let’s adopt a stance that’s aligned with accurate linguistic knowledge.
Let’s adopt a stance that’s expands students’ linguistic repertoires. Let’s use language
knowledge, in the same way we use literature and writing, to help our students learn more
about themselves and the world around them. Let’s describe the grammar our students use
and encounter in the world instead of trying to prescribe the grammar they should use. Let’s
help students consider how different language choices are read by different audiences in

Decentering
Standard
English

371

D
ow

nl
oa

de
d

by
D

oc
to

r M
ik

e
M

et
z

A
t 0

6:
43

0
5

D
ec

em
be

r 2
01

7
(P

different contexts. Let’s help them match their language use to their purposes, including the
purpose of conveying their identity in ways that feel genuine.

Our job as English teachers is to teach students about language as it really works in the
world. This means teaching them that language is a gatekeeping tool used to exclude certain
kinds of people from positions of power. It also means teaching them that all languages are
valid, valuable and vivacious. We can teach our students to play the game of Standardized
English, at the same time that we challenge policy makers to deepen their knowledge of
Englishes. Understanding how language is used in political ways to shape (and perpetuate)
social hierarchies should be taught alongside the (various) rules of subject-verb agreement.
To return to the anecdote that began this essay, adopting “singular they” is not an
abandonment of principles, but a lesson in how language works. Discussing “singular they”
with students allows for understanding of how gendered language shapes our experience of
the world, as well as demonstrating important and ongoing processes of language change.

By taking an inquiry stance toward language, by opening up the meaning of language use
instead of focusing on one narrow form, we make space for our students to enter the English
classroom as powerful contributors to our collective language knowledge. In our current
political climate that sees renewed calls for nationalism, increased xenophobia and an emphasis
on overly simple solutions to complex problems, promoting a nuanced and accurate view of
language and identity is a hard sell. A clear-cut, restricted view of what counts as “correct”
language is a much easier way to approach English teaching. But it is short-sighted and
inaccurate. As the experts in our subject area, English teachers have a responsibility to acquire
precise linguistic knowledge based in facts, not romanticized myths. We have a responsibility
to hold up truths about language even when the political climate makes it unpopular. As
English teachers, we can use our content area to demonstrate that there are many ways to be
correct. Through the study of English dialects, we can demonstrate that when we pool our
knowledge we are better off than when we divide it. By taking a repertoire approach to
language knowledge, we model the power of a pluralistic society and take a stand against
xenophobia and other forms of prejudice. That’s a political act.

Note

1. I use the term Standardized English in place of Standard English to highlight that
standardization is an active social process, not an inherent characteristic of any particular variety
of English.

References
Alim, H.S. and Baugh, J. (2007), Talkin Black Talk: Language, Education, and Social Change, Teachers

College Press, New York, NY, available at: www.tcrecord.org/books/Abstract.asp?ContentId=
14525

Alim, H.S. and Smitherman, G. (2012), Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in
the US, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Alim, H.S., Rickford, J.R. and Ball, A.F. (Eds) (2016), Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas
about Race, 1st edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, NewYork, NY.

Appleman, D. (2015), Critical Encounters in Secondary English: Teaching Literary Theory to
Adolescents, Third Edition, Teachers College Press, NewYork, NY.

Ball, A.F., Martinez, R.A. and Skerrett, A. (2011), “Research on diverse students in culturally and
linguistically complex language arts classrooms”, in Lapp, D. and Fisher, D. (Eds), Handbook of
Research on Teaching the English Language Arts, Routledge, NewYork, NY, pp. 22-28.

ETPC
16,3

372

D
ow

nl
oa

de
d

by
D

oc
to

r M
ik

e
M

et
z

A
t 0

6:
43

0
5

D
ec

em
be

r 2
01

7
(P

http://www.tcrecord.org/books/Abstract.asp?ContentId=14525

Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K. (2004), “Language and identity”, A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology,
Vol. 1, pp. 369-394.

Canagarajah, A.S. (2006), “The place of world englishes in composition: pluralization continued”,
College Composition and Communication, Vol. 57 No. 4, pp. 586-619.

Canagarajah, A.S. (2017), “A competence for negotiating diversity and unpredictability in global
contact zones”, in Ikizoglu, D., Wegner, J. and Fina, A.D. (Eds), Diversity and Super-Diversity:
Sociocultural Linguistic Perspectives, Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC, pp. 65-79.

Charity Hudley, A.H. and Mallinson, C. (2010), Understanding English Language Variation in US
Schools, Teachers College Press, AmsterdamAvenue, New York, NY.

Chisholm, J.S. and Godley, A.J. (2011), “Learning about language through inquiry-based discussion
three Bidialectal High School students’ talk about dialect variation, identity, and power”, Journal
of Literacy Research, Vol. 43 No. 4, pp. 430-468, available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/
1086296X11424200

Cochran-Smith, M. (2010), “Toward a theory of teacher education for social justice”, in Lieberman, A.,
Hargreaves, A., Fullan, M. and Hopkins, D. (Eds), Second International Handbook of Educational
Change, Springer, New York, NY, pp. 445-467.

Curzan, A. (2014), Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.

Delpit, L. (1988), “The silenced dialogue: power and pedagogy in educating other people’s children”,
Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 58 No. 3, pp. 280-299. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.58.3.
c43481778r528qw4

Dunn, P.A. and Lindblom, K. (2011),Grammar Rants: How a Backstage Tour ofWriting Complaints Can
Help StudentsMake Informed, Savvy Choices about TheirWriting, Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH.

Eckert, P. (2000), Language Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity in
Belten High, Blackwell, Oxford, available at: www.lavoisier.fr/livre/notice.asp?ouvrage=1469663

Flores, N. and Rosa, J. (2015), “Undoing appropriateness: raciolinguistic ideologies and language
diversity in education”,Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 85 No. 2, pp. 149-171.

Godley, A.J. and Loretto, A. (2013), “Fostering counter-narratives of race, language, and identity in an
urban English classroom”, Linguistics and Education, available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
linged.2013.03.006

Hancock, C. and Kolln, M. (2010), “Blowin’in the wind: English grammar in United States schools”,
Beyond the Grammar Wars. A Resource for Teachers and Students on Developing Language
Knowledge in the English/Literacy Classroom, pp. 21-37.

Hartman, A. (2003), “Language as oppression: the English-only movement in the united states”,
Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 187-208, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/
08854300308428349

Hirsch, E.D. (1988), Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, 1st Vintage Books Ed.,
Vintage, NewYork, NY.

Kellner, D. (2017), “Spectacle of horror: Brexit plus, angry white people, and the national nightmare”,
American Horror Show, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, pp. 39-56, available at: https://doi.org/
10.1007/978-94-6300-974-4_4

Landt, S.M. (2006), “Multicultural literature and young adolescents: a kaleidoscope of opportunity”,
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Vol. 49 No. 8, pp. 690-697, available at: https://doi.org/
10.1598/JAAL.49.8.5

Lash, C.L. (2017), “Defining ‘American’ in the context of immigration: a case study of helping hands
elementary”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 40 No. 6, pp. 871-890, available at: https://doi.org/
10.1080/01419870.2016.1250933

Lippi-Green, R. (2012), English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United
States, 2nd ed., Routledge, New York, NY.

