Going Global : Transnational Perspectives on Globalization, Language, and Education [1 ed.] 9781443867610, 9781443863339

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Going Global

Going Global: Transnational Perspectives on Globalization, Language, and Education

Edited by

Leslie Seawright

Going Global: Transnational Perspectives on Globalization, Language, and Education, Edited by Leslie Seawright This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Leslie Seawright and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6333-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6333-9

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ................................................................................... vii Leslie Seawright Introduction ................................................................................................ ix Leslie Seawright Part I: Critical Perspectives on Language, Culture, and Identity Chapter One ................................................................................................. 2 Globalized English: Power, Ethics, and Ideology Zohreh R. Eslami, Katherine L. Wright, and Sunni Sonnenburg Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 17 Globalization and Multiculturalism: A Linguistic Perspective Vivek Kumar Dwivedi Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 36 Cross-Cultural Implications for the Use of New Englishes in Postcolonial Literatures Fella Benabed Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 49 Internationalizing a Private Liberal Arts College in Ghana Millicent Adjei Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 67 Arab ESL Students at American Universities and their Identity Formation Process Gamil Alamrani Part II: In the Classroom: Globalization and Education Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 98 African American English and Code Switching in School Jeannie Waller

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Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 113 Integrating Applied Anthropology to Teach Gender Roles in the Age of Globalization Ursula Bertels and Noémie Waldhubel Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 128 Studying Arabic Abroad: A Transformative Experience Salah Ayari Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 148 The Globalization of the Teaching of Poetry in the 21st Century Andy Trevathan Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 154 Why Do Designers Have to Take Writing Classes? Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 169 Looking Back, Looking Forward: Bringing Home Culture to Play in the College Classroom Evelyn Baldwin Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 192 Isn’t Everyone a Plagiarist?: Teaching Plagiarism IS Teaching Culture Mysti Rudd and Amy Hodges Contributors ............................................................................................. 218 Index ........................................................................................................ 221

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many of the works contained in this volume grew out of presentations given in Doha, Qatar at the Texas A&M University of Qatar Liberal Arts International Conference in 2013 and 2014. Therefore, I must give credit to my fellow conference committee members that made possible such diverse and significant panels and presentations: Hassan Bashir (Chair 2013), Troy Bickham, and Phillip Gray. In addition, I must thank the graduate student assistants, postdoctoral research assistants, and student employees who worked tirelessly on the organization and creation of the conferences: Hamza Jenhangir, Amy Hodges, Colby Seay, and Alia AlHarthy. A special thank you to Hanaa Loutfy, an undergraduate student, who spent many hours and much effort in making this edited collection possible. I owe a debt of gratitude to the Liberal Arts Program administrative assistants, Khadija ElCadi and Amal Hassan, for their constant oversight of our program, the conference, and all of the details that make the difference between success and failure in our collective endeavors. The conferences and this book would not have been possible without multiple funding sources. I would like to thank Qatar Petroleum, the sole industry sponsor of the conference, and the Texas A&M University of Qatar special initiatives TIPE (The Initiative in Professional Ethics) and ICTS (Initiative in Culture, Technology, and Society). In addition special thanks to Dean Mark Weichold, Eyad Masad and Hamid Parsaei, all of Texas A&M University at Qatar, for their continuous support of the Liberal Arts Program and the international conferences with special funds and their attendance. The Qatar Foundation and Hamad bin Khalifa University have also played critical roles in the support and success of not only both conferences but the Liberal Arts Program and Texas A&M University at Qatar as well. The State of Qatar’s focus on higher education through the creation of Education City in Doha, Qatar is a testament to its people, future, and ambitions. I am delighted and grateful to be a part of the grand design. Finally, I must thank all of the conference speakers and participants who traveled across town and across continents to discuss globalization, multiculturalism, and education. More conversations, research, and discoveries are imperative if we are to positively impact our students, our institutions, and our nations. While our directions and opinions may vary

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widely, the discussions that are born of such complex issues as globalization will continue to shape and frame future generations’ notions of language, nationality and identity.

INTRODUCTION

The new forms of communication, technology, and travel suppress space/time differences and intensify inter-community contact, impressing upon us the fact that our fates are intertwined. —Suresh Canagarajah, Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations

Globalization is not a new phenomenon. For as long as communities have reached out to other communities for trade, marriage, and allies, globalization has been a force shaping the people of such societies. What perhaps is new in the process of globalization is the pace and impact of change given new technologies in communication and travel. The availability of information from and access to the most remote portions of our globe is now largely available within seconds on an inexpensive mobile phone. New technologies have changed the way in which we see each other and ourselves. World news, other languages, religions, beliefs, customs, values, systems of government, and cultures are now easily and immediately accessible. The impact of globalization on the global and local scale is undeniable. As educational systems have been impacted by globalization, tensions between the languages in use, local culture atrophy, and student identity concerns have plagued educators. Communities are trying to balance local perspectives with global realities in order to acknowledge the forces going on inside their communities. Joel Spring affirms, “There is a constant dynamic of interaction: global ideas about school practices interact with local school systems while, through mutual interaction, both the locals and the global are changed” (1). These ideas manifest from differences in cultural practices, values, education, religion, and other interactions. It is easy to see this dynamic play out in our own communities. From the United States where students continue to fall behind other countries in math and reading scores (OECD), to Qatar where the language of instruction in public schools has changed three times in 10 years (Khatri), school administrators and teachers are grappling with the effects of globalization on local cultures. This volume of critical essays explores questions surrounding language and culture in our globalized world. Honoring students’ cultures while

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trying to prepare them for an uncertain and constantly changing future is the resounding theme of this book. In addition, what to teach and how to teach it are the fundamental questions the authors examine. The contributors to this volume are as multicultural and multi-faceted as such a volume would demand. The essays include authors and studies from Algeria, India, Iran, Ghana, Germany, Poland, Tunisia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Yemen. Part One of this book, Critical Perspectives on Language, Culture, and Identity, addresses global concerns related to language, specifically English as the lingua franca, and identity. School systems and universities around the world are scrambling to adapt, change, include, and revise curriculum and other educational resources to reflect the multicultural and interdisciplinary nature of our present time. As administrators, teachers, and professors we look for ways to incorporate the themes of globalization and multiculturalism. While doing so, we must also reflect and determine the ways in which we use and teach English in our classrooms. While English has become the lingua franca in Science, Business, and other fields, scholars still grapple with the implications of its adoption in many settings. To what extent should English be introduced and taught in schools around the world? Who “owns” the English language and can therefore shape its structure and aims? What are world Englishes and how can we demonstrate them to our students? Is English the language of the oppressor, an imperialist tool, or does global English offer an opportunity for greater understanding and cooperation amongst peoples and cultures? Chapter One, Globalized English: Power, Ethics, and Ideology, provides an introduction to the controversy over English as lingua franca. The essay explores the economic, sociopolitical, and educational issues that occur as a result of the adoption of English in various countries and communities. Specifically focused on ethical issues related to the teaching of English, the authors offer a framework for examining assumptions related to who is deemed worthy of teaching language. The marginalization of non-native speakers as teachers of English is critiqued. Vivek Dwivedi in Chapter Two, Globalization and Multiculturalism: A Linguistic Perspective, extends the dialogue related to English as lingua franca. His essay describes the dual nature of language; its ability to lend identity to groups on the one hand, while enforcing ideological oppression on the other. Local cultures feel threatened, and less privileged cultures feel forced to adapt to new ideologies and new languages in order to compete economically and develop politically. It is imperative to recognize the linguistic role English plays, both ethically and sociopolitically in a globalized world.

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In Chapter Three Fella Benabed, in Cross-Cultural Implications for the Use of New Englishes in Postcolonial Literatures, offers one way that nonnative speakers may respond to the English language imperatives in their own societies. Recognizing the oppressive and unethical demand for English as lingua franca, especially in developing nations, Benabed details how postcolonial authors respond to such requirements. The resistance to English language conformity and hegemony has resulted in “New Englishes” being created, adopted, and adapted to better serve and represent cultural identity and needs. New non-mainstream authors of postcolonial literature have led to an expansion of the literary canon and have created opportunities for cross-cultural understanding. Millicent Adjei in Internationalizing a Private Liberal Arts College in Ghana, Chapter Four, presents the case study of Ashesi University College, a small liberal arts college. The college wished to increase its internationalization efforts and reputation; however, the college discovered that the concept of internationalization holds different meanings between and within academic institutions, and by extension presents different contextual interpretations to various academic settings. Adjei’s essay raises several questions including: What does internationalization really mean to institutions operating in an environment unique from the West, which has largely been responsible for defining the concept? How does the interpretation of the phenomenon affect what academic institutions deem as “necessary” in the training of its graduates? Can graduates really be trained to “fit into” today’s multicultural global work environment? This study includes semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with the college’s administration and students, naturalistic observations of the campus, and content analysis of documents. Gamil Alamrani closes Part One with his essay, Arab ESL Students at American Universities and their Identity Formation Process. In it, he describes how Arab students at the University of Arkansas navigate their cultural and religious identities in a Western environment. Literacy studies, specifically the ideological model of literacy which emphasizes the social and cultural nature of literacy acquisition, offers a framework to study ESL students and the complicated issues related to identity construction. Alamrani presents a case study of several Arab ESL students as their cultural identities are conflicted and questioned by the larger social context and classroom performance. In Part Two of this book, In the Classroom: Globalization and Education, issues directly related globalization, pedagogy, and classroom practices are discussed. The themes explored in this section are complex and troubling for educators. Should multiculturalism be taught? If so, who

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should teach it? How do students learn about culture? What is a framework for teaching globalization, gender, religion, and other complicated issues? The essays in this section offer case studies, interviews, lesson plans, and approaches to understanding and teaching in various contexts and places. Jeannie Waller in Chapter Six, African American English and CodeSwitching in School, examines one specific English in the context of a rural community in Arkansas, USA. African American English remains controversial as a variation, even though several scholars have declared it as an authentic version of English. For teachers in the community’s schools, nothing but Standard American English (SAE) is allowed. This pits teachers versus students and, ultimately, hurts student identity formation for the children who speak AAE in this community. Waller explores the environment of these children and their lives in school while holding up a critical lens on similar practices around the world. Chapter Seven, Integrating Applied Anthropology to Teach Gender Roles in the Age of Globalization, presents a practical approach to teaching students about gender in a multicultural context. Residents from over 190 countries currently live and work in Germany. In such a diverse and multicultural space, identity formation and gender roles are complicated and important topics. Ursula Bertels and Noémie Waldhubel offer insight into a project currently taking place in the city of Münster, Germany meant to contribute to the identity formation of girls and boys. Called Wann ist ein Mann ein Mann (When is a man a man, WIEMEM), this project is in its third year of being implemented in the city. The project’s approach is described and lessons plans presented in this chapter. Salah Ayari in Studying Arabic Abroad: A Transformative Experience, Chapter Eight, looks at students’ intercultural competencies by examining the study abroad experiences of native English speakers learning Arabic. He follows several students on their 10-week intensive cultural and language immersion program to Tunisia. His findings suggest that not only do students’ language abilities increase when given study abroad opportunities, but so too do their intercultural competencies and communication practices. Chapter Nine, The Globalization of the Teaching of Poetry in the 21st Century, explores how the teaching of a specific subject, in this case poetry, can positively affect students impacted by globalization. Andy Trevathan argues that poetry can aid in writing instruction, identity formation, and critical thinking skills. Despite a general decline in poetry publication and instruction, students stand to benefit from the practice of studying, reading, analyzing, and writing poetry, especially in the current

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context of multiculturalism and globalization. In addition, poetry leads to the negotiation of meaning making, which develops voice and a sense of audience in a specific community. These skills are invaluable for students at various levels of secondary and university training. In Chapter Ten, Why do Designers Have to Take Writing Classes?, Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar explores the context of design students studying English, specifically composition, at an American branch campus in the Middle East. Students are often resistant to taking courses they deem unnecessary or unrelated to their major, and this is a frequent source of contention for students required to take English writing courses. Combine this resistance with the fact that the students in this study are all native Arabic speakers first and ESL students, and a complicated picture arises for faculty and students. While many instructors expect students at the branch campus to perform like their American counterparts, Rajakumar notes the ethical and pedagogical faults of such an approach. Using student writing examples and assignments, the branch campus context and expectations are explored. Eve Baldwin in Chapter Eleven, Looking Back, Looking Forward: Bringing Home Culture to Play in the College Classroom, argues that cultural groups draw strength from their most essential characteristics. Research suggests that the first year of college is a traumatic time in students’ lives and educators must understand the unfamiliar territory students enter when arriving at campus. As students navigate new identities and roles, allowing them to connect with their home culture in writing assignments can help them bridge the familiar to the unfamiliar. Students who feel a sense of pride in their home identities will have confidence in writing about these and will produce more quality written products which, in turn, may alleviate some of their apprehension about the overall college experience. The final chapter, Isn’t Everyone a Plagiarist?: Teaching Plagiarism IS Teaching Culture, asks instructors and university administers to rethink current plagiarism penalties and violations, especially at institutions with majority ESL populations. LeAnn Rudd and Amy Hodges present the case study of student who habitually plagiarizes writing assignments. Through intensive discussion and interviews with this student, a new perspective on culture, American branch campus pedagogy, ESL education, and plagiarism definitions is gained. The authors contend that institutions and instructors need to re-examine issues of culture, cultural markers, ESL writing, plagiarism, and student identity and engage in dialogue with students on the interplay between ethos and competing academic notions of learning, sharing, and writing.

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References Canagarajah, Suresh.(2013) Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. New York: Routledge. Khatari, Shabina S. (2013). “Qatar’s education system grapples with language challenges.” Doha News Online. OECD. (2012) Programme “For International Student Assessment (PISA) Results from 2012/ United States.” http://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/PISA-2012-results-US.pdf Spring, Joel. (2009). Globalization of Education. New York: Routledge.

PART I: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND IDENTITY

CHAPTER ONE GLOBALIZED ENGLISH: POWER, ETHICS, AND IDEOLOGY ZOHREH R. ESLAMI, KATHERINE L.WRIGHT, AND SUNNI SONNENBURG

Society today is more global than ever before, and people need a linguistic medium for interactions. Businesses conduct international transactions on a daily basis and must be able to communicate with customers. American engineers order South Korean parts for their machines being assembled in Mexico and then shipped to the United States. Students from all over the world come to English speaking countries to attend college. The internet provides access to almost anywhere in the world with absolutely no travel involved, and countries come together for military invasions, humanitarian aid and natural disaster relief. English is now at the forefront of international relations, business, tourism, education, science, computer technology and even media. English is often viewed as an essential tool in developing and changing nations’ economic systems. In some countries, in order to assist the spread of English, improve the society’s English proficiency, and meet the needs of developing situations, various kinds of English programs have been established. English courses are offered in elementary and high schools, adult education programs in English are present, and various media, such as radio and television, have also made great contributions to the improvement of English proficiency of people from all walks of life. Governments play a central role in this local hegemony through dictating policies and systems to be implemented to facilitate English teaching and learning countrywide. A predominant emphasis on the teaching, learning, and testing of English in order to advance political and economic goals is prevalent in many countries. Performance in compulsory English study from early secondary school on and scores on national examinations, including compulsory English, continue to be critical factors for entrance into post-secondary education positions.

