Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
“In My Humble Opinion”: Assessing L2 Writing in the First Year Writing Classroom Amanda Athon Bowling Green State University [email protected] CCCC Position Statement In 1972, the Conference on College Composition and Communication passed the resolution “Students’ Rights to Their Own Language”: “We affirm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language -- the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style.” (SRTOL). What is Basic Writing and Who are Basic Writers? Courses typically offer no credit (Trimmer) May emphasize grammar (Trimmer; Rose) Students struggle with issues of conceptualization (AdlerKassner) More distance between their dialects and traditional academic dialects(Bizzell) Research Participants Two sections of First-Year Writing 1100 at Midwestern University One section enrolls international nonnative speakers of English; both sections enrolled nonnative speakers Higher percentage of “nonstandard” dialects in basic writing courses (Bizzell) Instructor Participant “Kay”: self-identifies as nonnative speaker of English Instructor Participant “May”: a graduate instructor in the English department Methodologies Largely influenced by feminism’s recognizing of the personal narrative and ethic of care toward research participants Value on the experiences of participants rather than just the researcher’s observations Development of a research website to share findings and provide updates on visits Research Questions What are heuristics for designing classroom-based assessment practices for nonnative speakers of English or speakers of dialects? How can we design assessment practices that are culturally sensitive to speakers of nonstandard English? How do students with diverse language backgrounds experience the assessment process? Data Results Students model their views of “good” writing based on the language of the program rubric. Instructors and students tend to think of “error” as referring to sentence-level mistakes. Students desired more language diverse writing models and assessments that specified how writing had progressed. Error Patterns in Student Writing May noted that students struggle with writing words as they hear them; Geoffrey Pullum calls these “eggcorns.” Kay’s international students struggled with verb issues and syntax errors due to structural differences between home languages and English. What may appear to be a mistake may actually be due to language difference. Influence of Program Rubrics • Although students, instructors, as well as the program guidebook, expressed that instructor feedback was the most valuable form of assessment, the language of the rubric was the most influential to students. • Balester categorizes writing rubrics as acculturationaism, those which count errors to determine correctness; accomodationism, which make some attempt to accommodate second-language writers; and multiculturalism, which incorporate principles of the CCCC position statement on language diversity through the emphasis of “writerly agency” (72). Rubrics that Foster Language Diversity University of Southern Florida First Year Writing Rubric Questions or Comments?