Decentering
Standard
English

373

D
ow

nl
oa

de
d

by
D

oc
to

r M
ik

e
M

et
z

A
t 0

6:
43

0
5

D
ec

em
be

r 2
01

7
(P

https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X11424200

https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.58.3.c43481778r528qw4

http://www.lavoisier.fr/livre/notice.asp?ouvrage=1469663

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2013.03.006

https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300308428349

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-974-4_4

https://doi.org/10.1598/JAAL.49.8.5

https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1250933

Locke, T. (Ed.) (2005), “Knowledge about language in the English/literacy classroom”, English
Teaching: Practice and Critique, Vol. 4 No. 3.

Locke, T. (Ed.) (2006), “Knowledge about language in the English/literacy classroom (part 2)”, English
Teaching: Practice and Critique, Vol. 5 No. 1.

McBee Orzulak, M.J. (2013), “Gatekeepers and guides: preparing future writing teachers to negotiate
standard language ideology”, Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education,
Vol. 2 No. 1, p. 5.

McWhorter, J. (2014), “The ‘ax’ versus ‘ask’ question”, Los Angeles Times, 19 January, available at:
http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/19/opinion/la-oe-mcwhorter-black-speech-ax-20140119

Mallinson, C. and Charity Hudley, A.H. (2013), We Do Language: English Language Variation in the
Secondary English Classroom (Multicultural Education Series), Teachers College Press,
AmsterdamAvenue, New York, NY.

Martin, B. (2003), “A writing assignment/a way of life”, The English Journal, Vol. 92 No. 6, pp. 52-56,
available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/3650535

Orellana, M., Lee, C. and Martínez, D. (2010), “More than just a hammer: building linguistic toolkits”,
Issues in Applied Linguistics, Vol. 18 No. 2.

Paris, D. (2011), Language across Difference: Ethnicity, Communication, and Youth Identities in
Changing Urban Schools, 1st ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York.

Provenzo, E.F. (2006), Critical Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, 1st ed., Routledge,
Boulder, CO.

Reaser, J., Adger, C.T., Wolfram, W. and Christian, D. (2017), Dialects at School: Educating Linguistically
Diverse Students, 1st ed., Routledge, New York, NY.

Reaser, J. andWolfram, W. (2007), Voices of North Carolina: Language and Life from the Atlantic to the
Appalachians, North Carolina Language and Life Project, Raleigh, NC.

Rickford, J.R. and Rickford, R.J. (2000), Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English, Wiley, New York, NY.
Rosa, J. (2017), “Locating and contesting raciolinguistic ideologies: from landuage “problems” to

“possibilities” in Latina/o communities”, in Rosa, J. (Chair), Do You Hear What I Hear?
Raciolinguistic Ideologies Across Educational Context, Symposium conduted at the Annual
Conference of the American Educational Research Association, San Antonio, TX.

Shaughnessy, M.P. (1979), Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing, Oxford
University Press, NewYork, NY.

Smith, M.W. andWilhelm, J. (2007), “Getting it right: fresh approaches to teaching grammar, usage, and
correctness”, Scholastic Teaching Resources (Theory an).

Wolfram, W. and Schilling, N. (2015), American English: Dialects and Variation, John Wiley & Sons,
New York, NY.

Wright, L. (Ed.) (2000), “The development of standard English”, Theories, Descriptions, Conflicts,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1300-1800.

Young, V.A., Barrett, R., Young-Rivera, Y. and Lovejoy, K.B. (2013), Other People’s English: Code-
Meshing, Code-Switching, and African American Literacy, Teachers College Press,
New York, NY.

Corresponding author
Mike Metz can be contacted at: metzml@missouri.edu

For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:
www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm
Or contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

ETPC
16,3

374

D
ow

nl
oa

de
d

by
D

oc
to

r M
ik

e
M

et
z

A
t 0

6:
43

0
5

D
ec

em
be

r 2
01

7
(P

View publication stats

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/19/opinion/la-oe-mcwhorter-black-speech-ax-20140119

https://doi.org/10.2307/3650535

mailto:metzml@missouri.edu

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320545438

What’s the point?

What do I teach?

What do I need to know?

What about the real world?

What about my ELs?

What about my white students?

What else?

References

71DOI: https://doi.org/10.37514/PRA-B.2020.0308.2.04

Chapter 4. Becoming a
Person Who Writes

Helen Collins Sitler
Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Reflect Before Reading
Think about your current or former students who struggle with writing. When a
student calls herself a “bad writer” or another says he “hates writing,” how do you
respond? What activities in your course allow students to build their confidence as
writers?

~ ~ ~

The Writing Marathon was always my favorite day in Basic Writing. Usually on
a portfolio turn-in day, a day when students’ energy would be low from working
to finish a major project, we left the classroom just to go somewhere new and
write. Students’ charge: Go with a couple classmates wherever you want. Take
your notebooks. Write about what you see, hear, smell, taste—coffeehouses and
fast food are often a part of a Writing Marathon. Let the place you’re in trigger
your writing. If anyone asks what you’re doing, you have to reply “We’re writers.
We’re writing.”

Before anyone left the room, we all rehearsed that line. Students had to repeat
loudly and with enthusiasm: “I am a writer!” Students giggled, then dutifully cho-
rused that sentence. Then off we went to write until time to return to the class-
room to tell the stories of the day’s writing and for each student to share at least a
small piece of what they had written. We rejoiced when sometimes students had
had the chance to announce “I am a writer!” to curious passersby.

Students generally enjoyed Writing Marathon days as much as I did, but I
doubt they took the “I am a writer!” routine seriously. It is serious, though, the
idea of considering oneself a writer. For students in Basic Writing it is an espe-
cially serious issue. So much of a student’s success in college depends on skill with
words, as does much of a person’s success in a career. And here they were in Basic
Writing, marked in their first semester of college as individuals whose words were
somehow inadequate. It raises questions: Can a Basic Writing student become
someone who says and believes that “I am a writer”?

Writing is tied to identity. Numerous composition scholars speak to this, ar-
ticulating that students’ taking on a writer’s identity is an essential part of any
composition course. Tom Romano argues that adolescents and college students

https://doi.org/10.37514/PRA-B.2020.0308.2.04

72 Sitler

need “to have opportunities to create their identities on the page” (175). Roz
Ivanič argues for the teaching of writing to be focused above all else on “helping
students to take an identity as a person who writes” (85). Taking this idea one step
further, Robert Brooke insists that successful teaching of a composition course
is marked by students’ “com[ing] to see that being a writer in their own way is a
valid and exciting way of acting in the world” (40).