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Meanwhile, scientists, technicians, teachers, and many other professionals are required to master English in order to read literature about advanced technology and management from developed countries. However, the worldwide use of English introduces a whole set of issues. Will English replace other languages or accompany them? Will countries create equitable opportunities for their citizens to learn English? What language policies will countries enact and how will these affect the native languages and culture? To address these and other questions, this chapter includes a summary of sociopolitical issues related to the spread of English; a description of language policies; the debate over English as an international language (EIL), including its relevance to English language teachers and their native/non-native status; and insight into specific critical issues related to the spread of English.

Different Views Related to the Global Spread of English Is English a neutral or innocent instrument? Critical linguist (e.g., Mahboob, 2011; Kandiah, 2001; Robinson, 2009) believe English, which, in some “standard” form, is the staple of the global medium of communication is hardly a neutral or innocent instrument. It defines a discourse whose conventions of grammar and use are heavily vested ideologically, affirming and legitimizing particular ways of seeing the world, particular forms of knowledge, and particular relations of power. All these factors work decidedly against the best interests of disadvantaged countries (Phillipson, 2008a). While much of English’s dissemination has evolved naturally, there has been some “forced” spread of English. Edge (2003) asserts that the United States has spread English through military invasions and “covert Christianity”. Especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in Israel and Palestine, American military presence has increased the importance of English. Since Americans have influential power in these countries, it is to the citizen’s advantage to learn and speak English. It should be noted that, while Edge appreciates the informed decision of people to learn and use English to open lines of communication, he criticizes those that use outright deception to do so (Edge, 2003). This phenomenon is relevant to teachers as “the extent that the dominance of English-speaking nations is to be imposed by force, English language teachers may now explicitly be perceived as a second wave of imperial troopers” (Edge, 2003, 703). According to Pennycook (2000), the dominant academic line on the spread of English in applied linguistics espouses a liberal attitude. Based on a mixture of general political liberalism and a more specific academic

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apoliticism, a view that academic work should somehow remain objective, this approach either denies ideological implications of the global spread of English, or suggests that they are not the concern of applied linguistic scholars. An example of this line of thinking is Crystal (1997) who claims to offer “a detached account” of global English (vii –viii). He argues for support for the benefits of English as a global means of communication, and does not deny the importance of multilingualism either. However, such a view of celebrating universalism while sustaining difference tends to downplay the ideological implications of the global expansion of English and thus is problematic. As Pennycook (2000) suggests, such a view, while appearing to maintain a stance of “scientific objectivity,” is in fact associated with a liberal ideology that favors a capitalist market-driven “freedom-of-choice” approach in interpreting human behavior – “everyone is free to do what they like with English, to use English in beneficial ways and to use other languages for other purposes” (111). As submitted by Phillipson (2008a): Is there a choice then between the panacea of English supposedly guaranteeing economic success, and the pandemic we are experiencing of corporate and military globalisation, environmental degradation, energy and food crises, and an intensifying gap between global Haves and Neverto-haves, mediated and constituted by the key international language, English? (3).

Phillipson is critical of the unquestioning assumption that learning or speaking English better prepares a society to participate in the global marketplace or that it gives individuals a better economic advantage. English is never neutral. The whole world does not have equal access to choice English education and state-of-the-art language learning facilities. Often this instruction is only available to financial and intellectual elites, not a country’s masses. Thus English proficiency becomes a gate keeping measure that maintains the status quo and keeps a society’s privileged in power. The Philippines exemplifies the asymmetry of English; “since independence in 1946, the Philippines has been dominated by a relatively small group of wealthy families who control the political system through a variety of means” including the belief that English language proficiency will garner one a successful and lucrative career (Tollefson, 2000, 14). Similar to the American ideal of meritocracy, the Filipino ideology is founded to serve the interest of those privileged in society, since not all have equal access to the linguistic capital. The acceptance that learning English improves one’s lot in life is not maintained with force but

Globalized English: Power, Ethics, and Ideology

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primarily through consensual social practices which only benefit the haut monde. There is nothing ‘normal’ about the way English has become established – it is a survival strategy dictated by economic and political pressures, which dovetail with linguistic imperialism. Causal factors and particular interests are behind the expansion of English in the neoimperial world (Phillipson, 2008b). Linguistic hegemony perpetuates the spread of English because “alternatives to the current linguistic hierarchies are seldom considered and tend to be regarded as counterintuitive and in conflict with a commonsensical, ‘natural’ order of things” (Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1996, 433). American culture has infiltrated the global consciousness through business and media, therefore English language is essential to participate in the world marketplace. This blind acceptance of English neglects the fact that certain people are benefitting. On a macro and micro level, certain entities are constructed to profit with English’s prevalence and power. Underscoring the supremacy and authority of English, Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (1996) note: As English is the dominant language of the U.S., the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, many other world policy organizations, and most of the world’s big businesses and elites in many countries worldwide, it is the language in which the fate of most of the world’s citizens is decided, directly, or indirectly (440-1).

Thus, as English language teachers, we are suddenly put in a precarious position of supporting linguistic hegemony and neocolonialism by entering foreign countries and promoting English language attainment. Edge (2003) even likens TESOL professionals to imperial troopers that “move in, following ‘pacification,’ with the unspoken role ... of facilitating the consent that hegemony requires” (703). Therefore English language educators need to be cognizant of linguicism. Skutnabb-Kangas define this construct as the “ideologies, structures and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language” (cited in Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1996, 437). More recently, Ammon (2000) contributed to the definition of linguicism, identifying “the valuing of NS [native speaker] English language forms above those of NNSs [non-native speakers] even though the former do not lead to greater communicative efficiency for the majority in international contexts of use” (cited in Jenkins, 2006, 44).

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English Hegemony Hegemony, and its associated concepts of consent and acceptance, suggests that many forms of dominance appear to be jointly produced through complicated forms of social interaction, socio-cultural assumptions, and discursive practices. It is critical to investigate how we are responding to “global English” and how our responses are related to the operation of the hegemony of “global English.” Edge (2003) defines hegemony as “a relationship based not on explicit coercion, but on established power and the consent of the majority to go along with the arrangements that flow from that power because of the rewards that the majority receives” (702). Gramsci (1971) suggests hegemony works when the dominated accept dominance as natural, and act in the interest of the powerful out of free will. In another words, inequities are internalized or taken for granted by both the dominant and dominated groups as being natural and legitimate. Consensus and acceptance contribute to the global hegemony of English in the form of uncritical support for its dissemination and our participation in the process. Thus, the global dominance of English should be considered partly as a product of the local hegemonies of English. Teachers need to be informed and instructed that they may be implicitly supporting a diffusion-ofEnglish paradigm, reflexively indoctrinating learners and reinforcing the society’s linguistic hegemonic attitudes.

Role of Government The extent that English has led to social inequities is related to how English is used by the government. For example, in Japan, English is primarily associated with international government and access to popular culture, minimizing its effects of inequality. However, in the Philippines, English is used for internal purposes and is a central basis for determining who has access to economic resources and political power (Tollefson, 2000). This distinction leads to a discussion of language policy, a “broad, overarching term for decisions on rights and access to languages and on the roles and functions of particular languages and varieties of language in a given polity” (Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1996, 434). Presented here are the policies most representational of the research field. While many similar theories exist, these are the most common and widely accepted. Monolingualism is one language policy “in which national unity and security are associated with a single dominant language and the politically

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dominant group holds power in part by excluding other languages from public use” (Tollefson, 2000, 14). In a country that has adopted this policy, the ability to speak English is a primary determination of access to wealth and power. Usually, access to high-quality English education is limited to the elite, helping to maintain the hierarchy. By contrast, assimilation encourages minority groups to adopt the language of the majority (English) as their own. This is the educational policy in the United States. Speakers of other languages are placed in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes and taught that English is the language of education and success. A third policy, pluralism, encourages cultural and linguistic diversity. In a pluralistic society, English may be common but does not hold a special power. Pluralistic governmental policies encourage and promote the use of a wide range of languages and government services are accessible in languages other than English (Tollefson, 2000). The Japanese communication scholar Tsuda described language policy as a continuum, with diffusion-of English and ecology-of-language as the endpoints. The diffusion-of-English paradigm is characterized by monolingualism, Americanization, homogenization of world culture, and linguistic, cultural, and media imperialism. At the opposite end, ecologyof-language is characterized by multilingualism, maintenance of languages and cultures and protection of national sovereignties (Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1996). Language initiatives can be seen as shifts toward one end or the other. The English-only movement in the U.S. sits on the diffusion-of-English end while the pluralistic policy and minority language rights sit on the ecology end (Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1996).

Local vs. Global Tensions As asserted by Modiano (2004), “Retaining our indigenous cultures and language(s) while reaping the benefits of large-scale integration via a language of wider communication is the challenge many of us will no doubt have to come to terms with in the years to come” (225). Within the English as an International Language (EIL) approach, there is no relationship between using English as a global language and assimilating the culture of native English speakers. English becomes localized as well as denationalized, is learned by all levels of society, and is established alongside local languages in multilingual contexts (Teodorescu, 2010). The emerging local standards need not and should not align with American or British standards (Teodorescu, 2010). As submitted by Jenkins (2009);

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Chapter One Younger English speakers in Expanding Circle countries, particularly in East Asia, are beginning to realize that native-like English is no longer relevant to their international communication needs. Instead, they seem increasingly to wish to make their own decisions about the kind of English they speak, and to protect – by means of the influence of their L1 on their English accent – a sense of their own local identity, as well as to develop some kind of hybrid global identity in their English, instead of being told to take on the identity of an NS of English in the US or UK (54).

EIL users thus liberate themselves from the imposition of native speaker norms as well as the cultural baggage associated with it. English is not simply an object used in different places, but rather something that emerges from local discursive practices. As Canagarajah (2007) argues, “LFE [lingua franca English] is not a product located in the mind of the speaker; it is a social process constantly reconstructed in sensitivity to environmental factors” (94). According to Pennycook (2010); We do not need to know the what, but the how and the why. We need to understand how people position themselves towards it, how they locate it within their linguistic repertoire, how it contributes to shaping their identities and how they use it to participate in, or resist, aspects of globalisation (123).

Despite the fact that English language use and its promotion is intended by some to further their political, economic and religious agendas, English users worldwide have realized that native-like English is no longer required for international communication. Speakers increasingly seem to wish to make their own decisions about the kind of English they speak, and to protect a sense of their local identity (by means of their accent). Many speakers are also working to develop some kind of hybrid global identity in their English, instead of being told to take on the identity of an NS of English (Jenkins, 2009). Many have resisted and, in fact, changed the language to reflect their own religious and cultural values (Mahboob, 2011). In the indigenization process regional cultural concepts influence the English language and give it a local flavor. Furthermore, this process signifies that EIL users are not passive recipients of native speaker norms of language use and culture; they resist by adapting and changing the language to suit their own purposes.

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Othering and the Dichotomy of Native vs. Non-native English Speakers Research estimates show that about 80 per cent of English language teaching professionals worldwide are bilingual users of English (McKay, 2002). However the English Language Teaching (ELT) field continues to subscribe to the dualistic labels of ‘native speaker’ (NS) and ‘non-native speaker’ (NNS) when discussing educators in the profession. The seemingly simplistic categorization of ELT teachers into either classification of NS or NNS inherently ranks the NS characterization as superior. Non-native English language teachers, learners, and administrators have been conditioned to have low self-efficacy and feel inferior by the type of discourses and practices they are exposed to. Like good is better than evil, right is better than wrong, native is better than non-native, these brands are encumbered with judgments. Therefore, NSs of English versus NNSs of English is a “power driven, identity laden, and confidence affecting” contrast (Davies, 1991, as cited in Liu, 1999, 85). Definitions of ‘native speaker’ have emphasized traits such as birth, heredity, and innateness of linguistic qualities (Mahboob, 2011). Additionally, there is an abstracted notion of an idealized native speaker of English from which ethnic and linguistic minorities are automatically excluded (Leung, Harris & Rampton, 1997). Therefore, notions of “Native English Speaker” are associated with marginalization and ‘othering’ based on race, linguistic variety, and skin color. One source of such ‘othering’ could be seen in the discourse on the website of ELIC (English Language Institute/China), an organization that yearly sends Christian teachers, mainly from the United States, to teach English in Chinese universities across the country. Apart from clearly supporting a simple argument about the superiority of English, this website’s view of the richness of English also ascribes certain qualities to native speakers of English - the idea that native English speakers are role models who have the power to influence and save the narrow-minded. Native speakers are portrayed as superior not only because of their knowledge of the English language, but because of certain higher inherent qualities granted to them as native speakers of English. Consider the following excerpt taken from recruitment messages, which appeared on the ELIC website in April 2004: ELIC (English Language Institute/China) first broke ground in 1982 by sending our first team of teachers into China . . . . Your passion to serve these people and bring them excellence in the English language will provide opportunity for you to influence each individual, one life at a

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Chapter One time. Deep within China’s Himalayan frontier . . . the English language is revered. . . . You’ll provide these students with a language they so desire to learn and a hope they so passionately seek . . . (emphasis added)

These writings produce discourse of Self and Other and construct speakers of English from the native speaker/non-native speaker dichotomy and subscribing a lower status to one versus the other. When examining job ads posted for English language teachers, the above assertions are corroborated. Two examples are shared below: International ESL Jobs EQuest Company (www.equest.edu.vn) 22 July 2008 email: Job posting: Job description: …..... Requirement: …..... Salary: The salary is based on the degrees, teaching certificates, teaching experiences, how long you commit to work, results of the TOEFL IBT tests (2) taken at the company and the trial sessions. Salary is paid on the last day of the calendar month. Teacher from US, England, Australia, Canada: 1200-1500 USD/month Teacher from India, The Philippines, South Africa and countries where people are bilingual: 700-1000 USD/month This posting email explicitly privileges NES teachers from the ‘inner circle’ countries. The bilingual speakers of English, no matter their language proficiency, added linguistic resources, pedagogical knowledge or qualifications, are discriminated against by being offered less salary. These discriminatory discourse and practices is strong in both the nativeEnglish speaking and the non-English speaking countries and is shared by both expatriate and local program administrators. As discussed above, in hegemonic practices the supremacy of English is often unquestioned and taken to be an obvious matter of common sense (Eslami,2013). The dominated group assumes that certain ideas and discursive positions are natural and universal (Gramsci, 1971). In many cases, especially in non-English speaking countries, this power structure leads to hiring practices in language schools that privilege native-English speakers over non-native speakers, even if a native speaker has no English language teaching credentials. The assumption that native speakers provide the best models and serve as the best teachers has been labeled the “native speaker myth”. The notion of a native speaker is

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further tied in with issues of racism in English language education. For a ELT paradigm shift to occur, research, publication and critical pedagogy that eradicate the NS/NNS dichotomy need to be established. There is no intrinsic relationship between ‘nativeness’ and ability and authority of English, yet these binary labels are influential and impact the identity of the NNEST (Non-native English Speaking Teachers). The differential treatment given to native and non-native English speakers results in discriminatory hiring practices and pay scales. In addition to dichotomizing NESTs (Native English Speaking Teachers) and NNESTs, there are other cultural and political agendas that privilege NESTs. One of these is the relationship between English and Christianity (Mahboob, 2011). The role of Christianity in the spread of English language is discussed in the next section.

