What is the thesis to your article for this course? What support will you cite to help you make your case?

I haven’t really finalized a thesis, but it would look something like the following:

A number of composition scholars have vehemently opposed at least two ideas that are critical and inherent to a composition classroom. One is the importance of reading. The other is the presence of multiculturalism in a composition classroom. The most common, and may I add limp, argument against the two is that it is not the job of composition teachers to teach reading or multiculturalism. They are right. For multiculturalism and reading cannot be taught. But what we can and must teach is to respect the importance of reading and multiculturalism in a globalized classroom. 

According to a new report, “Open Doors Report on International Exchange,” released by the Institute of International Education, American Universities enrolled about one million international students in 2014-2015 alone. Among these international students, Chinese students make up for one third of the total enrollments, and students from India, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia account for 25% - cultures entirely different from that of America. Explaining this influx of international students, the IIE president, Allan Goodman says that parents in countries such as India and China have become more “savvy” and are sending their children to not just Ivy Leagues but also to other lesser known U.S. universities. In a joyful vein, he adds, “The world has discovered America.” But the question that we, as educators, must ask of ourselves is whether America has discovered the world. Whether America is preparing itself well to discover the world. Given the above-mentioned numbers, the talk of teaching multiculturalism appears to be rather pompous and boastful. It is multiculturalism that is here to teach us something- the dire need to get out of our shells and recognize it, understand it, and embrace it. This emphasizes the need to not just read in our composition classrooms, but also the need to read the world as it stands at America’s doorstep ready to make it its home. In this paper, I will explore and establish the momentousness of multiculturalism and of reading it to read the world. 

I am looking at scholars such as Maxine Hairston, E. Shelley Reid, Barabara Davis, Sandra Mayo, and Mike Rose among others. Kindly feel free to comment on how I can make this better and on whatever appears redundant. Thank you. 

Review the learning objectives for this course. What's one thing you've learned that connects to an objective and to your future job?

This is coming from an international student used to an entirely different educational setting than what we have here in the U.S. When I was in college, if there was one aspect of ancient rhetoric that I mastered, it was memory. I remember learning by rote ten pages worth of notes and reproducing them as is in the examination- I like to call it academic bulimia. This is not to undermine the Indian educations system, but to highlight the fact that one value that Indian pedagogy values is that of memory. A look at any job examination or interview will confirm that. So it would be fair to say that Indian schools are preparing their students just right for their setting. And that’s that. What happens when we move abroad? Well, we were warned of that before- the impostor syndrome. It hounded me for quite some time but I believe I’ve been doing better now.

It would not be an overstatement to say that 5060 has helped me achieve almost all the objectives listed on the site, but if I were to pick one, it would be critical thinking. I no longer take down elaborate notes and try to mug them up. Yes, habits (good or bad) die hard. In India, rather I should say Shimla (my hometown), what was in the book, was right! It is sad that my university in Shimla has not seen any major changes in the syllabus for decades.  Think of this: the syllabus was the same when I completed my MA as it was when my father completed his M.phil over  three decades ago! Students guides, learning by rote, formulas for passing the exam. No wonder I failed the exam when I applied to Jamia Milia University in Delhi. They asked us to “critically appreciate” a documentary. I floundered! Delhi has different standards than small towns in India. I think I could nail that exam now. 

Identify where you think students may fail in an assignment in your syllabus, and how you will use that at a teachable moment by design. If you didn't produce a syllabus, discuss the relevance of this week's readings to your future workplace.

Hoping against hope, I hope my students don’t fail any assignment! Most of the assignments that I have designed are narrative essays with little room for right and wrong. I want my students to be as opinionated as they can be and want to be. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that our job in the department of English is not only to produce good writers, but also good thinkers. 