James Paul Gee discusses the identity-building process in terms of adopting
a discourse: “Think of discourse as an ‘identity kit’ which comes complete with
the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act and talk so as to take
on a particular role that others will recognize” (51). The role of someone who
writes would entail ways of talking about writing and the ability to think of
oneself as having something to say. This identity, however, would be just one
of many. Both Gee and Ivanič discuss the multiple identities any individual si-
multaneously maintains (Gee 56; Ivanič 11). Take, for example, Frankie, whom
readers will meet in these pages. She arrived in Basic Writing with multiple
identities that she made apparent in class and surely had others in addition.
Her classmates and I knew that she was a business major, that she had been a
student government leader in her high school, and that she was a multi-sport
athlete. Each of these roles in her life demanded its own discourse, its own
identity kit.

My course would challenge Frankie to add another identity, that of a person
who writes. Given her life history including multiple identity kits already, add-
ing this new one could create some clashes. Ivanič recognizes that taking on a
writerly identity is a potentially tension-filled process (65). Further, Frankie and
her peers were entering the world of higher education which would, according
to Ivanič, “require [them] to extend their repertoire of literacy practices: to build
and adapt existing ones and to engage in new ones” (70).

What conflicts of experience and expectation would emerge? Could being a
writer sit comfortably beside being a new college student, a business major, an
athlete? And so, I return to this question: Can a Basic Writing student become
someone who says and believes that “I am a writer”?

Two Basic Writing students, Spike and Frankie, show that this process can
occur. Both were part of an IRB-approved study of literacy development. Par-
ticipants were volunteers who had taken my own Basic Writing classes during a
four-year period designated for the study. Data used here come from students’
final exams and other papers they provided and from interviews conducted by
my colleague Dr. Gloria Park and her graduate assistant, Ravyn McKee.

Spike and Frankie were among nine study participants. At the time my former
students were invited to participate, they were the only two who were seniors,
thus the two with the most experience to share. Their experiences with Basic
Writing, with writing in courses for their majors, and their planning for jobs after
graduation provide an interesting picture of coming to consider oneself a writer
during and after their first college composition course.

Becoming a Person Who Writes 73

Spike and Frankie: Literacy Experiences
before Basic Writing

Spike arrived at college with his criminology major firmly in mind. During his in-
terview, he said: “It was probably around fourth grade. . . . One of my good friends
that I went to elementary school with . . . his dad was a state trooper, and I always
went over to his house and communicated with him on a regular basis and it kin-
da influenced me to want to grow up and be a state trooper.” Spike’s older sister
was the first in the family to hold a bachelor’s degree; Spike would be the second.

Graduating in a class of 150, Spike described reading and writing as some-
thing he needed to do for school. He was diligent, but not enthused: “I always did
my schoolwork and I always kept up with readings. If I had a paper, I . . . complet-
ed the paper, but I never went above and beyond schoolwork to satisfy a reading
habit or anything like that.” His writing experiences in school had consisted of
reflections on readings for English classes, daily writes (which he did not further
explain, but which I take to be short journal entries or responses to readings),
and his senior paper, about the charity golf event he had helped to organize. Essay
writing adhered to “the five-paragraph stance,” meaning “the fundamental intro-
duction, body, and conclusion.” When asked about more writing in his classes,
Spike responded that “I was never able to participate” in “classes that were for
higher up students, above the normal average student.” In other words, he had
not taken advanced or AP courses.

While he knew his writing skills were not especially strong—“I was a pretty
weak writer before coming to college”—his placement into Basic Writing was
“kinda like a bummer feeling . . . it’s not good.” However, Spike’s high school
habits of diligence and persistence—“I always did my schoolwork”—carried him
through the new learning curve.

Frankie arrived in college with 15 credits she had earned through joint high
school/college credit classes offered through her high school. None of those
courses, however, must have been in English, as she completed all of my uni-
versity’s required English courses. Like Spike, she had already decided on her
major: business. After a few courses, she refined that major to human resources
management. Interestingly, college was not her original plan: “I didn’t want to
come to college; I didn’t want to at all. I wanted to join the military.” Her parents’
fears about, at that time, an active war in Afghanistan changed her mind. Their
agreement was that if Frankie finished college and then still wanted to join the
military, they would not object. At the point of her interview, one summer course
away from graduating, she was no longer planning military enlistment. Frankie’s
older sister had already graduated college. Her parents’ college experience is un-
clear; but her father owned his own business and her mother worked part-time
while Frankie and her sister were growing up.

Frankie described her literacy background with positives and negatives. “I
love to read.” Her extensive reading, in fact, created barriers for her writing. “I

74 Sitler

strongly disliked writing. . . . I think I had read so much and so many types of
things, I couldn’t make my writing sound like something I would want to read. So
like why do it?” Her placement in Basic Writing was not a great surprise to her:
“I’ve never been a good test taker and when we did placement testing I probably
just didn’t do very well.” Her high school experience, even with all those college
credits, prepared her for college-level writing in limited ways. “In high school we
didn’t write a lot. . . . We only wrote two papers my entire high school career.” For
these two papers, the possibilities seem to have been minimal. When asked how
she knew what to write, she said, “Normally, I was answering . . . a writing prompt
or something like that. We had specific things we have to have in papers.” The key
guideline was the standard five-paragraph theme: “Most of our writing base was
based on what you had to know for PSSAs [the Pennsylvania Department of Ed-
ucation mandated testing] to write those essays, like, brainstorm first, like have an
introductory paragraph and something and filler stuff in middle and conclusion.”

Despite limited writing experience in high school, Frankie flourished in Basic
Writing. Her work was so strong that near the end of the semester I approached
her about submitting a portfolio to ask for exemption from College Writing, an
option my department allowed. Frankie did submit a portfolio and was approved
for exemption, her work in Basic Writing considered equivalent to what any
student completing College Writing would have been able to produce. Frankie’s
high expectations for herself allowed her to blossom when given assignments she
could dig into and tools for making her writing sound like something she and
others would want to read.

The Basic Writing Course as Spike
and Frankie Experienced It

“I have to give you a little background because you won’t understand if I don’t
give it to you,” Frankie said, in discussing her narrative essay with her interviewer.
In that spirit, we will leave Spike and Frankie for a short time and look at the Basic
Writing course they experienced. This course design is reflected in the writing
that Spike and Frankie did and in their development of identities as writers.

During the semesters when Spike and Frankie were in my courses, students
completed three formal writing assignments. Each assignment was submitted as
a portfolio; a reflection on writing decisions made from drafts to final copy was
part of each portfolio. Embedded within the three major assignments were nu-
merous smaller ones, what Frankie called “annoying little exercises.” We used a
writing workshop model. Students did a lot of writing in class; I used that time
to provide individual feedback through conferences. I wrote scant notes on pa-
pers. Most teacher feedback came through conversation. Feedback also came from
peers; writing groups, in which talk also superseded writing on papers, met at least
twice for each paper. Mentor texts, i.e., writing that offers models for writing tech-

Becoming a Person Who Writes 75

niques that students themselves might adopt, were an important course element.
The assignment sequence worked as a spiral. Each new assignment built on skills
practiced and honed in the previous assignment. New learning was layered in; stu-
dents could always circle back to writing techniques they had already rehearsed.

