Horner et al. contend that composition studies is still dominated by English monolingualism but is badly in need of revision given that many composition students are now multilingual or speak different varieties of Englishes. They concentrate on reforming composition scholarship and the preparation of academic practioners in terms of addressing the latter issue. For Horner et al., the field of composition scholarship must transition from monolingualism to adopting translingualism in disciplinary practices such as publishing in academic journals and incorporation in conferences. They propose that the field of composition scholarship inculcate translingualism by including multilingual perspectives, writing in different Englishes, non-Anglophone writing and translation from other languages. While maintaining a disciplinary focus, Horner et al. share Canagarajah’s concern with composition pedagogy being responsive to the needs of students’ linguistic diversity. Both Horner et al. and Canagarajah contend that multilingualism tends to be the norm amongst speakers of English wordwide and that global English speakers are continually adapting their language fluency and modifying their language use. Canagarajah asks us to consider these factors in teacher-training of professionalization of composition instructors, calling for greater sensitivity and responsiveness to translingual students in pedagogical practice. According to him, translingual composition instruction requires teachers to be flexible and attuned to student diversity, as well as the contexts, genres, and semiotic resources helpful to multilingual students. The teaching standards and formulas for instruction in monolingual classrooms may need to be modified for translingual classrooms, to include more multimodality, for instance.
Matsuda and Hammill likewise attempt to provide a portrait of the second language learners in order promote greater understanding of their needs. Coming from diverse cultures and languages, they impress upon readers that second language students are learning a new language at the same time that they are expected to learn concepts and write for diverse courses. Second language learner are also developing communicative competency in that they are discovering how to sustain social relations with an audience and learning meta-writing strategies while at the same time becoming familiarized with basic elements such as sentence structure and grammar. What I gathered most from Matsuda and Hammill’s discussion is that second language learners often carry a much larger labor burden in terms of coursework and acculturation. Additionally, if composition pedagogy is not inclusive for second language learners, they may become alienated from the writing process. I would be very interested in pedagogies that foster a sense of inclusiveness for second language learners. Some strategies put forth by Matsuda and Hammill include having second language learners reflect on their own cultural experiences, but not all students may be comfortable with talking about their differences. One teaching and assessment strategy that I have found useful is reading second language student essays for meaning and intention rather than attention to form according the language standards. When I have adopted this practice with my own second language students’ writing, I have found their papers to be much more enriching and modified my assessment rubric accordingly.
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