Christianity and the Spread of English Language Discourses of Christianity have been strongly entangled in the field of English language teaching. These links go back to the times of colonization. The non-Christian world was seen as a barbarous place that needed to be saved and rescued from their imminent doom (Mahboob, 2011). As submitted by Hixon (2008), Christianity has been central to the spread of Euro-American values and languages worldwide. Christianity is also at the heart of the Myth of America, the view that the USA has a Godgiven right to spread its values worldwide by military and economic force (cited by Phillipson 2008b). Missionaries believed that the study of English could pave the way for Christianity by allowing other people to grasp the key concepts of the Christian worldview and enabling them to read the English Bible and other religious materials in their original form. English language training was viewed as the path of least resistance through which to bring the hearts and minds of people to God. Others promoted English as a way to introduce Western ideas to the world to undermine “backward” traditions. Thus, from the beginning, English language instruction was used to save the savages by converting them to Christianity, replacing their native languages with English (Rafael, 2000). However, the spread of English was not only based on moral values; economic aspirations were tightly connected to it. This missionary element in English language teaching is particularly important in understanding the discourses on English and how English as a “global” language is not a neutral phenomenon, but laden with colonial implications. Consider the

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following examples taken from different websites recruiting native English speaking language teachers and promoting English language teaching: It's your chance to impact two generations - shepherds and the sheep - with your language and life. We desire to educate and train superbly competent teachers of English, the global language of modernization and development, to enable those in developing countries to maximize their contribution to the holistic progress of society. (Source: English Language Institute China Website)

The discourse used above not only asserts the superiority of English; it also promotes the idea that native English speakers are role models who have the power to influence and save the unenlightened. Mahboob (2011, 51-52) cites several other English teacher recruitment advertisements to illustrate these organizations do not require training in TESOL and the main qualifications listed for the jobs are being a believer in Jesus as Lord and Savior and a native speaker of American English. The concept of nativeness is tied to Christianity and shows how Christian native speakers are recruited to be sent abroad to enlighten the unenlightened.

Conclusion The teaching and learning of English in a third-world/postcolonial country is never a simple transparent process with clear-cut meanings and this complexity of English in cultures bespeaks the resilience of the ‘expanding circle’ countries (Mahboob, 2011; Kandiah, 2001; Robinson, 2009). English discourse and its use are heavily vested ideologically, affirming and legitimizing particular ways of seeing the world, forms of knowledge, and particular relations of power (Phillipson, 2008a and b). The legacy of English language teaching embedded in colonial relations defines and complicates the connection between local specificities and the global context of the hegemony of English. The rapid spread of English internationally has created a paradox. The language promoted as a liberating and equalizing force has furthered social, cultural, political, economic, and linguistic imbalance. Thus incorporating culturally and critically responsive instruction should be the paramount concern of educators because it is necessary to “unpack unequal distributions of power and privilege, and teach students . . . cultural competence about themselves and each other” (Gay, 2003, 181). The goal of education should be to benefit the public good. Therefore, universities should be accountable for supporting parallel language competencies and by instructing future educators that “language policy

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efforts need to be concentrated on diverse local language ecologies and maintaining a healthy balance between English and other languages” (Phillipson, 2008a, 7). Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (1996) advocate an ecology-of-language paradigm as proposed by Tsuda (1997). This paradigm can be viewed not as the antithesis of the diffusion-of-English paradigm, which focuses on capitalism and monolingualism, but rather the far end of the continuum on different language policy approaches. The ecology-of-language paradigm endorses: 1. a human rights perspective 2. equality in communication 3. multilingualism 4. maintenance of languages and cultures 5. protection of national sovereignties 6. promotion of foreign language education (Phillipson & SkutnabbKangas, 1996, p. 436) These paradigm characteristics should find their way not only into language policy decisions but also in classroom curriculum and instruction decisions. Language policy concerns might seem out of the sphere of a teacher’s control; however teachers can change perspectives by supporting additive rather than subtractive language learning and acceptance and inclusion of varieties of English. Often teachers are advised to promote an English only policy in the classroom, silencing the identity of the learner and ignoring research findings that show: a learner-centered position which prioritizes language learning objectives while simultaneously advocating the exclusive use of the target language is untenable. The majority of current pedagogical thought holds that optimal L1 use can enhance and support L2 learning as well as contributing to the development of multilingual and multicultural language learner identities (Rivers, 2011, 104).

As suggested by Eslami (2013), in order to promote multilingualism and preserve vibrant local cultures and languages, it is of essence to have governmental, non-governmental, international, and nationally based concerted efforts and appropriate policies. Supporting bilingualism in the classroom will encourage a debunking of the majority of “the monolingual fallacy, the native speaker fallacy, the early start fallacy, the maximum exposure fallacy, the subtractive fallacy” (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000, 37), all currently endorsed by the TESOL community. Continuing multilingualism will not only support the learners’ identity, but also the identity of the

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bilingual speaker of English teacher. Seidlhofer (1996) posits that “native speakers know the destination, but not the terrain that has to be crossed to get there: they themselves have not travelled the same route” (70), thus bilingualism should be viewed as a benefit not a liability. Additionally, Seidlhofer maintains that too often “in communicative language teaching, the emphasis has tended to be on the target competence of the learner, but not on the pedagogic competence the teacher needs to have in order to facilitate learning” (1999, 237). Learners can only flourish under the guidance and tutelage of well-trained and qualified educators that endorse culturally and linguistically responsive curriculum. Furthermore, ethics regarding the spread of English has a place in language teacher training and education. Ignoring the fundamental role ethics play in language policy and teaching only promotes linguicism and linguistic imperialism. Linguicism and linguistic imperialism need to be resisted with vigilance and awareness. Supporting an ecology-of-language paradigm as well as “consider[ing] which agents promote or constrain English and for what purposes” (Phillipson, 2008b, 251) will elevate the TESOL field and equip learners to be critical thinkers aware of the power and privilege of English.

References Ammon, U. (2000). Towards more fairness in international English: linguistic rights of non-native speakers? in Phillipson, R. (Ed), Rights th

to Language, Equity, Power, and Education: Celebrating the 60 Birthday of Tove Skutnabb-Kangas. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 111-16. Canagarajah, S. (2007). The ecology of global English. International Multilingual Research Journal, 1(2) 89-100. Crystal, D. (1997). English as a global language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edge, J. (2003). Imperial troopers and servants of the lord: A vision of TESOL for the 21st century. TESOL Quarterly, 37, 701-709. Eslami. Z. R. (2013) Ethical Issues in the Spread of English as a Global Language: Is the Spread of English a Cure or a Curse? In H. Bashir, P.W. Gray, and E. Masad (Eds).Co-Existing in a globalized World: Key Themes in Inter-Professional Ethics (pp. 135-147). Lexington Books Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53, 106-116.

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Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. International Publishers. Hixson,W. L. (2008). The myth of American diplomacy. National identity and U.S. foreign policy. New Haven: Yale University Press. Jenkins, J. (2006). The spread of EIL: A testing time for testers. ELT Journal, 60, 42-50. Jenkins, Jennifer (2009) World Englishes: a resource book for students, 2nd edition, London, UK, Routledge. Kandiah, T. (2001). Whose meanings? Probing the dialectics of English as a global language. In R. Goh, et al., (Eds.) Ariels – departures and returns: a Festschrift for Edwin Thumboo. Singapore (pp.102-121) Oxford University Press. Leung, C., Harris, R., & Rampton, B. (1997). The idealised native speaker, reified ethnicities, and classroom realities. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 543 560. Liu, L. (Ed.). (1999). Tokens of exchange: The problems of translation in global circulations. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McKay SL. (2002). Teaching English as an International Language: Rethinking Goals and Approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mahboob, A. (2011) English: The industry. Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies. 2(4), 46-61. Modiano, M. (2004). Monoculturalization and language dissemination. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 3(3), 215-227. Pennycook, A. (2000). English, politics and ideology. In T. Ricento (Ed.), Ideology, politics and language policies (pp.107-120). Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. —. (2010). Language as a Local Practice. London, England: Routledge. Phillipson, R. (2008a). The linguistic imperialism of neoliberal empire. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 5/1, 2008, 1-43. —. (2008b). Lingua franca or lingua frankensteinia? English in European integration and globalisation. World Englishes, 27(2), 250-284. Phillipson, R. & Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1996). English only worldwide or language ecology. TESOL Quarterly, 30 (3), 429-452. Rafael, V. (2000). White Love and Other Events in Filipino History. Durham: Duke University Press. Rivers, D. J. (2011). Politics without pedagogy: Questioning linguistic exclusion. ELT Journal, 65, 103-113. Robison, R. (2009). Truth in Teaching English. In M. Wong & S. Canagarajah (Eds.) Christian and Critical English Language Educators in Dialogue: Pedagogical and Ethical Dilemmas. New York: Routledge. Seidlhofer, B. (1996). ‘It is an undulating feeling . . . ‘:

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The importance of being a non-native teacher of English. Views 5 (12), 63-80. Seidlhofer, B. (1999). Double standards: Teacher education in the expanding circle. World Englishes, 18, 233-245. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education - or worldwide diversity and human rights? Mahwah, New Jersey & London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Tollefson, J. (2000). Policy and ideology in the spread of English. In J K Hall and W Eggington (Eds) The sociopolitics of English language teaching (pp. 7-20). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Teodorescu, A. (2010). Multiple perspectives on English as an international language. Petroleum - Gas University of Ploiesti Bulletin, Philology Series, 62(2), 75-80. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Tsuda, Y. (1997). Hegemony of English vs. Ecology of Language: Building equality in international communication. In L. E. Smith & M. L. Forman (Eds.), World Englishes 2000: Selected essays (pp. 21–31). Honolulu, HI: College of Language, Linguistics and Literature, University of Hawaii and the East-West Center.

CHAPTER TWO GLOBALIZATION AND MULTICULTURALISM: A LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE VIVEK KUMAR DWIVEDI

Salman Rushdie (1991) asserts: “A full migrant suffers, traditionally, a triple disruption: he loses his place, he enters into an alien language, and he finds himself surrounded by beings whose social behavior and codes are very unlike, and sometimes even offensive to his own. And this is what makes migrants such important figures because roots, language and social norms have been three of the most important parts of the definition of what it is to be human being. The migrant, denied all three, is obliged to find new ways of describing himself, new ways of being human”. Language change may be thought of as having internal (intra-systemic), external (contact-based) and extra-linguistic (socio-political and economic) motivations (Farrar & Jones 2002). The interaction between migration and language is intricate, however quite transparent. Essentially, migration leads to language or dialect contact, and is, undeniably, the prime cause of such contact. It can be deduced that the relocation of people is a major cause of contact-induced change; in other words, migration is an elementary extra linguistic factor leading to externally-motivated change. In every case of migration, except where a homogeneous group of people moves to an isolated location, language or dialect contact succeeds (Thomason & Kaufman 1988, Trudgill 1986). Migration also has extensive bearings for the social fabric of the three communities affected: the society of origin, the society of destination, and the migrants themselves (Lewis 1982). Migration has intense sociolinguistic imports, as it invariably transforms the demographic balance of the sending and receiving populations (migrants are usually young and economically active), and as the migrants are relocated from acquainted social and sociolinguistic set-ups, an ethnolinguistic marginalized community, which has to relate sociolinguistically to a different ‘host’

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speech community, is, in due course, transformed by their arrival (Kerswill 1994). A language with an official sanction in more than one third of the world would certainly have a status of Global language. Books, magazines, and newspapers written in English are available in many countries around the world, and English is the most commonly used language in the sciences. This increasing use of the English language globally has impacted many other languages, leading to language shift, to claims of linguistic imperialism and even to language death. Charles Ferguson in his Foreword to the First Edition of The Other Tongue observes: “Frequently conferences are conducted in English (and their proceedings published in English) when only few of the participants are native speakers. At such conferences the English spoken shows variance with the English of England but shared by other speakers (Kachru1992)”. Kachru asserts that the spread of English, and its espousal across cultures and languages, should be reassuring for societies that believe bilingualism (or multilingualism) is an aberration. In fact, acquiring and maintaining another language has been a normal activity, and monolingualism is not an ideal state. Other cultures are better appreciated and understood through other tongues. Mahatma Gandhi’s avowal seems to support Kachru’s conviction: “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any” (Gandhi 2008). English is presently the predominant language on a global scale, it is quite intriguing to analyze the power politics attached to the spread of this language. David Crystal in his book raises the issue: It has all happened so quickly. In 1950, any notion of English as a true world language was but a dim, shadowy, theoretical possibility…. Fifty years on, and World English exists as a political and cultural reality. How could such a dramatic linguistic shift have taken place, in less than a lifetime? (Crystal 1997)

Crystal (1997) candidly explains why English has become an international language. The dominance of English is due to power of various types. He looks to history, to the Latin and the Roman Empires, to help explain the present: Latin became an international language throughout the Roman Empire …not because the Romans were more numerous than the peoples they subjugated. They were simply more powerful. …when Roman military

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power declined, Latin remained for a millennium as the international language of education, thanks to a different sort of power— the ecclesiastical power of Roman Catholicism. There is the closest of links between language dominance and cultural power…. Without a strong power-base, whether political, military or economic, no language can make progress as an international medium of communication. Language has no independent existence, living in some sort of mystical space apart from the people who speak it. Language only exists in the brains and mouths and ears and hands and eyes of its users. When they succeed, on the international stage, their language succeeds. When they fail, their language fails (Crystal 1997).

According to Crystal the key to the recognition and the success of a language is plain, as he indicates: The history of a global language can be traced through the successful expeditions of its soldier/sailor speakers. And English…has been no exception. But international language dominance is not solely the result of military might. It may take a militarily powerful nation to establish a language, but it takes an economically powerful one to maintain and expand it (Crystal 1997).