The course design reflects elements that others in this collection have advo-
cated for. Jo-Anne Kerr speaks to the development of a discourse important for
transferring writerly habits to future contexts: reading in a writerly way, feedback
from readers, moving beyond one format for writing. Kara Taczak, Liane Rob-
ertson, and Kathleen Blake Yancey show that deliberate reflection on one’s work
and active uptake of language to describe it are essential for transfer. All of these
features were part of the course that Spike and Frankie experienced.

Table 4.1 presents the major assignments for the course, accompanying in-
class exercises, and the mentor texts that Spike and Frankie reference.

As is apparent in biographical information for both Spike and Frankie, each
entered his/her first university semester with limited writing experience. They re-
semble the students that Mina Shaughnessy, the first composition scholar whose
work was dedicated to basic writing, described as “have been writing infrequent-
ly” and “in such artificial and strained situations that the communicative pur-
pose of writing has rarely if ever seemed real” (14). Today’s testing culture in K-12
schools has, for many students, reduced writing to a formula in order to earn an
acceptable test score. Ritter, in this collection, testifies to the pervasiveness of this
practice. Thus, it is not surprising that university placement testing might reveal
a limited writing repertoire among some incoming students if they do not engage
in self-sponsored writing and if their writing for school has primarily focused on
test preparation. Ivanič notes that “writers bring to any act of writing the literacy
practices into which they have been acculturated through their past experience”
(184). Test prep is the writing practice many high school students have become
accustomed to. This had been the experience of both Spike and Frankie.

However, over many years of teaching Basic Writing, I have found that stu-
dents assigned to my classes are capable, competent learners. Inexperience with
writing is the issue, not capability. Given opportunities to write and to craft their
writing, inexperienced student writers can accomplish things that surprise them.

Spike: Breaking Away from the Five-Paragraph Theme
When interviewed, Spike said, “I was expecting to come in[to his first writing
course in college] with my basic writing skills as the five-paragraph essay as that’s
how you write.” Lorna Collier addresses this kind of mismatch between what high
school seniors think college writing will be about and what actually occurs, noting
that students “expect to do writing rather than engage in writing, both as a way of
thinking and as a way of demonstrating knowledge” (11). Very quickly, Spike real-
ized that writing would not be simply filling in a formula: “My professor she kinda
told me that’s [the five-paragraph theme] not the way to go about the papers.”

76 Sitler

Table 4.1. Assignment sequence

First third of
semester

Second third of
semester

Final third of
semester

End of semester

Assignment: Narrative Researched Essay Radical Revision Final Exam
In-class
exercises:

-quick writes
-guided imagery

-collaborative
topic development
-quick write
prompts
-color coding to
balance research,
personal writing
-bookless draft
-Post-it organiz-
ing and thesis

-write from a
new point of
view
-found poem
-rework previous
writing

Skills
learned:

-1st person
-narrow focus
-strong lead
-develop evi-
dence: anecdote,
description
-dialogue
-organize for
readability,
interest
-variations in
paragraph length
-aware of audi-
ence
-revise
-monitor pat-
terns of error

-research question
-find sources
-gain content
expertise
-develop evi-
dence: sources
-recognize multi-
ple views
-integrate others’
words
-strong topic
sentences
-organize for
reader needs
-transitions
-transition
markers
-monitor pat-
terns of error

-re-envision
topic
-global revision
-try out new
form
-provide reader
adequate infor-
mation
-maintain reader
interest

-provide evi-
dence of learning
-identify practic-
es, behaviors that
helped during
semester
-identify how
to reproduce
practices and be-
haviors in future
courses

Techniques
that carry
over from
previous
assignment:

-new view of
topic
-strong lead
-nonlinear orga-
nization
-anecdote, de-
scription
-dialogue
-1st person
-variations in
paragraph length

-any skills from
previous papers
-writing or proj-
ects outside the
course

Becoming a Person Who Writes 77

The mentor texts the class read and discussed played a significant role in
showing him new possibilities. “We started off by reading various stories . . . and
we picked out the similar techniques they were using. . . . We were going to be
able to try these techniques in our own writings.” While this shift felt somewhat
uncomfortable to Spike, like learning “there’s actually another way to tie your
shoe,” he did what he had always done in high school. He relied on his sense
of responsibility to do the assignments. By the time he submitted his narrative
portfolio, the first assignment of the semester, he was recognizing the benefits of
trying out some new writing techniques.

One new technique that Spike used to his advantage was writing dialogue.
In his final exam, in answer to a question about which mentor authors influ-
enced him, he named Jimmy Baca: “Baca gave me the idea to use dialog” for “not
just the words coming out of the characters [sic] mouth but the feeling being
expressed as well.” Dialogue comprises much of his narrative and does, in fact,
move the action forward more effectively than his expository sections. In the fol-
lowing segment he has found a credit card that someone has dropped in a busy
convenience store/gas station; as he ponders what to do with the card, he notices
the car parked beside his:

The man was saying, “I do not know where it went. I had it in
my hand and I went up to pay and it was gone.” I walked over
to the man.

“Did you lose something?”

The man turned around and his face was as read [sic] as a toma-
to. He looked like he was about to hit someone.

“Yeah, I had it and now it is gone.”

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“I lost my credit card. I don’t have any money on me. Some
punk ass kid probably has it now and is running my bill sky
high!” stated the man.

The dialogue continues until Spike establishes that the credit card he found
and is still holding onto belongs to this upset man. He hands the man the card.

Spike also worked to make his speakers’ language more realistic, the way
talking actually sounds. From draft to final copy, shopping becomes shoppin’. You
cannot trust anyone anymore becomes You can’t trust no one anymore. These are
tiny shifts, but they reflect a writer who has begun to understand that writers craft
their work and that he, too, can craft his writing. This is a far cry from simply
filling in a five-paragraph template.

Spike also tested out Baca’s single-sentence paragraphs. The following is a
short excerpt in which he attempts to draw attention to important lines by creat-

78 Sitler

ing them as stand-alone paragraphs. The action occurs at a local mall where Spike
has gone with his friend, Nick. Nick is the first speaker:

“Yeah I will go along.” As I looked into his eyes I could tell that
what he was really thinking was no way, not after what we just
went through in Pac Sun.

We walked over to Lids.

After purchasing a hat, we were done shopping at the mall.
Therefore, I asked Nick if he wanted to go get something to eat
before we headed [home]. With a firm yes to my question, we
then began to decide on a place to eat.

We went to the Ponderosa Steak House.

Spike’s use of the single-sentence paragraph is not particularly successful. Ba-
ca’s single-sentence paragraphs convey vital information. Spike just uses them
to shift scenes. Still the attempt again shows a writer’s willingness to experiment
with something new.

Spike’s final foray into new techniques in his narrative is something we de-
cided to call sidetracking. We used the term to describe a digression he added
in order to stretch and slow down time within the action of the piece. It serves
the additional purpose of addressing a common issue with basic writers, lack
of elaboration of ideas (Shaughnessy 227-32). In his cover letter, Spike identified
sidetracking as a risk he took in the writing. It looked like this:

On my way into the store, I looked down and I saw a credit card
lying between the two automatic doors.