Even though most of my assignments require students to think and express their point of view, there is one assignment that is very tricky. I think my students might stumble while attempting the “grammar(err)” assignment. It is where I ask them to express their opinions on the importance of grammar. I ask them whether they think grammar is important or just a way to create an elitist class that can look down upon others. While it would be interesting to see their answers, the trick is that there is a right and wrong to this question. This assignment is almost a mean test on my poor, unsuspecting students. I am afraid they’ll fail this one. Not only am I expecting a right answer, but also impeccable writing while arriving at that answer.  Yes, this sounds like a trap. It is one! But it is one that hope will be the only one that they fall into as far as the importance of grammar is concerned. No safe place my classroom, eh! 

When they turn in their assignments and when I'll have graded them, I will explain to my students why good grammar is important. I will teach them how it lends to a person’s credibility and strengthens his/her argument. The kind of research that I am expecting them to do for this assignment should help them clear a lot of their doubts. I expect them to cite at least one prescriptivist and one descriptivist for this assignment. Let us see what they come up with!

List 5 terms you don't quite know yet how to define from our final keywords list. Next identify three in other students' blog you do know how to define, and comment on them there in those blogs.

Five terms that I do not know how to define are:

1. Discourse Community

2. Intertextuality

3. Error

4. Power

5. Self/the subject

Actually, there is one more:

6. Discipline

What is one assignment you will include in your syllabus assignment that uses collaboration and/or technology and/or other things Yancey, Selfe, Breuch, Bruffee, or Shaughnessey have discussed?

One assignment that I would like to use in my syllabus assignment would be a mixture of both technology and old school letter writing. Since I value collaboration and interaction between native students and international students, I would like to have at least one assignment that fosters interaction among them. 

For my syllabus, I intend to have my students make a video or presentation about their native places, and write a letter, sorry, handwrite a letter, to a classmate explaining the video and convincing each other to spend their summer there. The video could have images supported by music and titles, but I would want them to use words and detailed explanation only in the handwritten letter. No matter how modern our teaching methods become, I like to believe that we will always be connected to at least some traditional way of teaching. Through this assignment, I intend to make it easier for my international students to make a transition to a new educational system that values technology more than their countries’ educational systems do. Similarly, it will be a new experience for American students to indulge in something that they might not have done before.

Apart from fostering a sense of camaraderie among my students, I think that dividing the assignment into two parts would give them a chance to practice  two different media at the same time. While making a video or presentation would give them hands on experience regarding technology, writing about the video would help them learn how to express themselves, or may even use rhetoric to some extent. I would also have the students reply to those letters, telling their friends what they liked about the video and if they needed more information. In all this I would exhort my students to maintain civility. I do abhor the grading system, but I might have to use it to attain my goals here!

Moreover, I think this assignment would be a fun way to start the semester! 

Engage in discussion about something that captured your attention over the past few weeks in the course. Relate it back to specific class discussions, readings, and your grading/teaching when possible.

5060 has been an amazing learning experience and in the last few days, many things struck me. I can’t stop thinking of Peter Elbow’s “Inviting the Mother Tongue” in particular. Initially I like his idea of making students feel “safe” in the classroom. However, as I continued to read and came across Elbow’s solutions to the problems that students face, I realized that it was an exercise in futility. 

“I may sound perverse to some readers, but my main goal in this essay is to show how the writing classroom can be a safer place for such language than most sites of language use-a place where, for a good deal of the time, students can put out of mind any worries about whether anyone might consider their language wrong or incorrect,” says Peter Elbow in Inviting the Mother Tongue. I found it interesting how  Peter Elbow defines “mother tongue” as dialects of English and “not languages other than English,” and with one sleight of his pen, strikes out any possibility of acknowledging the difficulties that international students face in a “foreign” classroom. 