Kachru (1992) believes that the association of worldly power or religious sanctity with the spread of other tongues voices only part of the story. There have always been linguistic romanticists, representing various disciplines, who have seen the limitations of a culture-bound natural language as a universal language. In their view— and rightly so— a natural language always possesses cultural and language affinities. Though English, or for that matter any other language, is conditioned by context of situation and communicative universality cannot be claimed for any language, and despite the fact that English has been more liberal in assimilating variations in phonology, orthography, expressions, etc. than many languages it came into contact with, which is evident from the terms such as African English Literature, Indian English writing, etc. which separate these writings not only in the geographical sense but also in terms of contents, forms, and sensibilities, this much can be said with a degree of certainty that it has been the language of the colonizer not only in the political sense, but also in the fact that, like all other cultural aspects namely clothes, festivals, etc. it has effected change in the languages of the colonized much more than it received their influence. The result, therefore, is that English is largely no longer alien to non-native speakers in the former British colonies, though sometimes distinct terms such as Indian English or African English are used to refer to it. The same does not hold

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good for any language of the colonized. An Indian language remains alien to the British despite their being in contact for quite a long period, though the British were lesser in number who directly came in contact with Indian languages. It is the English hegemony that directed the third world, first through direct rule and then through market forces and globalization. Thus it is not the contact that defines the direction of change, but the nature of contact. For instance, when the British lived in India English became the language of the elite Indian and then occupied the place of a contact language between different regions. The rulers did not have to learn and speak the native language, but the ruled must speak the language of the masters, as it was now the passport to success. The rulers, ‘while in Rome’, did not have to ‘do as Romans do’. In the process it made its way into local languages. And the process continues. Today if an illiterate unskilled Indian is talked to for five minutes and the speech is recorded, the talk will have quite many English words, such as bus, mobile, rail, paper, mug, cup, etc. which have become ‘common’. The language of the rapidly rising middle class as reflected in newspapers, films, and other media bears the evidence of the overarching influence of the former masters, stretching from the colonial to the post-colonial period. If this is taken into consideration from a different angle, the case is not vice versa. Migrants from commonwealth countries residing with native speakers in England have to speak English, have to ‘do as Romans do’ and the change in the language they carried from their homelands gets a direction. It will receive a disproportionate influence of the local language. To them it seems desirable, perhaps. And their language remains an alien language to the native population, as it has no attraction in terms of economic prospects in comparison to what English has become, the global language. It seems to be an extension of the colonial period. English has attained its status from a minor language in the 16th century to an international language. A comparison between its place today with how John Dryden described it in 1693 makes it more visible as to what extent English has diffused and replaced other languages, gaining an edge over them. Dryden said: “We have yet no prosodia, not so much as a tolerable dictionary, or a grammar, so that our language is in a manner barbarous” (Baugh & Cable 1978). Kachru (1992) attributes it to political, social, and technological reasons, not to linguistic ones. The fact remains that all the languages of human communication have the potential, in terms of communicative usability, of becoming an international contact language, as they all are primarily based on human nature and understanding which is universal.

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English, too, has been subjected to change and today we have different Englishes, such as American English, Indian English, Singaporean English, African English, etc. It has always been desirable, as the public and missionary schools taught, to imitate and conform to the patterns of Standard British English, but cultural, geographical, and linguistic factors contributed to the change in English resulting in different types of the language, though not very far from the original practiced by the native speakers. What is important here is again the political condition. English has been Indianized, Africanized, Caribbeanized, and has become an indispensable part of the respective national traditions, has been in use as an official language, and has taken a pride of place, but these types are confined to these nations. The native British English is largely untouched by them. On the other hand the American English, clearly owing to American supremacy over the world order and consequently over the markets, have made its way into Britain. At the beginning even in the US, loyalty to the British English model existed, but eventually they declared what can be termed as linguistic emancipation resonating the political struggle (Kachru 1986). Now unlike other forms of nativized English in different nations, the American influence is visible if looked at merely superficially. The conversation of the British today has phrases and expressions considered to be of American origin. I wouldn’t know, let’s face it, as simple as that, by and large, right now, way over, consult with, baby-sitter, round-trip, to have a chip on one’s shoulder, to scrape the bottom of the barrel, out on a limb are just a few examples. The intrusion of American English as of Americanism in other walks of life is welcomed by the new generation. Here too, political and economic supremacy rules. Americanized English is more acceptable than its Indianized or Africanized versions. They remained confined to where they got transformed. Kachru (1992) looks into how languages are transformed under the influence of another language: The vision of another tongue evokes the memories of language being used as powerful— sometimes ruthless— instrument for religious and cultural subjugation and for colonialization. There are elevated (standard) and not so elevated (pidgin) varieties for local commerce, international trade, and even for political maneuvering. In the past the other tongues (as imposed or non-imposed languages) have been associated with majestic empires (e.g., Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Latin, Persian, Sanskrit). In our own time Dutch, English, French, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese have been used, in varying degree, as the tongues of colonizers. A language has often been used as a tool for unifying a nation, for establishing political boundaries, and for creating dissent.

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India has been a witness to many cases of language contact resulting in a two-way linguistic impact, of one more on the other. The most tangible contacts are those between Indo-Aryan languages with the Dravidian languages, between Persian and Indian languages, and between English and Indian languages. The Indo-Aryan languages, Persian, and English are same in that they were the languages practiced by the conquerors, and thus were epistatic. These imposed languages, by virtue of their high place in the hierarchy in terms of prestige as the rulers’ language, soon acquired the central place, despite being the languages of ruling minorities. Despite some resistance by linguistic purists to linguistic borrowing, Hindi and Urdu have been Englishized much more than English could be Indianized to suit the local needs. Scholars like Bahri suggest that the attitude of resistance toward English is not identical to the earlier attitude of the Hindi belt toward Persian when it was introduced as the language of the elite and of administration (Kachru 1986). Now it seems easier to use English words in Hindi or Urdu and the equivalents in these languages sound difficult chiefly because of being archaic and no longer in use. There has also been an effort to enable Hindi to have similar functional range as English. This could be possible by borrowing from English, which is the language of technology, of markets, and of inventions. Kachru (1986) has listed a few excerpts from a medical register in Hindi which demonstrate that Hindi has been so Englishized that English words sound more homely than Hindi words. (i)

ƗpreĞan (operation) thiyetar (theatre) mƟ sar‫ۥ‬an (surgeon) tathƗ enasthetist (anaesthetist) kƯ tƯm(team) bilkul saha‫ ۥ‬tathƗ tanƗv rahit rahne kƯ koĞiĞ kartƯ hai. (ii) hƗrt (heart) ke þembar (chamber) se dnjsrƯ taraph ek kamynjnikeĞan (communication) þanel (channel) hotƗ hai. This influence of English is more visible in news media. Lexical borrowings, hybridization, and Hindi expressions taken from English as loan translations have a high frequency because news in Hindi is translated from the main source, which is English. Earlier the translation was more puritan, but globalization has made it acceptable to the middle class to digest Englishized translations. The following headlines are telling examples: (i) bajat (budget) sƯmƗ kƗ nayƗ rikƗrd (record) (ii) viĞwa kap (cup) hockey tnjrnƗment (tournament) (iii) vipakĞa dvƗrƗ wƗk-Ɨot (walkout)

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(iv) dilars (dealers), tathƗ kamiĞan ejents (commission agents) kƯ ƗvyaĞyaktƗ hai (Kachru 1986). English has its continued influence on the native languages in the former colonies. Besides, there is now another dimension of this influence. People from these countries have migrated to the West, especially the UK and the USA, which they see as the land of hope and promise. These immigrants have to adopt English, the national language of their destination. The acquisition of English as their second language is influenced by several factors such as: conditions in the country of origin and in the country of settlement, the presence and size of an ethnic community and— in particular— individual and family living conditions. An immigrant’s age, length of stay, and language skills are predominantly significant factors. A higher level of education enhances second language acquisition. On the other hand, the linguistic distance between the first language and the language to be acquired, and cultural prejudices adversely affect the second language acquisition by immigrants. A high level of ethnic concentration in the host country encourages communication in the language of origin and hampers second language acquisition. Some pockets with a very high concentration of one ethnic group have media publications too. This denies them the opportunity to learn another language, which otherwise they would be compelled to. A general leaning towards monolingual assimilation has been observed across generations of immigrants throughout the world whereas proficient bilingualism, command over the language of origin and the language of the country of settlement, is rare. The cause for this is that the environment that is favorable to the acquisition of second language is generally hostile to the preservation of the native language and vice versa. Therefore, it can be deduced that if the immigrant enters in an advanced age, the chances of his retaining his mother tongue are greater whereas the chances of his acquisition of the language of the country of his settlement are lesser. Phillipson (1992) recognizes an imperialistic ploy in the spread of English Language in his book Linguistic Imperialism: . . . imperialism theory provides a conceptual framework within which English linguistic imperialism, the dominance of English worldwide, and efforts to promote the language can be understood. Scientific imperialism, media imperialism, and educational imperialism are all sub-types of cultural imperialism. So is linguistic imperialism. Linguistic imperialism also permeates all the other types of imperialism, since language is the means used to mediate and express them. Each is a theoretical construct forming part of imperialism as a global theory which is concerned with the

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Chapter Two structural relations between rich and poor countries and the mechanisms by which the inequality between them is maintained. Each type overlaps and interweaves with the others and must be seen as aspect of imperialism as an over-arching world structure.

Phillipson (1992) tries to link his concept of linguistic imperialism with a number of other “isms” including racism, sexism, capitalism, and imperialism (of at least six types). He proposes a new word: linguicism. Linguicism, is intended to bear and encapsulate how varying isms are echoed and used in the English language when it is employed as a tool of imperialism. Colonialism is a system of rules which assumes the right of one people to impose their will upon another. This must inevitably lead to a situation of dominance and dependency which will systematically subordinate those governed by it to the imported culture in social, economic and political life. Britain justified its colonial expansion agenda on the grounds that they are a group of traders and they have a missionary goal of civilizing the native population. When somebody undertakes the charge of civilizing a local population, the claimant has to put up an exemplary show. They have to establish that they have a superior culture. Language being an inseparable part of their culture, the British had to make the colonized unlearn their own language and make them learn the language of the superior culture. The English language is obviously associated with the British people, and in a colony such as in India it is looked at as alien. However, Narasimhaiah (1968) sees it as a distinct instrument in the promotion of Indian national interests: A time may . . . come when we can speak of Indian English as they do of American English, Australian or African English. For the term ‘English’ is no longer restricted to the language spoken in the British Isles, but denotes a wide variety of English, wherever it is spoken and however well or illspoken.

Narasimhaiah was a crusader for the English language. He was against certain British ways and institutions, like the British Council, no doubt, but he always believed that the English language could not be considered as one of the other institutions of British imperialism that were employed for subjugation of the colonized. He had tremendous faith in the English language and he was always the one who believed that the best way of acquiring it was through English literature. Spivak strangely shares some of Narasimhaiah’s views on the necessity of English. Pointing out that

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English is a practical necessity for all nationalistic seminars, conventions and conferences, Narasimhaiah says that even when Indians have a dig at the use of English, favoring another of India’s fourteen languages, they know that English is the only language in which they can communicate nationally (Narasimhaiah 1968). He further states that there is hardly a learned journal, of national standing, that can do without English. Even the journal published by the Sahitya Akademy, to promote Indian languages, uses English as its medium. Quoting Gokhale, Narasimhaiah (1968) points out that the nationalist leader could see how the English language could link up, say a Bengali with a Maharashtrian, through English translations. Whereas “the contact of the West with other countries had only been external, in India, the West had, so to say, entered the very bone and marrow of the East.” Narasimhaiah (1968) sees nothing wrong if Indians use the English language with a difference, or even inadequacy. The question about the English language has occurred to Spivak as well and she has spoken of it like Narasimhaiah has, though the import of both is quite different from each other. According to Spivak (2004): Indeed, the question of the old imperialisms and the new empire is itself different if uncoupled from high-culture radicalism. While I was working on this manuscript, I was also looking at the Report of the Mayor’s Task Force on the City University of New York, undertaken in 1998. The question before us was “What is English? Literary Studies in a Public Urban University.”

Spivak (2004) then goes on to suggest that sitting in a class in the New York University that has several nationals including black, Hispanic, and Asian, “you perceive the institutional incapacity to cope with the crossroads of race, gender and class— even when the teacher has the best will in the world— to come to grips with the actual play of the choice of English as a tongue in the imagination of these working-class new immigrant survival artists.” From this statement of Spivak, it is clear that she, too, like Narasimhaiah before her, links up the issues of the English language with imperialism. Narasimhaiah was ardently opposed to derivativeness and he promoted originality even in the use of the language: There is an additional risk . . . of standard English degenerating into stereotyped writing, inhibiting in the process the creativity of the writer, whereas by deviating from Standard English he stands a good chance of scoring his triumphs by neutralising or taming the conventional structure and syntax, igniting the cliché and playing with intonational contours. And this phenomenon, if one may say so, is in contrast to the French colonial attitude which, as Leopold Senghor alleges, ‘emptied the African of his

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Kachru (1992) contends that those are legitimate varieties of English that merit description and valuation independently from metropolitan norms and standards. It is difficult to appreciate their linguistic trait and social purposes unless we deliberate on the social and linguistic context, in which they emerged, developed and continue to exist. Rather than handling them as ‘imperfect’ or ‘improper’ versions of ‘true’, i.e. native, varieties of English, English Language teaching worldwide, needs to offer them full attention in order to combat the linguistic discrimination of their speakers and to decolonize English. Phillipson (1992) and Pennycook (1998) engage in a slightly different approach. They explore the factors that made English the world’s most dominant language. In his book Linguistic Imperialism, Phillipson examines colonial and post-colonial policies aimed at promoting English. He demonstrates that the rise of English was not fortuitous but has been cautiously engineered. Monetary incentives from the UK and the USA, Euro-centric research on language learning in the UK and the USA, and colonial and post-colonial educational policies supported by local elites have done much to promote and to spread (certain forms of) English. Phillipson’s conviction seems to get support from Hobson’s quote in his book Imperialism: A Study: Probably everyone would agree that an Englishman would be right in considering his way of looking at the world and at life better than that of the Maori or Hottentot, and no one will object in the abstract to England doing her best to impose her better and higher view on those savages. . . Can there be any doubt that the white man must and will impose his superior civilisation on the coloured races? (Hobson 1902)

Pennycook (1998) scrutinizes the cultural discourses of colonialism. In his book English and the Discourses of Colonialism, he exposes how the cultural and economic activities of the colonizers played a vital role in influencing the representation of the other, e.g. Indian culture. Colonizers adopted a way of cautiously fabricating negative discourses about the Other, that, covertly or overtly, helped in conveying their representation in positive light. These colonial dichotomies or constructs have had as much an effect on the representation of the colonized as on the colonizers’ culture. Pennycook maintains that the colonial discourse around English

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and English culture or Anglicism and orientalism may have been engaged to rationalize colonial and imperial economic activities but these discursive aspects about the superiority of the former and the inferiority of the latter are not “mere reflexes of the material domain” (Pennycook 1998). He further upholds that the material exploitation of the colonies and the associated scientific, religious and cultural activities of the colonizers are essentially a manifestation of these discourses. They undoubtedly aggressively endorsed and furthered them, however, they did not bring about these discourses. They are “fundamental aspects of European culture that may predate colonialism and certainly have outlived its formal end” (Pennycook 1998). He further maintains: “At the very least, there is a reciprocal relationship here, with cultures and ideologies both enabling and being generated by colonialism” (Pennycook 1998). Calvet (1987) categorizes the two steps involved in linguistic colonization as ‘vertical step’ and ‘horizontal step’. The first one denotes to the social expansion of the language. The European language first spread into the ‘upper classes’ of the colonized people (those near or representing the colonial power) and was only then spread among members of the ‘lower classes’. The second one encompasses its geographic spread. The colonial language is dispersed from the capital to small cities and from there to villages. The colonizers put in much effort, mainly through the education system, on infusing this asymmetrical social ideology in the colonized population but it was also relentlessly being reaffirmed and generated by a range of other social and linguistic practices. Calvet (1974) opines that the colonial language hierarchy safeguarded the interest of the European Languages by making sure that the European and local languages influenced each other differently. The languages of the colonized populations, generally borrowed a substantial amount of lexical material from the colonial language. In the British colonies, education was in the beginning only obtainable by a small number of people and schools were largely run by missionaries and private persons. In India, the availability of education to larger masses started from about 1823, but the implementation of this procedure could not be accelerated until the middle of that century for lack of funds and infrastructure (Pennycook 1998). It was only after the 1854 Despatch (Despatch from the Court of Directors of the East Indian Company, to the Governor General of India in Council (No. 49, dated 19 July 1854)) that an Education Department and other educational facilities including regular supervision were established in India. From this point on, the government saw it as its moral duty to facilitate education. The government said: “It is one of our most sacred duties to be the means, as far as in us lies, of

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conferring upon the natives of India those vast moral and material blessings which flow from the diffusion of useful knowledge, and which India may, under Providence, derive from her connexion with England” (1845, 87). But the government also pursued clear economic interests: [We] will teach the native of India the marvellous results of the employment of labor and capital, rouse them to emulate us in the development of the vast resources of their country, guide them in their efforts and gradually, but certainly, confer upon them all the advantages which accompany the healthy increase of wealth and commerce; and, at the same time, secure to us a larger and more certain supply of many articles necessary for our manufactures and extensively consumed by all classes of our population, as well as an almost inexhaustible demand for the produce of British labor (1845).