“Should I keep it? How would I feel if this happened to me?” These
questions raced through my head.

I was brought up by my mom and my dad. We live on the out-
skirts of town and I have been there for as long as I can remem-
ber. My dad, abandoned by his true father, is self-employed. He
does concrete work, brick masonry, and his favorite, stone ma-
sonry. My mom, on the other hand, works in an office for [name
of her workplace]. I was raised with the idea that stealing was
not acceptable. If an item was free and I wanted it my dad would
push me to ask if it would be alright if I had it. If I would take
something without asking and my dad would find out he made
me take it back to where I got it and ask if it was alright to have
it. Stealing, in my dad’s eyes, is for two types of people, people
who are too lazy to get a job and those who are too lazy to pay.

I finished my business and walked out to my car.

Becoming a Person Who Writes 79

From here the essay continues with the dialogue about the upset man in the
car nearby.

Nested between internal dialogue, marked by the italic font, and the actual
dialogue noted earlier, the sidetrack, as noted by Spike in his portfolio reflection
“really worked.” I agree. It added some depth to his paper, adding a deep motiva-
tion for returning the credit card to the man who had lost it. Spike wrote, “I have
seen this technique before, but I have never really given it the thought to add it
in one of my own writings. This most definitely changed the way I usually write.”

Unfortunately, Spike did not provide his researched essay or his radical revi-
sion for this study. His final exam, however, provides an excerpt and some com-
mentary from the researched essay.

Spike identifies Deborah Tannen, writer of a mentor text for this assignment,
as key to the progress of his researched piece. True to the creative nonfiction
mentor texts we used, like Tannen’s, Spike “learned how to incorporate my own
story into a research paper.” The following excerpt shows how he did this:

Criminals of identity theft are very seldom caught. . . . However
the government has passed a law in 2004. . . . The government
has also added the Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act, this
Act states “IN GENERAL.—Whoever, during and in relation to
any felony violation . . . imprisonment of 5 years.”

When I walked out of the gas station, and the credit card was
still in my hand, I walked over to my car. . . . I asked him a few
brief questions about the card in my possession and I handed
the card over to the young man.

While the transition between researched and personal text is bumpy, Spike
has again been willing to try something new. With growing audience awareness,
he articulates why he has done this: “Instead of using strictly information this
technique allowed me to add a personally [sic] experience that relates to the topic
to make it sound more real.”

He attributed this awareness of how a writer might mix research and per-
sonal information to a color-coding exercise (based on ideas drawn from Harry
Noden’s Image Grammar) that we did with the Tannen essay. After using a high-
lighter, each of a different color, to mark 1) exposition; 2) narration/description;
3) quotation (quotes from sources as well as use of dialogue), students discovered
that Tannen’s integration of multiple writing techniques made the research she
presented highly readable. Students then color-coded their own drafts, evaluated
what the colors revealed to them, and revised accordingly.

Where do these examples of Spike’s writing lead us? In what ways do they
demonstrate his developing an identity as a writer? As noted earlier, taking on
this identity means acting and talking like a writer.

As a writer new to the college classroom, Spike’s incoming assumptions about

80 Sitler

writing, particularly about one-size-fits-all writing, were challenged. He respond-
ed by trying new techniques. He developed vocabulary for articulating what he
was doing and why he was making particular writerly choices. Perhaps the best
example is his noting that he had seen writers do sidetracking before but never
considered doing it himself. Now he was doing it. His final exam includes these
lines, indicative of someone who has taken on some aspects of being a writer.
Basic Writing, he writes, has “busted [boosted] my confidence to be able to write
with integrity for my future writing courses.” Later in the same document he
notes, “I am no longer afraid to try new things in my writing.” He was no longer
filling in a predetermined template. He was crafting his writing with a reader in
mind. In baby steps, his thinking about “I am a writer” was emerging.

Frankie: Shifting an Attitude About Writing
Frankie arrived in Basic Writing having “dreaded everything I ever had to write.”
Her strong reading background and high school/college courses gave her an ad-
vantage. Her attitude about writing, however, was a challenge to her progress.
Frankie needed to be convinced that she had some skill and that every writing
experience was not dreadful.

In his study of basic writers, Josh Lederman found that teacher expectations
played a key role in student performance: “The two clear success stories [stu-
dents] in this study . . . both had teachers who truly believed in them, and in some
deep ways, these teachers helped the students believe in themselves too” (199).
Lederman’s finding echoes other research on the effects of teacher expectations
on student performance. Susan McLeod cautions that a teacher’s negative expec-
tations are particularly powerful; however, she also confirms that positive teacher
expectations can lead to improved student performance (108-09). While Spike’s
writing improved mostly through adopting new techniques from mentor texts,
Frankie’s writing improved more in response to topic choice, in-class exercises,
and supportive reader feedback.

Frankie’s first paper, her narrative, focused on a school consolidation that oc-
curred during her senior year. Two high schools in her district were merged into
one. She was from the smaller school that closed. She worked her way through
this self-selected topic, one she cared about, as if she were constructing an intri-
cate jigsaw puzzle. Her writing moves were sophisticated and intentional.

Her early draft began this way:

Senior year of high school, the year to remember, the year where
you rule the school, the year you have waited for your entire life.
The year for me that was turned upside down. . . . I went from
a senior class of forty-six to a senior class of one hundred thir-
ty-seven of which I knew no one but my original classmates.

She wrote of bullying, name-calling, eating lunch surrounded by strangers. Mid-

Becoming a Person Who Writes 81

way through the essay she briefly mentioned her Spanish teacher, Mrs. S., who
had moved with the students to the larger high school:

I had her for eighth period everyday for Spanish IV. The end of
the day which I had with eight other kids that I had been with
since freshman year. Some days that class took years to get to,
those seven periods before it were the longest ever experienced
until I finally got to what I was used to, until I finally was famil-
iar with everything around me.

Then she moved on to describe how “I wanted to be the one to change things; I
wanted to make new friends, I wanted to say I was the first consolidated class and
I benefited from it.”

That first draft provided much information but not much focus. The essay
was moving in two opposing directions: 1) I’m an outsider; 2) I want to change
things. Each idea was functioning without connection to the other. We confer-
enced about this, and Frankie understood the disconnect but puzzled over how
to resolve it.

Before students submitted their second draft, we did one of those “annoying
little exercises,” an extended guided imagery prompt. Students made a quick list of
snapshot moments, i.e., vivid individual scenes from the writing they were draft-
ing. Then they selected one scene and responded to a series of sensory prompts,
as if they were playing a movie in their minds: What did you hear? What did you
see? What was the temperature?, etc.

Frankie’s completed guided imagery described Mrs. S: “never be one to need
a microphone,” “always wore a skirt,” “hair never out of place.” It described her
classroom: “vocab posters, the Spanish alphabet pictures of her and students from
years past . . . maracas . . . spectacular bulletin boards. You could learn just from
being in her room.” This short piece was filled with detail about how important
this teacher and her classroom were to Frankie.