For international students, the classroom is perhaps one of the most unsafe places for not only improving their English or writing skills, but also for acclimating to a new culture and country. When it comes to “mother tongues”, international students have myriads of those, and yes, they are all dialects of English. Check out this link to get an idea of the kinds of Englishes we speak in India:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9arM_agKFA

The point that I’m trying to make is that although I like Elbow’s idea of making the classroom safer for speakers of “mother tongues”, I know for sure that it is impossible. More so, when we ignore the fact that the dialects of English are not limited to dialects of “American English”. They go beyond to the dialects of world English as spoken in different parts of the world- which is, differently. So is making the classroom a “safe” haven for “bad English” after all, a good idea? Well, I don’t think so. I grew up in a small Indian town, Shimla, which used to be the “summer capital” (so British- they needed to move to a cooler place during the summer!) of the British in India and over time became more Anglicized than the British. Schools in Shimla are known to be among the best in the country because they offer an education that prizes English language over anything else. I remember being fined ten bucks for speaking in Hindi once. Safe, as far as using one’s “mother tongue” was concerned, was the last thing I felt there. This is after I grew up in a household where my father liked to converse in English, my brother and I in Hindi, and my mother in our local dialect, “pahari”. Honestly, I don’t know what my mother tongue is. Am I most comfortable while speaking Hindi mixed with English, which is called “Hinglish” by the way, or am I comfortable speaking just English? 

Consider those students who speak combinations of English and Tamil, English and Telugu, English and Marathi and so on. Regional languages in India are  increasingly turning into dialects of English. Hindi has been “infiltrated” by English to such an extent that you will never hear anyone speak “pure” Hindi. What is Elbow even talking about! 

I think I would rather let students face the dangers of the classroom ( I won’t fine them. though). Can you learn how to swim if you never enter the water? What we can do is that we can make the classrooms more welcoming not just for international students, but also for native English speakers. I intend to do this by employing the same rules and conditions for everyone, irrespective of their “mother tongues.” We are teaching writing in English, after all.

Review of Leah's Philosophy of Teaching

When early on we did a blog on the most difficult thing to teach in the teaching of writing, I was at a loss to know what it could be. I now have a feeling that reviewing your peer’s work is definitely one of the most difficult things to teach and to do.

Anyway, here I am reviewing Leah’s teaching philosophy. I am glad that Leah did an assignment on teaching philosophy since we are in the same grading group and this might give me some insight into my colleague’s teaching values. In reviewing Leah’s philosophy of teaching, I came across some core beliefs that resonate with my teaching philosophy. Leah begins by talking about language and that her core value finds roots in the belief that language is a product of one’s environment. I think it is interesting the way Leah draws the connection between language and environment, and how she situates agency at the cross-section of the two. 

Leah does a great job laying out her core principles of teaching. It gives the reader a broad idea about what Leah intends to talk about in her teaching philosophy. I could relate to her principle of incorporating external reading material in classroom. I think this a good idea to introduce students to reading outside of the classroom. Since I value reading a lot, I think introducing external texts is rather essential in the teaching of composition. 

When Leah explains a student’s “writing environment” as “a collection of unchallenged truths,” I think she makes a great point. After all, writing is a process of arriving at the truth. What better way of teaching writing than challenging those that already exist! What better way than to critically evaluate the notions that we thrust on ourselves or rather that we allow others to thrust on us! Leah talks about using Classical theory to teach rhetoric in FYI. Again, I think is a great approach to introduce students to critical thinking. 

I also find it interesting that Leah argues for students to be good writers not only to succeed at workplace, but also as good citizens. Leah talks about the importance of technology, which without doubt is indispensable to the teaching of writing or for any kind of teaching for that matter. 

Another great idea that Leah incorporates in her teaching philosophy is that students need to engage in civic activities and public writing. I find this very interesting, but I would like to read in detail about the assignments that Leah would have her students do for public writing. What kind of “civic engagements” would such assignments require? Would these be individual or group-oriented? 

I think Leah nails it when she says that she’s not looking for the “correct method of composition”, but for students to discover their “own method of composition.” This is beautifully put and reflects the central idea behind teaching writing. I think I will take a leaf from Leah’s book and edit my own philosophy to make it more specific and coherent.