After 1854, funding was therefore made available to schools that conformed to governmental regulations (Pennycook 1998). Little effort was made to expand the education system to cover all subjects and/or to open up all levels of education to all pupils because skilled positions were generally reserved for Europeans and colonial governments were notoriously fearful of indigenous opposition and unrest. The colonial enterprise only required people for limited vocations such as clerks, translators and administrators who were able to function in English. It was presumed that general learning of English by the masses would needlessly inspire an ambition of achieving such positions when, in fact, they were not available. Colonial educators also argued that an English medium education would undermine the effectiveness of education. People would be disintegrated from the cultural context and would become a danger to British rule. [I]f ‘the study of the English language is forced upon a very large class of students for whom the Government is unable to provide employment’, there is the danger that such people, ‘becoming unfit for their own natural and hereditary professions, remains discontented and disloyal members of the community’(Pennycook 1998, 91). Learning the colonizer’s language was a ladder to advance socially and become a contender for a public position. The colonial linguistic hierarchy was enabled by and also generated or reaffirmed by dominant European conceptions of European and non-European culture and language (Pennycook 1998). These conceptions are clearly reflected in the discourse surrounding European and non-European culture and language. “Simply put, from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century Europeans developed a view of the world in which different people could be divided into so-called ‘races’ and that these races differed in terms of various mental and

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physical characteristics” (Pennycook 1998, 51). These differences were expressed by a set of dichotomies, the positive characteristics applying to European culture and people and the negative ones being assigned to its ‘natural’ opposite, the non-European. The colonizers were generally described as possessors of culture, history, intelligence, know-how while the colonized were seen as lacking in these vital characteristics (Pennycook 1998). In relation to language, this meant that designations such as ‘language’ which were intimately tied up with concepts such as ‘nation’, ‘culture’ and ‘power’ were reserved for the colonial languages. The indigenous languages, linked to tribes, ‘uncultured’ naturalness and lack of military power, were referred to by negative terms such as ‘dialect’, ‘vernacular’ and ‘patois’ implying their inferior status. Two of the most dominant labels in colonialist cultural mythology are tribe and dialect. They both express the way the dominant group differentiates itself from and denounces the dominated group. They therefore form part of an essentially racist ideology. The rule is that we are a nation with a language whereas they are tribes with dialects (Phillipson 1992). A comment by a Ugandan political scientist stresses the Eurocentric nature of terms: One might further ask what a tribe is. There was a time when the word possessed scientific content, when it characterized social formations that did not possess a state structure— the communal, classless societies, as, for example, the Germanic tribes. Today, however, every single ethnic group in Africa is referred to as a tribe regardless of the nature of its social development. What is that makes 2 million Norwegians a people and just as many Baganda a tribe? A few hundred thousand Icelanders a people and 14 million Hausa-Fulanis a tribe? There is only one explanation: racism (Mamdani 1976).

Colonial policies actively reshaped the linguistic makeup of many regions and implemented educational systems that were clearly geared to suit their own needs; they were mainly interested in instilling notions of European morality in their colonial subjects and at forming an easily available and cheap labor resource for their economic endeavors. Most regions found it hard to shed their colonial inheritance even after they gained political independence. Although the education system in most regions has been extended to cover an increasingly greater number of pupils, educational curricula, teaching methods and language policies have only been slowly adapted to these new challenges. Most people in developing countries still receive a highly inadequate education, if at all, and continue to be burdened by inequitable language policies.

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The language that one uses in public life or writes in for a wider reach is certainly indispensable to one's identity. Then a genuine question is how a language shapes our identity and to what extent? The debate whether authors from the erstwhile colonies should write in the language of the colonizers— English, French, Portuguese, etc. — or in their native languages is very much a part of the post-colonial discourse. Those who opposed the use of such languages see this as an extension of colonial hegemony, with the language as a tool for colonial imperialism. It is a fact that the native languages in many of the formerly colonized countries have been replaced, in schools, universities, government offices, and courts, by the languages of the erstwhile rulers, they have downgraded as inferior and the schools with native languages as a medium of instruction are, in public perception, looked down upon. Even for public discourse the colonizers' language is sometimes preferred at the cost of the local language. It is painful to the pedagogues who believe in the first language being the medium of school instructions, to those who see national glory in having their own language, and also to those who believe that it is only the native language that can afford to convey native experiences. However, there are many who support the use of non-native languages arguing that a nonnative language can be molded and adapted to suit local needs. Any language keeps going through changes even at its birthplace, so why can it not be altered and reworked for local purposes? But why to rework and adopt a foreign language when people already have a language which they can naturally be at home with and which can bear the weight of native experiences? It is said that using a global, instead of local, language offers a wider reach and a global audience. This serves a greater and more important purpose (Babel and Pentecost). Even within a country, if it is a large one, e.g. India, with a variety of regional languages, sometimes in competition with and opposed to one another, the non-native language links all the regional entities together, facilitates communication among them, and authors have far greater audience within the country that they would for their works in a native language confined to a region. "Mold" and "cloak" theories of speech deal with these and other related issues. "Mold" theories propound that it is our language, with its cognitive and emotional resources, that shapes our belief, while "cloak" theories underline that our thinking is partially regulated by language. The SapirWhorf hypothesis is one of the most talked about mold theories. This hypothesis assumes that our language conditions the way we describe our experiences and thus it also sets a frame through which we observe and perceive reality. The hypothesis in its strong form claims that our thought, behavior, and perspectives to interpret the world are determined by the

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language we speak, hear, and think in. If a language does not have a word for an idea, it is quite difficult for the speaker to conceive and appreciate that idea and communicate about it to others. For instance, in Arabic there is no word for democracy; and it can be said that the language may be one of the influences that has determined people's attitude towards democracy in the Arab world. Adopting voluntarily or forcibly a language other than your native language transforms you, at least to some extent. Change your language, and you change your outlook, worldview and interpretation, and thus your identity. Even in its weak form the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that using a different language gives a different tint to the world you see. Your world appears in a different shade, if not entirely changed or incommensurable to another (Babel and Pentecost). Though the term coined by Roland Robertson and then listed in the Webster’s English Dictionary in 1961, globalization can be traced to premodern times in the sense that colonization was its precursor or, to put it the other way round, globalization is only an extension of colonization in the postcolonial world. It has its roots in the 15th century, not in the 20th when it is believed to have started. The demand for a global economy has only accelerated the process (Kilminister 2012). The colonial policy of expansionism intended at subjugating the undeveloped countries in Asia and Africa enabled the European powers to expand their power and direct influence on these countries, which they believed were ‘steeped in their animistic beliefs’. Driven by the 3 G’s, i.e. gold, glory, and gospel, as it is sometimes referred to, they brought, along with them the system of law and order, administration, and judiciary, their culture, custom, and language which would establish their hegemony over the colonies. It is not difficult to see that Globalization serves the similar purposes that colonization had (Block and Cameron 2003). Since it is a multi-faceted phenomenon, it has been defined by many in different ways, such as by Jan Aart Scholte. Universalization, internationalization, deterritorialization, etc. are only euphemisms for Westernization, through which existing cultures in underdeveloped societies are replaced with the Western culture (Scholte 2005). Since the idea of globalization comes from the economically and politically powerful countries of the West, the former colonial masters of the East, many are skeptical and believe that it imposes the Western hegemony on the political, economic, social, cultural and other aspects of the people in the East. Thus, globalization is a subtle form of colonization which does not require the colonizer’s political control of the countries of their interests. Globalization seems to be capable of bringing about comprehensive transformation of a society. Every facet of life has been witnessing its

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impact, ranging from relationships and attitudes to planning and financial management. Language, too, is not immune to changes; it has never been. In the former colonies English had already occupied the pride of place, but since the opening up of economies effected by globalization, it has acquired the unchallenged singular position. Like the American Dollar is the currency for international trade even if America in not involved, English today has become the world language used for communication between inter-linguistic societies, and, as a result, other languages have lost currency as the language of international communication, even though they may be spoken by more people. For example, for diplomatic and business communication between China and India, English is used. If globalization is, as claimed, the growth of international exchange and interdependence, it falls short of explaining the reason behind one sided flow, rather than reciprocal exchange. Use of Hindi for communication between India and Britain or of Mandarin for communication between China and Britain is perhaps beyond imagination. Moreover, it is not the question of reciprocity that may explain a county’s greater influence in a mutual relationship because communication even between China, a major economic power, and say the Maldives, a tiny island, has to be in English. Linguistic imperialism has frequently followed in the wake of economic and political imperialism. The dominance of English in the world can be compared to that of a national language adopted by nation states, which does not allow other languages and dialects to flourish. The different national and regional languages have been under influence in yet another dimension. It is becoming inevitable to loan and absorb English words, expressions, pronunciation, construction, etc. South Asia is a typical example of this phenomenon. South Asian languages showcase such great level of borrowing from English that it is quite difficult to lead a normal life without some knowledge of English. It has penetrated not only informal communication between individuals, but also the mass media. Unlike what it was two decades ago, now it is usual for a Hindi newspaper to have pages with titles such as City Plus, Technology, Auto World, Multiplex, Lifestyle, etc. written in the Hindi (Devanagari) script. Electronic media, films, and TV shows exhibit a greater level of English influence. Hybrid compound words have secured their place in common life. Ironically, this ‘onslaught’ is welcomed and resented only by few traditionalists. At another level, this influence is reflected in word order and construction borrowed from English. Sabaahal Khair in Arabic and Shubh Prabhaat in Hindi are translations of Good Morning; Shab Bakhair in Urdu and Shubh Raatri in Hindi of Good Night. These are just a few examples

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of how English is spoken in translation. English style communication overshadows the traditional styles. Now it is more direct, aggressive, assertive, competitive, egalitarian, and gender equal. Mass media and education, directly controlled by the market forces, have been the agents of this linguistic imperialism. Learning English has become inevitable for the people in non-English speaking developing countries to survive and to grab job opportunities. The better you know English, the brighter prospects you have. This in turn has brought more English medium public schools and foreign universities. The governments in Malaysia, China, Saudi Arabia, and several others who are concerned about producing trained employable workforce and bringing down the unemployment rate were forced to implement English in their respective curricula. These countries had to get their school teachers trained in English or hire teachers from abroad and import huge quantities of teaching materials, books, and software solutions from the US or elsewhere in the West. Globalization has globalized the Western culture; it tends to westernize, or more precisely, North Americanize the world. Supremacy of English, cultural values, terms of business, market ethics, lifestyle, everything is virtually dictated by the US. The East uses American brands of clothes, operating systems, KFC, and Coca Cola, watches American movies, imbibes family values and defines relationships, plays computer games, and in the process, imports American culture as well. It is not that cultural influences are received with these products, for the US, too, is one of the biggest importers of goods, but not of culture. Chinese goods are seen everywhere in the US, but Chinese way of life only in the pockets where the Chinese live. It is, perhaps, because of the fact that the US dictates the world order, disseminates information and knowledge, and is ahead of others in technology. This unilateralism is also because of debtbondage to World Bank and IMF, hypercapitalism, and commodification of education. Despite economic liberalization, the reach of globalization was limited. But English language and rapid advancement of Information Technology have given access to every kind of information from anywhere and pulled down all the barriers. In the western world, globalization may lead to disappearance of borders, but since elsewhere many countries, particularly Muslim nations, are resisting, with partial success, the cultural onslaught and the pressure to conform to the Western values. It will certainly lead to hybridization of culture. South Asia does not seem to have made any conscious effort to resist the process. It will permeate deeper and the local cultures may be

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jeopardized resulting in mixedness with a greater Western influence on language and practical values.

References Babel and Pentecost—Post Colonial Languages, Identities, and Biblical Models, Retrieved from http://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/babellan.htm Baugh, Albert C. & Cable, Thomas. (1978). A History of the English Language, 3rd ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Block, D & Cameron, D. (2002). Globalization and Language Teaching. London: Routledge. Calvet, Louis-Jean. (1987). La guerre des Langues. Paris: Payot. —. (1974). Langue et colonialisme: petit traité de glottophagie. Paris: Payot. Crystal, D. (1997). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dwivedi, Vivek. (2010). The Other Truth: The Indian Discourse on Literary Theory. Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. Farrar, Kimberley & Jones, Mari C. (2002). “Introduction” In Mari C. Jones & Edith Esch (eds.), Contact Induced Language Change. The Interplay of Internal, External and Extra-linguistic Factors. Berlin New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Gandhi, Rajmohan. (2008). Gandhi: The Man, His People and the Empire. Berkeley & California: University of California Press. Hobson, J.A. (1902). Imperialism: A Study. UK: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Kachru, Braj B (Ed.). (1992). The Other Tongue: English across Cultures. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. — (1986). The Alchemy of English: The Spread, Functions, and Models of Non-Native Englishes. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kerswill, Paul. (1994). Dialects Converging: Rural Speech in Urban Norway. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kilminster, Richard. (2012). Sociological Revolution. London: Routledge. Lewis, Gareth. (1982). Human Migration: A Geographical Perspective. London/Canberra: Taylor & Francis. Mamdani, Mahmood. (1976). Politics and Class Formation in Uganda. Monthly Review Press: Heinemann. Narasimhaiah, C.D. (1968). The Swan and the Eagle: Essays on Indian English Literature. New Delhi: Vision Books. —. (1990). The Indian Critical Scene: Controversial Essays. Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corporation.