Through this in-class exercise, Frankie’s focal point emerged—her beloved
Spanish teacher. In her portfolio reflective cover letter, Frankie wrote that com-
pleting the guided imagery was significant for her writing “because after doing
this exercise I realized what the main focus of my paper should be as well as what
direction from that point on my paper needed to head. . . . It made my paper go
from several separate pieces to one flowing work of writing.” She wanted to “focus
more on my ‘safe haven’ . . . and not so much on the negative.” That safe haven was
her Spanish teacher’s classroom.

The final copy of her essay began with some text that had been midway
through her earlier draft, a nod to Mrs. S, and added new material:

Some days that class took years to get to, those seven periods
before it were the longest ever experienced until I got what I
was used to, until I finally was familiar with everything around

82 Sitler

me. Walking into that classroom seeing Mrs. S’s familiar face
and all those familiar students around me, learning like I had
been learning for the last three years was in a sense for me like
going home.

The new draft and later the final copy included pages about Mrs. S., her meth-
ods of teaching, and her ability to personally connect with students. In thinking
about this teacher, Frankie also found the rhetorical link she needed in order to
connect being an outsider with wanting to change that status. This sentence from
her second draft bridged the competing ideas: “I wanted to change things, and
when I began to try it started right back there in Spanish IV, with Ms. S. leading
the way.” It was Mrs. S’ response to consolidation, Mrs. S’ “courageous lead,” that
pushed Frankie to ask “students sitting alone in the cafeteria to come and eat
with my friends and me. On the volleyball team we made a point to have one
team-bonding event a week. I quickly made new friends ‘from the other side.’”

In Frankie’s jigsaw of revision, each draft rearranged or layered in new infor-
mation. In her interview, Frankie described herself as being “really big on organi-
zation.” In high school, she had been an honor student while on multiple sports
teams and active in student government. In college, she was “involved in like 4-5
organizations” while carrying 18 credits. “I’ve always like had a lot on my plate.”
Her approach to revising her paper was the same as her general approach to life:
How do all these pieces fit together? How can I manage them so they all make
sense? For her paper, she “needed to decide what direction it needed to take . . .
Mrs. S. or Consolidation. I chose Mrs. S.” This decision allowed Frankie to “focus
. . . on her as a person and what she did for me during the consolidation.” With
this as her goal, Frankie found ways for the parts of her essay to intersect, rather
than cast parts off. In Frankie’s words, the paper “was a lot different than what I
planned on as my original topic,” which had been a much more negative report-
ing on the consolidation.

One thing she was willing to cast off was the five-paragraph format she was fa-
miliar with. Brief nods to it appear in individual sentences in drafts. For instance,
in one late draft, this appeared: “She has high standards, an amazing story and the
drive to make you a better human being.” In no cases, though, did she follow up
by addressing each of the items in the sequence. Mentor texts appear to have had
minimal effect. The one noticeable technique that was borrowed from the course
readings appeared in her final copy of the paper. It came from Annie Dillard, an
extra-large space between paragraphs at a place where the topic shifts. Frankie
did this only once in her four-page essay.

Frankie’s portfolio cover letter for her narrative spoke to the attitude noted at
the beginning: “Something I have learned about myself as a writer would be that
I can write. . . . I was dreading this project but with much surprise it came easily
to me. I felt confident reading my work to my writing group and to you [the in-
structor]. . . . I liked what I was doing.”

Becoming a Person Who Writes 83

Frankie’s researched essay, her second assignment of the semester, focused
on another topic of great personal significance, the experiences of her sister and
her mother with skin cancer. It mattered to Frankie that in Basic Writing she was
asked “to write about something that we were passionate about.” “She [instruc-
tor] didn’t give us a prompt I didn’t care about and was like blah blah blah write
something on this. It was like whatever we wanted to write about so that really
helped.” The topic for this second piece had actually emerged many weeks before
she began the paper. It had been on the list of snapshot moments she had gener-
ated for the guided composing exercise.

The creative nonfiction approach we used to writing this essay allowed Frankie
to personalize the writing. She bookended two researched pages with the story of
her mother and sister. In her portfolio reflection she noted that now she is “able to
more comfortably write. Not every sentence is a struggle. Also I feel much more
confident as a writer.” She was no longer writing “because I had to for a grade.”

As with the narrative, Frankie identified an in-class exercise as most helpful
for her writing. Before their second draft, students used Post-it notes, one idea
per note, to list key points they wanted to make in their essays. Then, in one
sentence, they were to write their “So what?”—what is it that you want a reader
to understand when they finish your essay? Finally, they arranged the Post-its in
the order in which they thought they needed to write; thus, they left class with an
outline for a revised draft. Frankie’s Post-it page included seven notes, arranged
in this order:

-Does artificial tanning cause skin cancer

-Mom and Angela having skin cancer

-Why they got it

-The real truth from studies

-Vitamin D

-How it affected Angela

-Would tan again?

Frankie noted that this exercise was significant because “I knew . . . where I
wanted my paper to go and what things I was going to make my most important
points. It also made me realize that I was going to need at least two more topics to
meet the length requirement for this paper.”

Indeed, she adjusted her text in her final copy. She had had some trouble with
a researched section about Vitamin D. The writing was awkward and didn’t fit
well with surrounding text. For the final copy, she abandoned that information.
Then she added segments on additional causes of skin cancer—beyond tanning
beds, the specific focus of this writing—and on advancements in knowledge of
how to treat skin cancer.

84 Sitler

Her portfolio cover letter indicated that Frankie understood what she was
executing well in this writing: “the detail I use to explain things” and “putting
feeling into my paper.” The detail she mentions arose from two factors: her abil-
ity as a researcher and her ability to make that research readable. Frankie was
a skilled researcher, something she must have been taught in high school. Her
bibliography included recent issues of Gerontology, British Journal of Dermatolo-
gy, and Dermatologic Therapy along with several consumer editions of the more
readable Health Source. She made this heavy material readable while carefully ac-
knowledging each source and prepping readers with strong topic sentences. One
paragraph shows how she included research throughout the essay:

Multiple tanning regulars would argue that some people just get
skin cancer. They would say it is not caused specifically from
tanning. That is only because it never happened to them. Denise
K. Woo and Melody J. Eide from the Department of Dermatol-
ogy and Biostatistics Research Epidemiology, out of The Henry
Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan would disagree. Their most
recent study provides the most extensive evidence to date of the
risk of melanoma associated with tanning beds. They recom-
mend discouraging teenagers from using tanning beds and oth-
er tanning equipment.

We had talked about strong topic sentences, looking at Tannen’s essay and
some student essays as models. Frankie understood quickly how to manage her
topic sentences. We also talked about selecting credible sources and about ac-
knowledging them. Her scientific articles generally included multiple authors.
She was unhappy with the lengthy, sometimes awkward method of naming them,
but diligently did so. In later years, with her permission, I used her paper as a
mentor text to help newer writers understand how they, too, could acknowledge
the resources they had tapped.