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Pennycook, Alastair. (1998). English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge. Phillipson, Robert. (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rushdie, Salman. (1991). Imaginary Homelands. London: Granta Books. Scholte, Jan Aart. (2005). Globalization: A Critical Introduction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. (2004). Death of a Discipline. Calcutta: Seagull Books. Thomason, Sarah & Kaufman, Terrence. (1988). Language Contact, Creolization and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Trudgill, Peter. (1986). Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

CHAPTER THREE CROSS-CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS FOR THE USE OF NEW ENGLISHES IN POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES ILLUSTRATIONS FROM WOLE SOYINK’S THE INTERPRETERS

FELLA BENABED

Through a rapprochement between linguistics and literature, this chapter attempts to show the ever-increasing fortune of New Englishes and New Literatures in English, which reflect the growing importance given to the peripheral cultures of erstwhile-colonized countries. These nonmainstream varieties are celebrated for their thematic and stylistic hybridity, as well as their substantial role in cross-cultural comprehension. The Interpreters (1965), written by Nigerian Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka, is one of the novels of “the periphery” which best illustrate the postcolonial “writing back” to “the centre” through the use of a hybrid form of the English language.

New Englishes in Linguistics The global diffusion of English started with the British imperial expansion in the seventeenth century, and it survived the mid-twentieth century independence movements, particularly for the status of the United States of America as a superpower. In the newly-independent countries, some leaders and intellectuals insisted on the use of native languages as part of the decolonization of minds. They failed, however, because in many of these countries, there are many ethnic groups with different vernaculars. English hence became the vehicular language not only in inter-ethnic interactions, but also in administration, education, journalism,

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and literature. It equally became, for some, a landmark of social status and intellectual distinction. Analyzing the relationship between dominant and dominated languages in his book entitled Linguistic Imperialism, Robert Phillipson states that English has an “intrinsic value” described by the British Council as the “invisible, God-given asset” of its native speakers’ power. It also has an “extrinsic value” characterized by its use in international interactions and its necessity for scientific achievements (1992, 144). In some academic circles, however, English is considered as a threat to linguistic diversity. David Crystal, for instances, argues that the global spread of English is endangering hundreds of languages across the globe while they are repositories of cultural diversity (1997, 17). To face this threat, Indian linguist Braj B. Kachru champions a kind of “liberation linguistics” through what he calls “World Englishes” or “New Englishes.” He believes that “the legacy of colonial Englishes has resulted in the existence of transplanted varieties of English having distinct linguistic ecologies— their own context of function and usage” (1995, 1). In other words, New Englishes have emerged from the translocation of the English language to new environments where it has adapted to the local conditions and needs. He conceives the cross-cultural reincarnations of English in terms of three concentric circles (see figure 3.1). In “the Inner Circle,” like in Great Britain, the USA, Canada, and Australia, English is the native language; it is norm-providing. In “the Outer Circle,” like in India, Nigeria, Hong Kong and Singapore, English is the second language; it is norm-developing. Finally, in “the Expanding Circle,” English is a foreign medium of international communication, and it is norm-dependent (1985, 12). It is worthy of note that the number of English speakers in some countries in the “Outer Circle” like India and in the “Expanding Circle” like China is much greater than the number of Native Speakers in the United Kingdom. In this regard, Henry G. Widdowson contends that “English is an international language . . . no nation can have custody over it” since this would “arrest its development and so undermine its international status” (1994, 385). Some purists, however, worry that English could splinter into different unintelligible languages through what is called a process of “indigenization,” “nativization,” or “domestication,” like Latin in the Middle Ages, which branched into Italian, French, Spanish, and so on. The “Kachru-Quirk debate” illustrates this linguistic controversy. On the one hand, Kachru refutes the argument that the varieties of English are symptoms of linguistic contamination, arguing that “the native speaker is not always a valid yardstick for the global uses of

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English” (1992, 358). On the other hand, Randolph Quirk calls for a “single monochrome standard form that looks as good on paper as it sounds in speech” (1985, 6), defending a form of English that is solely defined by its native speakers (mainly British and American). With Gabriele Stein, Quirk also proposes the concept of “Nuclear English,” a simplified Standard language for international communication, but the concept has not met academic acclaim.

Fig.3-1: B. B. Kachru’s Concentric Circles of English

New Englishes in Literature The use of former colonial languages like English is one of the most important issues in postcolonial literatures. In The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures, Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin assert that control over language is one of the main instruments of

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colonial domination. They believe that colonial education has established a “standard” form of “the metropolitan language as a norm, and marginalizes all ‘variants’ as impurities … Language becomes the medium through which a hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated, and the medium through which conceptions of ‘truth,’ ‘order,’ and ‘reality’ become established” (1989, 7). Hence, postcolonial literatures in English clearly reflect what Crystal calls “the conflict between intelligibility and identity” (1997, 134). Postcolonial writers share ambivalent attitudes towards the English language for, in their view, both its alienating and liberating potentials. While they feel the need to preserve their endangered mother tongues, they also need a widely used language to have a large readership. In Africa, for example, some writers have advocated the use of local languages as tools of communication and creativity. Wole Soyinka (1988) has proposed the use of Kiswahili as a pan-African language “to create a new unifying culture from the uneasy amalgam of diversified ones” (139), but he has not succeeded in making this proposal come true. Kenyan writer and theorist NgNJgƭ Wa Thiong’o is one of the strongest adherents to the separatist stance. In his Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, he expresses his “farewell to English as a vehicle” for his writings (1986, 177). He considers that writers should not perpetuate at the cultural level the very neo-colonialism they condemn at the economic and political levels. He asks postcolonial writers “to do for [their] languages what Spencer, Milton and Shakespeare did for English; what Pushkin and Tolstoy did for Russian; indeed what all writers in world history have done for their languages” (1986, 29). He particularly considers that colonial education used its language as a destructive weapon for local tongues; he equally believes that language was “the most important vehicle through which […] power fascinated and held the soul prisoner. The bullet was the means of the physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation” (1995. 287-88). For him, therefore, postcolonial writers need to heal the cultural sores of their continent by writing in their indigenous languages, as he does by writing in Gikuyu (a Kenyan vernacular language). He subsequently translates his works into English to get a wider readership. At the opposite position, Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe admits the colonial past of the English language, but asserts that in the postindependence period, it also has to play the historical role of a unifying force. He also believes that the postcolonial writer should not write as a native speaker does. He says, Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else’s? It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling. But

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Chapter Three for me there is no other choice. I have been given the language and I intend to use it. . . . I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit new African surroundings. (1975, 103)

Achebe admits his incapability to write in his mother tongue and hopes that there will be men, like Chief Fagunwa, who can write in their mother tongues to participate in the blooming of their ethnic literatures. In the same vein, Indian writer Raja Rao considers that “truth can use any language, and the more universal, the better it is” (qtd. in Kachru, 1995, 12). The postcolonial writer hence appropriates the former colonial language in a Promethean manner to transform the weapon of oppression into a weapon of resistance and emancipation. This counter-hegemonic discourse consists in multiplying the sources of inspiration, hybridizing languages and literary genres, as well as inserting oral passages within the fabric of the written text. The resulting aesthetic hybridity is quite common in world literatures, and essentially in minority literatures that displace major languages and paint them with local hues. The French language, for instance, is being subverted in francophone Caribbean and African literatures through the use of local Creoles and Pidgins as tools of artistic creation. In his Les soleils des indépendances (1970), for example, Ahmadou Kourouma from Ivory Coast, creates a hybrid text using the lexis of French and the syntax of Malinké (his mother tongue). The hybridization of the English language started early in the twentieth century with Irish writers like James Joyce and William Butler Yeast, who used a typical English tainted with Celtic imagery and mythology. African American writers like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison currently use in their fiction a specific type of English, African American Vernacular English. In a broader scope, English vocabulary gives an overview of the different historical periods that left their indelible traces on it, mainly AngloSaxon, Latin, and Norman. In African literatures, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) is considered as the landmark of Africanized European discourse with its distinctive use of proverbs, images, rhythms and syntactic turns from the Igbo vernacular language of the author. Yet, long before, Daniel Olorunfemi Fagunwa wrote novels in Yoruba, among which Soyinka translated The Forest of a Thousand Daemons in 1968. Amos Tutuola blended pre-colonial orality and colonial writing techniques in his two novels The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952) and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954). Another important example is Sozaboy: A novel in rotten English (1985) by Ken

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Saro-Wiwa who creates a form of language he calls “Rotten English,” i.e., formal and broken English, mixed with Nigerian Pidgin English. Other major illustrations of the use of New Englishes in postcolonial literatures are also found in Raja Rao’s novel Kanthapura (1938) and Gabriel Okara’s The Voice (1964), which hybridize English with local lexis and syntactic turns. Such writers believe that when English is used to carry a different reality, it needs to be freed from the shackles of its customary usage. It should, in their view, develop new rhythms and neologisms; it should likewise widen its symbolic scope to fit the imaginary realm of another culture. The resulting “interlanguage” is a hybrid form of indigenous orality and Western literacy. In the nineteenth century, the term “hybrid” was associated with the Eugenics movement; racist allegations to the superiority of the white race were appended by the belief that racial interbreeding would tarnish white purity and weaken its force. So was it that during slavery and colonialism, interracial offspring was considered physically and mentally inferior to both the race of the mother and the father, whence the expression of “tragic mulatto.” In modern biology, however, “hybridity” can either be a negative term, when a random crossbreeding creates abnormal beings, or a positive one, when a selective crossbreeding produces new and better varieties. Today, as almost all human beings are characterized by hybridity owing to the shared experiences of slavery and colonialism, the term has moved from a highly pejorative to positive use. It is increasingly considered that the power of positive hybridity can indeed deconstruct timeworn binary oppositions of master/slave, colonizer/colonized, civilized/savage, and all such stereotypical epithets. The movement of the term “hybrid” and its correlates from biology to the humanities owes much to the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin who, in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, defines hybridization as “an encounter, within the arena of an utterance, between two different linguistic consciousnesses, separated from one another by an epoch, by social differentiation, or by some other factor” (1981, 358). He uses a wide range of other concepts such as “heteroglossia,” “dialogism,” and “polyphony” to refer to the multiplicity of voices within the novelistic discourse. Taking Bakhtin’s theory as a starting point, Homi K. Bhabha posits that the Self/Other binary undergoes a process of deconstruction by the emergence of a hybrid space between them he calls a “Third Space,” a “liminal space” or an “interstice” that challenges ordinary definitions of cultural identity as a pure entity. Aware of the perils of “the fixity and fetishism of identities” (1994, 9), he advances that hybridity is “the strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal. . . . It

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unsettles the mimetic or narcissistic demands of colonial power but reimplicates its identifications in strategies of subversion that turn the gaze of the discriminated back upon the eye of power” (112). In his view, discourse is not absolutely within the control of the colonizer, and the mimetic responses of the colonized can be effective weapons of resistance. Comparing colonial mimicry to the warfare stratagem of camouflage, he also shows that it is part of the postcolonial struggle for discursive liberation. Those who have once been considered as objects finally emerge as subjects to de-stabilize colonial authority, to de-centre its centrality, and to corrupt its discursive purity (88). In other words, since discourse initially disempowered the colonized peoples, so has it now to empower them.

Nigerian English in Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters Soyinka’s The Interpreters recounts the stories of six Nigerian intellectuals who try to be reintegrated into their Nigerian society after their return from years of study abroad: Sekoni (the engineer and carver), Kola (the painter), Egbo (the Foreign Office worker), Bandele (the university professor), Sagoe (the journalist), and Dehinwa (the educated urban woman). Through these different characters, Soyinka depicts several issues in post-independence Nigeria, but the focus of this chapter is on his use of a particular type of English, that is, Nigerian English. The language of Soyinka is particularly characterized by the use of Yoruba words, proverbs, symbols and metaphors. Like Achebe’s position for the necessity to adapt the English language to one’s own African needs, Soyinka considers that the African experience is a heavy load that he needs to express in a hybridized language. He states, when we borrow an alien language to sculpt or paint in, we must begin by co-opting the entire properties in our matrix of thought and expression . . . to bear the burden of experiencing and of experiences, be such experiences formulated or not in the conceptual idioms of that language (1988, 107).

The imagery used by the writer bears a Yoruba stamp, reflecting the Africans’ symbiotic alliance with their gods and with nature. Bruce King notes that Soyinka makes “English operate like ‘deep Yoruba,’ metaphorically, imagistically, allusively. . . . If the style is partly a result of ‘Yorubaizing’ English, it also results from expressing a sacramental vision in a language, and during an era, which lacks acceptable equivalents for the concepts being evoked” (1980, 92). It is consequently difficult to

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understand the cultural allusions of Soyinka without an investigation into his Yoruba worldview. A major feature of postcolonial counter-hegemonic discourse lies in the insertion of the local sociolect in the texture of the English literary work. In The Interpreters, Soyinka invites the foreign audience to penetrate into the authentic Nigerian sociolect. He particularly relies on the technique of “code-switching” by alternating between English and Yoruba, as well as between the different registers of English. He swiftly switches from the modern English to the Elizabethan, and from the flowery language to the slang. There are instances of Elizabethan English when Lazarus, the priest, tells the Verse Feeder, “woman, why weepest thou?” (173), and when Sagoe woos Dehinwa, “to thine tent, O damsel” (34). Yet, Soyinka hybridizes this language with whole sentences in Yoruba. For example, a waiter tells chief Winsala, Sagoe’s boss, “se wa s’omo fun wa?” (84, original italics). Describing Egbo’s future mission, the narrator likewise uses the Yoruba language, “Egbo-lo, e-pulu-pulu, Egbo-lo, e-pulu-pulu, Egbo-lo…” (246). Soyinka also describes his people’s sufferance from an inferiority complex and blind mimicry of English manners. Mr. Oguazor is the prototype of such individuals; he strives to speak English, but fails to do it correctly. He says, for example, “Ceroline der, the ledies herv been wetting for you” (142), and “ef cerse der” (142). Peter, the German who mimics “Yankee” manners and mixes American accents, says, “your friend’s a sure funny guy. Wassat he was shouring just now?” (136). Soyinka uses Peter to demonstrate that mimicry is not only an African phenomenon, but also a global one. There are equally numerous sentences in Pidgin English in The Interpreters, and this is probably one of the most pertinent instances of linguistic hybridity. For example, o A servant in a pub says, “o ti sah. Madam ni npe yin . . . Nta. Won wa nnu taxi” (58); o Matthias, Sagoe’s assistant says, “Oga, sometimes den go want me for other office. Messenger job for newspaper office no get siddon time . . . Oga, make a go drink my own for canteen” (69); o A taxi driver equally says, “Enh, oga mi, you see wetin man dey suffer. Sixteen pound ten na in den charge me for service. Unless we Africans drive all dis foreign firm commor” (109). Peter Young comments, “Soyinka’s use of Pidgin illustrates this freedom of multilingual balance in the joyous exploitation of the West African

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extension of diglossia” (1973, 47). The author wants to stress that his Nigerian English is a variety of English just like the British and American ones; he also wants to show the switching facility among bilingual individuals. Soyinka uses another translation technique known as “lexical calque,” in which he literally translates the words of the Source Language into the Target Language. The literal aspect of translation is supposed to draw the foreign reader’s attention to the cultural difference in the text. He also relies on the technique of “structural calque” or “syntactic fusion,” which consists in the arrangement of English words following the syntax of a local language (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, 1989, 68). Foreign readers of Soyinka’s The Interpreters thus encounter a great difficulty in understanding some unfamiliar expressions and images directly calqued from a language that expresses a completely different worldview. Major instances of calques occur on proverbs. In traditional cultures, the latter are considered as repositories of communal wisdom; they are used to guide, to forewarn and to reprimand, and they are passed on orally from one generation to another. Through their persuasive and corrective role, they are sometimes more didactic than long orations. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe depicts them as “the palm oil with which words are eaten” (1958, 7). This is an eloquent metaphor insofar as the Igbo cannot eat without palm oil; the same as they cannot speak without proverbs. In The Interpreters, Soyinka relies on proverbs as a mark of cultural distinctiveness and as a means of social reformation. He translates many Yoruba proverbs such as: o “When asked why they wore leather shields over their thoughts, the counsellors replied, ‘the king says he’s blind’ ” (11); o “When a cub yields right of way to an antelope, first look and see if Father Leopard himself is not a few trees behind” (85); o “When the Bale borrows a horse-tail he sends a menial” (92); o “The rains of May become in July slit arteries of the sacrificial bull” (155). Yet, it should be noted that proverbs lose their vividness in translation since they are isolated “from the whole pattern of allusion and direct cultural reference in the African language” (Young, 1973, 40). The cultural distance also hinders the translation of a vast repertoire of terms related to proverbs, myths, and legends. The “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” shows that every language expresses the specific worldview of its native speakers, and that different languages

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predispose their speakers to think differently. This creates what John C. Catford calls “cultural untranslatability” which happens “when it is impossible to build functionally relevant features of the situation into the contextual meaning of the TL text” (1978, 94). For postcolonial writers, this untranslatability constitutes a deliberate cultural decision and reflects a kind of “lexical fidelity” to one’s native tongue, stands for “cultural distinctiveness,” and obliges the foreign reader to investigate into the cultural horizons of the author (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, 1989, 37). In his article entitled “Constitutive Graphonomy,” Bill Ashcroft explains that this “cultural distance . . . is not a result of the inability of language to communicate, but a product of the ‘metonymic gap’ installed by strategies of language variance which themselves signify a post-colonial identity” (1995, 302). This “metonymic gap” in cross-cultural texts means that a part of the author’s culture stands for the whole; it creates a gap between his/her own culture and that of the language he/she is borrowing. It has an ethnographic role because it is a sign of cultural difference and identity affirmation. In cases of untranslatability, postcolonial writers sometimes use the translation technique known as “vernacular transcription” or “transliteration,” which refers to the replacement of the Source Language “graphological units” by those of the Target Language (Catford, 1978, 66). In The Interpreters, Soyinka transliterates Yoruba appellations of costumes like “agbada,” “dansiki”; Yoruba music and musical instruments like “apala,” “maracas,” and Yoruba dishes as “amala,” “ewudu.” Soyinka also uses Islamic words like “alhaji,” “sheikh,” and “salaam” to bear witness to the interfaith coexistence among the Yoruba. He significantly italicizes these words to show their foreignness to English, but when they appear for the second time in the text, he no longer italicizes them probably to mean that he has integrated them into English. Although this practice subverts the English language, it enriches it with neologisms, original images, and syntactic structures. Soyinka’s hermetic style is even more complicated by the fact that he leaves Yoruba words untranslated. To make up for the opacity this practice entails, Eldred Jones provides explicative endnotes as well as a comprehensive glossary of Yoruba words and deities in his Heinemann and Andre Deutsch’s edition of The Interpreters. There is a debate among postcolonial authors and critics concerning the choice of leaving these untranslated words with no explanation. Many of them consider it as a political decision and an affirmation of cultural identity because “glossing gives the translated word, and thus the ‘receptor’ culture, the higher status” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, 1989, 66). This technique, however,

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leads to a considerable loss of meaning for the foreign readers who need to investigate into the authors’ mother tongue to decode the secrets of the text. Although written in a European medium, The Interpreters consequently carries an unmistakable African tone. Soyinka skillfully demonstrates that the introduction of some native lexis into the language of the Other is a deliberate sign of alterity and cultural distinctiveness. In the words of Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, it is “a clear signifier of the fact that the language which actually informs the novel is an/Other language” (1989, 64). By borrowing a foreign language, the author “twisted the linguistic blade” of the former colonizer and “carved new concepts into the flesh of white supremacy. The customary linguistic usage was rejected outright and a new, raw, urgent and revolutionary syntax was given to this medium which had become the greatest single repository of racist concepts” (Soyinka, 1988, 139). Using an “interlanguage” between English and Yoruba, he not only elevates his Source Language, but also enriches the Target Language at the level of words and contextual meanings, and such is the nature of a living language. The title of the novel, The Interpreters, probably reflects Soyinka’s purpose of creating a “new generation of interpreters” (178) as transcultural translators or mediators. The author especially contributes to the dialogue of cultures through texts by his use of local orature, translation, transliteration, and other techniques that are strategies of linguistic innovation in the English language. New Literatures in English, here illustrated by The Interpreters, have taken inspiration from the literatures of the Western center, and using its tools, they have provided some of the most innovative literary works of the contemporary period. Soyinka and other postcolonial writers have appropriated English in a Promethean manner, promoting tolerance towards New Englishes, which were erstwhile considered as degraded forms. Indeed, as illustrated by the chosen novel, English is a medium of trans-cultural creation, and although in this process much meaning is lost in translation, much advantage can also be gained from the cross-pollination of different languages and cultures.

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References Achebe, Chinua. (1958). Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann. —. (1975). Morning yet on Creation Day. London: Heinemann. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. (1989). The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. London and New York: Routledge. Ashcroft, Bill. (1995). “Constitutive Graphonomy.” The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, 298-302. London and New York: Routledge. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Texas: University of Texas Press. Bhabha, Homi K. (1994). The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Catford, John Cunnison. (1978). A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crystal, David. (1997). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kachru, Braj B. (1985). “Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English language in the Outer Circle.” English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures, edited by R. Quirk & H. G. Widdowson, 11-30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —, ed. (1992). The Other Tongue: English Across Cultures. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. —. (1995). “The Alchemy of English.” The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, 291-295. London and New York: Routledge. King, Bruce. (1980). The New English Literatures: Cultural Nationalism in a Changing World. London: Macmillan International College Editions. NgNJgƭ, wa Thiong’o. (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey. —. (1995). “The Language of African Literature.” The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, 285-290. London and New York: Routledge. Phillipson, Robert. (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Soyinka, Wole. (1965). The Interpreters. London: Heinemann and Andre Deutsch.

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—. (1988). Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture. New York: Pantheon Book. Quirk, Randolph. (1985). “The English Language in a Global Context.” English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures, edited by R. Quirk & H. G. Widdowson, 1-16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Widdowson, Henry G. (1994). “The Ownership of English.” TESOL Quarterly28 (2): 377-389. Young, Peter. (1973). “Tradition, Language and the Reintegration of Identity in West African Literature in English.” The Critical Evaluation of African Literature, edited by Edgar Wright, 23-50. London: Heinemann.

CHAPTER FOUR INTERNATIONALIZING A PRIVATE LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE IN GHANA MILLICENT ADJEI

Many institutions of higher learning are becoming increasingly aware of the need to equip their students with additional relevant skills necessary to navigate a world characterized by international and intercultural interactions. Studies have suggested that students around the world and across various academic disciplines sometimes lack the international awareness, multiple language fluency, and cross-cultural understanding needed to navigate the global work environment (Lambert 1989; Hayward and Siaya 2001). Today’s graduates also lack the necessary multicultural knowledge needed to solve the many multifaceted problems facing the world today. In response, many leaders in higher-education institutions have tried to address the growing need for international and cross-cultural competences of students through the growing concept of higher education internationalization. For the purpose of this chapter, Knight’s definition of internationalization as “the process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of higher-education” (2008), will be our definition of internationalization in higher education institutions. Internationalization however means many things to many people, especially in different academic institutional contexts. The concept has been interpreted based on how stakeholders perceive it, how it affects them, how it affects their daily work, and how they believe they can apply it to meet their needs. Internationalization is an interactive, global and multicultural phenomenon which involves several countries and their people, academic institutions, governments and the global work force. Some academic institutions try to internationalize by emphasizing the development of international awareness among students by encouraging them to be internationally savvy throughout their academic experience. Institutions have been encouraged to do this by drawing on the

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international and intercultural aspects of what is taught in the curriculum (Mestenhauser 1998). In addition, some institutions now try to internationalize by paying attention to and intentionally equipping students with the necessary cross-cultural competencies needed to understand and make meaningful contributions towards solving the many problems they are trained in their various academic disciplines to solve. While most universities recently are making an intentional effort to structure and define their internationalization direction, the path an institution chooses to follow to achieve their internationalization goals, according to Childress (2009), is greatly influenced by the rational for internationalizing. Several studies have outlined how different institutions approach internationalization and the rationales behind their choice of actions. One of the largest and most significant of such studies is the 3rd IAU (International Association of Universities) Global Survey on Internationalization of Higher Education in 2010. The findings of the survey suggested that amongst the various regional blocks included in the survey (Africa, Asia and Pacific, Europe, Latin America and Caribbean, Middle East and North America), the various rationale for internationalization were different but are changing, and at a very rapid rate (2010 Survey). The survey suggests for example that the United States is focusing on both internal and external international mobility programs, aimed at exposing students internationally beyond their home countries and familiar cultures. This can be seen in the increased numbers of study abroad programs in U.S. institutions which sends students out of the U.S. for a semester, an academic year or a couple of weeks, and the various efforts by institutions to make the U.S. an attractive international destination for international students. Europe, on the other hand, is focusing on the convergence of its higher education institutions through the Bologna Process which was signed in Bologna, Italy in 1999. Bologna emphasizes the harmonization of higher education throughout Europe to enhance mobility of students, graduates and higher education staff within the region. It also aims at facilitating the transferability of academic qualifications across Europe to enhance employability of graduates within the region. In both regions, there is direct government involvement in working with academic institutions to provide international opportunities for students, faculty and staff. An example of such government involvement is President Barack Obama’s pledge to send 100,000 American students to China in four years, supported by 10,000 scholarships for them. American students can also access several other innovative programs and

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opportunities, including Fulbright, critical language awards and the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program which American students can explore to study abroad. According to the IAU survey, internationalization in Africa has over the years been approached in an unstructured manner, with no set direction or common focus, but has mainly focused on improving research and knowledge production. With the exception of Africa and the Middle East; which had knowledge production and the advancement of research as their main rational for internationalizing, the remaining five regional blocks included in the 3rd IAU Global Survey mainly focused on increasing international awareness of students as the main rational for institutions internationalizing. At a time when globalization is forcing many companies to reach out to include cross-border employment as a way of expanding their workforce, it is imperative to investigate why stakeholders in institutions of higher education in Africa as presented in the survey are not focusing on improving student international awareness as their a rational for internationalizing. Understanding why this is so is particularly important because most of the literature on internationalization has focused on how internationalization is evolving in academic institutions in developed countries, leaving a relative dearth of scholarly research and literature on how the phenomenon is evolving in institutions in developing economies like Africa. Significantly, a majority of the world’s population resides in developing countries which fall within regions where the literature on internationalization has not adequately covered, and where the systems of higher education need more structured internationalization frameworks that are culturally and contextually appropriate. This study uses a case study approach to analyze how various stakeholders of a private liberal arts college in Ghana are interpreting the concept of internationalization, by closely examining what the concept means to them.

Conceptual Framework In his 1989 “International Integration Wheel”, Harari suggests ten components which should be present in any institution seeking a more integral approach towards internationalization. The ten includes the institution: internationalizing its curriculum, having international educational linkages, international student admission, international students services and programs, study abroad programs, having an international faculty at the institution and the institutions faculty overseas , pursuance of foreign languages, cooperative programs with the

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community, the presence of international institutes and the presence of international housing on campus (Harari 1989). Harare’s ten components constitutes the conceptual framework used to examine how internationalization is developing at Ashesi University College.

Contextual Setting of Ashesi University College The contextual presentation of Ashesi draws largely from information on the University’s website and gives a general description of the university in order to provide the appropriate context through which to view and interpret the data gathered. Ashesi University is a coeducational institution whose goal is to educate African leaders of exceptional integrity and professional ability. By raising the bar for higher education in Ghana they aim to make a significant contribution towards a renaissance in Africa. The university, which began instruction in March 2002 with a pioneer class of 27 students, has quickly gained a reputation for innovation and quality education in Ghana. Ashesi is the first university in Ghana to adopt and blend the Liberal Arts method of education with majors in Computer Science, Management Information Systems and Business Administration. The university is an independent, private, not-for-profit institution. The mission of Ashesi University College is to educate a new generation of ethical, entrepreneurial leaders in Africa; to cultivate within our students critical thinking skills, concern for others and courage to transform a continent. At the time of data collection, Ashesi had a staff size of twenty full-time faculty, ten adjunct faculty, twenty-three faculty interns who assisted full-time faculty, one Fulbright Scholar and forty administrative staff. The University had a total enrollment of 505 full time students at the time data was collected for this research, of which 91.5% were Ghanaian and 8.5% were international degree seeking students. Ashesi however had an internationalization vision to be a Pan-African university with an international to Ghanaian student ratio of 30-50% by 2020. Degreeseeking international students primarily come from neighboring African countries, including Benin, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Togo and Nigeria, with Nigerians forming the largest number of the international student body. Ashesi is also in active partnerships and collaboration with international academic and business institutions which provide sponsorships, academic support and funding opportunities to the University and its students. Significant among these international partnerships is a $13million service partnership with the MasterCard Foundation in Canada to provide forty need-based full scholarships to very

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talented and academically brilliant students from economically deprived backgrounds on the continent every year starting from 2012. The scholarship covers the cost of the entire four years of tuition, room and board, meal stipend, monthly allowance, a laptop and a cross-cultural enrichment summer program for the first year of the scholarship. The MCF funding is greatly helping Ashesi to have a rich and diverse campus, and helping the university’s internationalization agenda of having a 3050% international student population by 2020, as most of its international students come from all over the African continent.

Methodology A qualitative case study approach was used to explore the perspectives of five stakeholder groups at Ashesi University to understand their internationalization rational as an institution. The following research question was asked: What is the faculty, administration, leadership, students and alumni perception and definition of internationalization at Ashesi University College. In total, sixty individuals were interviewed. The descriptive nature of case studies allowed for a rich thick description of the phenomenon under study, hence providing the latitude to explain internationalization at Ashesi through varying ways. The application of case study methodology also allowed for important contextual conditions to be applied to the understandings of various phenomena, in this case the phenomenon of internationalization at Ashesi University (Yin 2009).