Frankie’s final paper for the semester was her radical revision. Toby Fulwiler’s
essay “A Lesson in Revision” provides the basis for this assignment. It asks stu-
dents to play with form and language. Shaughnessy identifies absence of “play”
with ideas as an issue with basic writers (236). I, too, find that my students have
rarely been invited to play with language in the ways the radical revision asks of
them. The assignment requires students to rethink an earlier completed essay by
radically changing its form, its purpose, or its audience.

Frankie returned to her tanning bed essay for this project. She revised the re-
searched essay into a children’s story in two forms: a printed and bound copy and
the Power Point presentation she had done in order to create the printed pages of
the bound copy. Slides were illustrated with colorful clip art drawings. Text from
the first three slides gives a feel for how her children’s story proceeded:

Slide 1: One day my Mommy my big sister and I all went to the

Becoming a Person Who Writes 85

doctor. Mommy told me it wasn’t the doctor for when you’re
sick. It was the doctor for your skin. She said he was called a
Dermatologist.

Slide 2: The doctor ran lots and lots of tests on my Mommy.
Then he ran lots and lots more tests on my sister. The doctor
was really nice and told me I could ask as many questions as I
wanted.

Slide 3: After waiting for forever the doctor came out to see us.
He told us that there was something wrong with my Mommy’s
back and something really wrong with the back of my Sister’s
leg.

Frankie noted in her portfolio reflection that in order to make her radical
revision effective, “I needed to keep [different elements of the essay] in order
and keep the detail in them, but still take out a lot of my writing”; this time the
illustrations would carry meaning as well. Her awareness of her audience was a
key factor in this decision; children’s books need “an easier reading level.” She
was also purposeful in her decision about why to revise this essay in this way:
“I think this [skin cancer] is something kids should be educated about even at
a young age.” She was so determined to assure that her writing reached her in-
tended audience that “I tried it out on a first grader and he paid attention the
whole time.”

As with Spike, readers might now ask what this shows us about Frankie’s
development of an identity as a writer. Like Spike, Frankie easily adopted the
discourse of a writer. She was able to articulate what she changed from draft to
final copy and, more important, why she made those changes. Primary to those
changes was Frankie’s knowing she needed to focus her writing for a particular
audience. This, in turn, gave her writing purpose; it was not just for a grade. Also,
like Spike, she distanced herself from formula writing, opting instead to craft
writing to her own purposes.

In the cover letter for her portfolio asking for exemption from College Writ-
ing, she wrote this: “After learning multiple writing techniques I know so much
more and am able to more comfortably write. I feel that what I produce is worth
reading.” Her key reason for dreading writing had disappeared. A surprise sur-
faced in her interview. When asked if she had any advice for incoming first-year
students, she said, “You’re not gonna get better [as a writer] unless you’re writing.
After I took [Basic Writing], I had a journal that I wrote in religiously every single
night no matter what until about last winter break. I didn’t do that before.” Some-
times the journal recorded events of the day, sometimes personal things. Still, this
student who had dreaded any kind of writing began and continued self-sponsored
writing for several years after her first college composition course. She had not
only adopted the discourse of a writer; she was, as writers do, regularly writing.

86 Sitler

We know that students’ progress in writing is idiosyncratic; thus, course de-
sign needs to reach students in multiple ways. Mentor texts and the in-class ex-
ercises we did mattered in general to writers in my classes, but Spike and Frankie
show how that work mattered differently to each. Conversations with them about
their writing were important. The course focus on process, including draft after
draft and supported challenges to try new things, was important. Spike noted in
his narrative portfolio reflection that “no copy that u [sic] make is your final copy.
. . . A paper is always a work in progress.” Three years later in his interview, he
maintained that process still mattered: “I feel that even for a final draft I feel that
there is always something that you can add or change and just you can always take
a different view on a paper.” All of this leads me to conclude that course design
needs to be deliberate. Nothing can happen by accident.

Composition courses are often thought of as service courses. The question be-
comes this: Service to whom? To the institution and its various constituents? To the
student? To both? In her work on identity and writing, Ivanič references Lev Vy-
gotsky’s and Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of the social and dialogic nature of learning
and of language use. Ivanič points to the necessity of teaching writing as a social act,
through authentic tasks in which writers have a sense of purpose and of audience
(339). She argues that in order for students to take on an identity of someone who
writes, tasks, assignments, and outcomes need first to serve the writer (338-39).

In her discussion of teaching English language learners, Gloria Park argues for
“the importance of writing in constructing identity,” (336) in and outside of aca-
demic settings, and raises another issue about teaching writing as well, the need
for student writers to benefit in personal ways from their experiences in writing
courses. She outlines how she accomplished this in a course. One course goal was
“to remind my students as well as myself of how academic writing was, and could
be, seen as a form of writing to understand the world around us and not just as
a conduit to mastering the linguistic code of the US educational context” (338).
While my Basic Writers were not English language learners, I subscribe to the
same philosophy as Park. Students should not write only traditional academic
prose in Basic Writing. It is just as effective to expand writing opportunities so
that students can discover themselves as people who can write and who can, in
addition, write in an academic setting.

Of course, these students-becoming-writers who have had opportunities to
write about subjects that matter to them in ways that challenge and stretch them
leave our classrooms where their writing has been nurtured. They move into
courses where we can only hope they will continue the habits and behaviors they
have developed in our classes. What happens to them as writers outside the con-
fines of a carefully crafted writing setting?

Spike and Frankie: Writing in Future Careers
Helping our students to apply ways of thinking used by the professionals they

Becoming a Person Who Writes 87

will become needs to be a goal of all writing instruction (Taczak, Robertson, and
Yancey, this collection). Indeed, Spike and Frankie found some footing with a
writing identity in Basic Writing and, as their college experiences continued,
grew that identity into a more professional view of themselves as writers.

Spike majored in criminology, intending even from his first college semester,
to become a state trooper. His major required him to write frequently, for in-
stance “look[ing] at a report of a crime or a study” then writing a personal reflec-
tion or applying criminological theories. By the “beginning of junior year,” Spike
was recognizing “how powerful writing can be and how important it is in current
and future society.” By that time, he had written papers for various classes, in-
cluding one about racial overtones in laws guiding sentencing for cocaine users.
He recognized that someone had written those laws and that, indeed, words had
life-altering effects. He recognized, too, that his own words on the job would
matter, especially in offering a point of view: “If I’m working with a fellow officer
and he’s on the same crime or something . . . and he says something but I believe
another, I . . . want my part to be heard. I don’t want the judge to go solely off his
[the other officer’s] things.”

Spike expected that his future writing would be comprised largely of accident
reports and investigation reports, “like first-hand accounts.” He was aware of the
weight his own words would carry: “If an arrest happens and you’re there, you’re
a first-hand account, and it’s important because that’s what judges are gonna read
. . . [in order to decide] if he’s guilty or not guilty.” Essentially, Spike will spend
much of his career writing detail-filled narratives so that authorities beyond him-
self can make appropriate decisions. As a senior, Spike no longer spoke about
trying new things in his writing. He spoke of writing not as a separate thing he
would do but as an element at the very heart of his professional life. His words
would have the heft of affecting individuals’ futures.

Frankie, a human resources management major, had also expanded her
identity as a writer. When asked how important writing was in her life, she an-
swered, “Way more important than I thought it would be. I do a ton of writing.”
As with Spike, Frankie’s major required significant writing. Her management
courses demanded that she write case studies and short essays of two to five
pages.

Her future in human resources management, she said, would involve writ-
ing emails, memos, letters related to hiring and firing, and reports. The sense of
audience Frankie had expressed in Basic Writing three years earlier was further
honed. She recognized that her written words needed to be succinct and mean-
ingful if she wanted employees to read them. It was her job as writer, not the
employees’, to assure that messages were read: “If I’m writing an email or memo
. . . if you make the first five or six lines about stupid things that don’t matter . . .
they’ll stop reading.”

Five to ten years in her future, Frankie expected to continue her workplace
writing. By that time, she hoped to have expanded her audience, saying she want-

88 Sitler

ed to be “comfortable with writing things that people higher up in the organiza-
tion would be okay with reading, okay with presenting to executives. . . . I never
want my writing to just stick with emails.” The first-semester student who dread-
ed any writing foresaw a future in which her words would be “worthwhile, like
making a difference.”

Closing Thoughts
James Paul Gee (in this collection) argues that FYC, if it is to be continued at all,
must attend to students’ subject positions and social engagement with literacy
in the world beyond academic disciplines and certainly beyond the classroom.
Intentionality of course design, as shown by numerous writers in this collection,
can usher student writers into that larger world of writing. It can foster not only
transfer of skills but of dispositions and of one’s view of oneself as a writer. Stu-
dents who emerge from such classrooms can discover what Jane, a first-year par-
ticipant in the study with Spike and Frankie discovered: “It [her Basic Writing
course] . . . made me realize that there are many different ways you can write a
paper and different techniques you can use when writing and not to stick to just
one thing. . . . Everyone can be a writer; they just have to find it.”

Works Cited
Baca, Jimmy Santiago. “Sign Language, Convict Style.” Adolescents on the Edge,

edited by Jimmy Santiago Baca and ReLeah Cossett Lent, Heinemann, 2010, pp.
113-18.

Brooke, Robert. “Modeling a Writer’s Identity: Reading and Imitation in the Writing
Classroom.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 39, no. 1, 1988, pp.
24-41.

Collier, Lorna. “Listening to Students: New Insights on Their College-Writing Ex-
pectations.” Council Chronicle, March 2014, pp. 10-12.

Dillard, Annie. An American Childhood. Harper Collins, 1987.
Frankie. Interview. Conducted by Gloria Park and Ravyn McKee, 24 Feb. 2014.
Fulwiler, Toby. “A Lesson in Revision.” The Subject is Writing, 2nd ed., edited by Wen-

dy Bishop, Boynton/Cook, 1999, pp. 73-88.
Gee, James Paul. (this collection). “Foreword.”
Gee, James Paul. “What is Literacy?” Negotiating Academic Literacies, edited by Vivi-

an Zamel and Ruth Spack, Erlbaum, 1998, pp. 51-59.
Ivanič, Roz. Writing and Identity: The Discoursal Construction of Identity in Academ-

ic Writing. John Benjamins, 1998.
Kerr, Jo-Anne. (this collection). “Teaching for Transfer in the First-year Composi-

tion Course: Fostering the Development of Dispositions.”
Lederman, Josh. Critical, Third-Space Phenomenology as a Framework for Vali-

dating College Composition Placement. 2011. Indiana U of Pennsylvania, PhD
dissertation.

Becoming a Person Who Writes 89

McLeod, Susan H. Notes on the Heart: Affective Issues in the Writing Classroom.
Southern Illinois UP, 1997.

Noden, Harry. Image Grammar. Heinemann, 1999.
Park, Gloria. “‘Writing is a Way of Knowing’: Writing and Identity.” ELT Journal, vol.

67, 2013, pp. 336-45.
Ritter, Ashley M. (this collection). “A Transition.”
Romano, Tom. “Teaching Writing from the Inside.” Adolescent Literacy, edited by

Kylene Beers et al., Heinemann, 2007, pp. 167-78.
Shaughnessy, Mina P. Errors & Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writ-

ing. Oxford UP, 1977.
Spike. Interview. Conducted by Ravyn McKee, 13 March 2014.
Taczak, Kara, et al. (this collection). “A Framework for Transfer: Students’ Develop-

ment of a ‘Theory of Writing.’”
Tannen, Deborah. “Sex, Lies, and Conversation.” The Thomson Reader: Conversations

in Context, edited by Robert P. Yagelski and Thomson Wadsworth, 2007, pp. 306-10.

Questions for Reflection and Discussion After Chapter 4

1. During the Writing Marathon activity Helen describes, students write on
campus and respond “I am a writer” if someone asks what they are doing.
In what other ways can you prompt students to enact the role of “writer”
during class, outside of the classroom? In what other ways can you prompt
students to own the label of “writer” in the process?

2. What are the mentor texts you have in mind when writing? You might
consider the “mentor texts” that you borrow discourse from in any type of
writing that you do, including writing course materials.

3. How can you implement the writing activities Helen describes to foster
your students’ building of confidence as writers? Consider how you may
adapt these activities to fit your students’ levels of academic preparedness
and their language and cultural backgrounds.

Writing Activity After Chapter 4
Choose a current student who you know of who struggles as a writer, or imagine
a hypothetical student in FYC. Write a few sentences to describe this student’s
struggles with writing. Now, dream big: If this student could become a highly
confident, highly skilled writer, what would that look like? Dreaming big, write a
description of this student in the future that includes what he or she can do as a
writer and what attitude he or she has toward writing. Now, dream a little smaller:
In what reasonable ways can this student grow as a writer within a one semester
course? Dreaming smaller, write a description of this student at the end of an
FYC course that includes the few new (or newly refined) abilities he or she has
acquired as a writer and the attitude he or she now has toward writing.

90 Sitler

Further Reading
Corkery, Caleb. “Literacy Narratives and Confidence Building in the Writing Class-

room.” Journal of Basic Writing, vol. 24, no. 1, 2005, pp. 48-67.
Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achieve-

ments of America’s Educationally Underprepared. Penguin, 2005.
Williams, Bonnie J. “Students’ ‘Write’ to Their Own Language: Teaching the African

American Verbal Tradition as a Rhetorically Effective Writing Skill.” Equity &
Excellence in Education, vol. 46, no. 3, 2013, pp. 411-29.

Expert paper writers are just a few clicks away

Place an order in 3 easy steps. Takes less than 5 mins.

Calculate the price of your order

Type of paper needed:

Pages:

You will get a personal manager and a discount.

Academic level:

We'll send you the first draft for approval by at

Total price:

$0.00