Participants A sample size of sixty (60) stakeholders was purposefully selected based on their influence and role they play in the decision-making process of the university, and their willingness to participate in this study. Stakeholders were also selected on the criteria that they had a vested interest in the preparation of students for the job market and the internationalization process developing at Ashesi, according to the communities they represent and the set of responsibilities given them by the University. Different stakeholders were selected in order to attain a more nuanced understanding of how internationalization is perceived across the university. Participants included forty-three (43) current students selected across the four undergraduate year groups, eleven (11) faculty and senior administrators, including the president of the University, and five (5) alumni. The researcher also interviewed the then Secretary General of the Association of African Universities (AAU) Prof.

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Olugbemiro Jegede, whose headquarters is in Ghana. This additional interview was mainly aimed at providing a broad regional perspective on how member institutions on the continent are approaching and responding to internationalization and for what rationale.

Research Methods Three instruments were used to collect the data for this case study: one-on-one semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and document analyses. One-on-one semi-structured interviews of one hour each were conducted with faculty, leadership including the President of the university, alumni, and senior administrators. The interview with the President, however, lasted two and a half hours due to the structure of his interview protocol, which contained more questions. A semi-structured interview design was chosen in order to get these stakeholders to express their experiences with the phenomenon of internationalization in their own unique ways and also to allow for further probing of the participants’ responses during the interviews (Merriam 2009). A combination of both closed and open-ended interview questions were used in order to capture vital background information about the participants and also give them the opportunity to express their insights through the open-ended questions. Focus group discussions were conducted in order to obtain data that emanated from the social construction of the interaction within the group, four focus group discussions were conducted each lasting two hours. The groups consisted of ten students each, averaging five males and five females. They were purposefully selected from the same year group with different majors. Selecting participants from the same year group was to ensure that they were familiar and comfortable with each other to engage in meaningful discussions, and even to respectfully express divergent perspectives on the evolution of internationalization at Ashesi. The focus group discussions were documented using both audio and video because of the size of the group, and also to allow for easy identification, and reinforced precision of the contributions and body languages of the participants during the discussion. Finally, documents likely to contain relevant data related to the rationale behind Ashesi’s internationalization efforts were gathered and analyzed. The documents included: The Ashesi Year Book, Ashesi Quarterly Journal, College Catalogue, Student Hand Book, Ashesi Bulletin and reports on graduate employment and employee interviews from the Career Services Center. The university’s website was also critically analyzed.

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Visibly displayed documents on the campus, such as the vision statement, mission statement, learning objectives were scrutinized for the general campus ethos towards internationalization. All other documents were obtained from the Academic Registrar in charge of records to ensure their authenticity. The documents were also used to verify assertions made by stakeholders during the interview process. The main verification strategy employed to ensure the internal validity and credibility of the case study was member checking, also known as respondent validation. According to Merriam, member checks refer to soliciting feedback on emerging findings from some of the individuals interviewed (2009). Due to the number of participants in this study and the limitation of time, one participant from the following stakeholder groups was selected to participate in this aspect of the research: students, faculty, administrators and alumni. These participants however provided valuable information due to the role they played at the University, which gave them access to the most current and updated information. To better understand the perspectives of individuals and gain insight into themes consistent across stakeholders, five selected participants were sent copies of their transcribed interviews to verify the content and make clarifications to the researcher’s understanding of stakeholder responses in their interviews. This approach was utilized in order to confirm and clarify participants’ experiences. Specifically, the Director of Development and one International Programs Officer represented the administrators. One Business Administration faculty represented the faculty perspective, while an alumnus who was now working at Ashesi as a Faculty Intern as well as a student who worked as a student intern, who coordinated all the four focus group discussions, constituted the member checking group. All the five participants selected to verify the transcribed interviews, gave positive feedback on the validity of their transcripts and provided further information on new developments with respect to internationalization at Ashesi which had occurred after the interview.

Presentation of Findings This chapter covers data constituting the findings which emanated inductively from interviews with the five identified stakeholder groups and deductively from the document analysis. The sixty stakeholders interviewed for this research provided rich, descriptive, and insightful responses about their personal perceptions of what internationalization meant to them. Interview responses were diverse in content and scope. A series of eighteen open ended interview protocol was administered across

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the stakeholder groups. Because the interview questions were open-ended, the stakeholders stated their personal thoughts regarding what constituted internationalization in their own context. This chapter focuses on the research question: What is the faculty, administration, leadership, students and alumni perception and definition of internationalization at Ashesi University College. The rationale behind this question was to understand the contextual meanings stakeholders were attributing to the concept of internationalization. As is often the case with defining internationalization, the various stakeholders had different interpretations of what internationalization should be depending on how it affected them and their work. The Human Resource Manager, for instance, defined internationalization as: “having a cross-cultural diversity within your work force” (Interview, July 2011), reflecting his work as being responsible for hiring Ashesi’s work force. During the coding process several significant themes emerged which, though not unanimously identified by all stakeholders, represent the most prominent perceptions of how stakeholders interpreted the phenomenon of internationalization. The findings from this research, suggest that stakeholders perceived the following characteristics to be vital for any institution to be considered to be engaging with the phenomenon of internationalization: 1) internationalization should demonstrate diversity and global competency; 2) internationalization is about operating an institution within an acceptable international standard; and 3) internationalization means bringing an international perspective to whatever one does. Following Genzuk’s (2003) approach, which stresses the importance of using “direct quotations” to capture participants’ views of their own experiences or perceptions, the following section presents each of the three predominant characteristics in much detail.

Diversity and Global Competency Stakeholders believed that internationalization should operate from a diverse setting where there are different interactions of cultures and backgrounds which force or require people to operate outside their comfort zone. Stakeholders used the term “fit in” to describe the process of functioning in that environment. Stakeholders further explained that internationalization should train students to adapt into the diverse environment they find themselves in beyond their own. One student for example explained:

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I guess it’s about providing an education that creates students who can “fit in” and function anywhere in the world without barriers. Basically, creating global citizens and making sure they have the competencies to deal with the kinds of people they meet; the different cultures they come across. It is also very critical that they have an appreciation of the fact that the world out there is much bigger than what they see; and not to be afraid of that but be able to embrace the differences (Interview, July 2011). Similarly one faculty commented that : “An international education is giving an education that through the curriculum, will take the student beyond Ghana as well as interactions within the university that reflect a culturally diverse environment, through exchanges and research” (Business Administration lecturer, June 10, 2011). Seventy-eight percent of all interviewees believed that for internationalization to take place institutions should be able to prepare students to deal with cultural diversity as well as equipping them with the necessary skills needed to “fit in” and function in today’s global environment. When asked about examples of some of the skills mentioned above, stakeholders predominantly mentioned: effective communication across cultures, multiple language fluency and general empathy for difference across cultures.

An Acceptable International Standard Stakeholders also expressed the view that in order for an institution to be internationalized, it must operate within a set of global standards which governed their everyday operations. These standards they believed should cut across every aspect and unit of the institution and to be standards which are “acceptable” and recognized by similar institutions all over the world. One student, for example, defined internationalization as “having an internationally standardized curriculum, which can be taken by students from different countries yet is understood in the same way, thus students around the world study issues revolving around the same topics or theories” (Interview, June 14, 2011). In the same way, the Founder and President of the University defined internationalization as: Operating at a global standard, following international norms and asking ourselves if we are operating at a standard where students from other countries will like to come and study here at Ashesi, or our graduating students can work anywhere in the world and be

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successful because the standards we have used to train them at Ashesi are the same globally. In comparing Ashesi’s standards to other universities in Ghana, the Founder and President was emphatic in explaining that Ashesi can be considered to be internationalized for the following reasons, which touched upon teaching methods, standards of conduct, and reaching a “global standard”: Some of the local universities here in Ghana teach by dictating and students learn by rote, that is not an international standard for a high function university. Ashesi approaches plagiarism seriously; if you are using other people’s work, proper referencing is a must. We have also developed an honor code, which is not common in Ghana, but many institutions worldwide have this. Our Honor Code system teaches students self-leadership this is also evidence of following international standards. (Interview, June 2011) In addition, to the standards mentioned above, the document analysis revealed several programs run by Ashesi which exhibited worldwide standards for institutions seeking to internationalize. Prominent amongst these programs were: study and internship abroad programs, international collaborative teaching with international universities through video conferencing, a diverse and internationally trained faculty and administration; of the eleven faculty interviewed, 98% received their Masters and PhD trainings from Universities in the United States and Europe; integration programs for international and Ghanaian students to foster cross-cultural learning and several other programs. Of the ten components advocated by Harari (1989) in the contextual framework guiding this study, Ashesi had eight of the components with the exception of an international student’s hostel and a second language course. Stakeholders therefore believed that having these programs meant Ashesi operated within recognized international standards.

An International Perspective Another way stakeholders interpreted internationalization was adding an “international perspective” to the day to day interactions that took place on campus. One department head described how he does this in the classroom when he is teaching: “I make sure that in presenting the teaching materials, I extend the range of application into the international

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world. For instance I will compare Ghana Post to UPS or FedEx to bring the international perspective to it”. (Interview, June 2011) One student also commented: “Some lecturers always ask if there are other nationals in the class, and they ask for their perspective on whatever issues we are discussing”. (Interview, June 2011) Most faculty, for instance, believed that giving their students examples from international case studies and scenarios when teaching constituted an example of internationalization. Though there were these specific examples by stakeholders, they all agreed that the “international perspective” must be brought into whatever they did whether as students, faculty or administrators in order to consider themselves internationalized.

Additional Components of Internationalization at Ashesi In addition to the three ways stakeholders’ interpreted internationalization, there were other components stakeholders considered to be unique to Ashesi’s context which also constituted internationalization. For example, students were particularly emphatic about the use of “international textbooks” and access to e-library resources that gave them access to thousands of journals and educational resources which they used in their academic work. To them the availability of these resources signified that internationalization was taking place at Ashesi, as similar facilities in many universities in Africa are non-existing or its usage overly stretched. Students also mentioned the completion of the ultra-modern campus complex to be one of the climaxes of Ashesi’s efforts to inculcate into its students a campus ethos that provided the ambiance needed for serious academic work. Having a permanent academic learning space, to them was important and constituted internationalization because for close to ten years, Ashesi operated from a rented residential unit which did not convey the appearance of an internationalized institution.

Discussion In examining the concept of internationalization, many stakeholders have traditionally viewed it as integrating an international, intercultural and global dimension into the extant curriculum and campus ethos of an institution, with the aim of educating graduates who are able to navigate today’s multicultural work environment. This study sought to understand what internationalization really meant to institutions operating in an environment unique from the West, which has largely been responsible for defining the concept. It does so by using a case study approach to analyze

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how stakeholders at Ashesi University College a private liberal arts college in Ghana a region with a different contextual reality from the West are interpreting internationalization. The conceptual framework used in this study identified ten critical components of an internationalized campus. This study revealed three main themes which described how stakeholders interpreted and described internationalization in an African higher education institution. All three themes had elements that correlated with research and the literature on internationalization and matched the components in the conceptual framework. Stakeholders additionally described meanings they attributed to those same elements which were unique to their own context. The most direct correlation was evident in stakeholder’s interpretation of internationalization as an education that trains graduates to have competencies that demonstrate their ability to handle diversity, and possession of competencies needed to operate in a multicultural environment. Both the existing literature and the responses from the stakeholders under study supported the idea that internationalization should have these elements. Stakeholders for instance emphasized that institutions espousing internationalization should train students to be able to “fit in” an environment which is different from what they are used to without any barriers. Most of the alumni for example interpreted internationalization as being able to work anywhere in the world with the preparation one’s educational experience equips them with. One alumnus defined internationalization saying: In terms of the work I do, I believe it means I can be working in PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Ghana, pick up my bag tomorrow and be able to work in PwC Nigeria or U.S. But not even necessarily work with PwC, but basically with the skills and the mindset that I have received from my education, I can and should be able to compete with the best anywhere in the world. (Interview with ’07 alumnus, July 2011) Operating within an acceptable international standard was another interpretation stakeholders associated with internationalization. This interpretation particularly was significant because most of the standards described by stakeholders were in direct correlation with what Harari had described in the conceptual framework as components of an internationalized campus. From the responses given by stakeholders and what emanated from the document analysis, Ashesi University College had eight out of the ten components with the exception of a foreign

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language course and an international students housing. Stakeholders identified components such as: Ashesi’s study and work internships abroad with companies like Goldman Sachs, Google and Microsoft, Collaborative teaching with institutions like Swarthmore University in the U.S. and Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada through a video conferencing platform, and the MasterCard Foundation Fellowship which was going to help the institution give scholarships to students from all over the continent to come and study at Ashesi, thus making their campus very international and diverse. Ashesi also receives a Fulbright Scholar and other international visiting faculty every year who teach and do collaborative research with Ashesi faculty. All of these components fitted Harari’s components described in the conceptual framework. In addition to the above, stakeholders also associated internationalization with differing conceptualizations which were unique to Ashesi’s contextual setting as an African institution. These included employing faculty who have a “rich” portfolio of international experience and training. Stakeholders across all the five groups expressed this as an internationalization strategy consciously employed by Ashesi to ensure that faculty were well exposed internationally and can bring whatever they had learned internationally to enrich their teaching in the classroom. Indeed 98% of the faculty interviewed had had a significant academic or work experience largely in the United States, but also in other European countries. Secondly, providing basic infrastructure such as adequate and appropriate physical buildings, digital libraries, computers and textbooks which otherwise would not have been available to allow students the opportunity to participate fully in the global knowledge community was also considered by most stakeholders as an internationalization strategy employed by Ashesi. This was largely due to the fact that in most African institutions, these facilities are highly stretched among the large numbers of students and sometimes are not available. Finally, adopting a four-year liberal arts curriculum which allows students to take core courses from different departments in the humanities, social sciences, and also ensures that students develop their critical thinking, problem solving and analytical abilities was interpreted as internationalization. The expressed goal of requiring students to take the liberal arts core curriculum was to expose students to a wide variety of options before they finally specialize, as opposed to the prevailing system in other Ghanaian and African universities, where students learn largely by rote and are usually places in one department where they take all their

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courses and specialize in, without significant exposure to other departments and courses. The findings especially the additional findings expressed by stakeholders revealed that the existing literature on internationalization though captures some of the general components and rationalizations worldwide, has not captured some of the realities faced by institutions in developing nations like Ashesi. Thus, there is a distinct bias in the theoretical frameworks toward conceptualizations of internationalization emanating from universities with vastly different institutional realities and practitioners who may not be familiar with the African context. It was particularly interesting to note that using internationalization for the purpose of knowledge production did not come up as a rational across all stakeholders interviewed, given the fact that knowledge production was the number one rational for internationalization in the IAU 3rd Global Survey Report for institutions of higher education in Africa. This study, therefore, provides additional insights into how internationalization is being perceived and what the phenomenon means to a non-western higher education institution. The results of the study also provides additional evidence not captured in the body of literature on the rationales for internationalization in higher education institutions which has largely focused on how internationalization is viewed by stakeholders in institution situated in developed countries. In a developed country like the United States, a higher education institution would proudly showcase how internationalized they are by the high number of students they send on study abroad programs, government funding they receive to send even more students abroad, and the high number of international students they receive each semester; in contrast, a similar institution in a developing country would likely pride itself as being internationalized because they have the necessary physical infrastructure and basic facilities, such as international textbooks, internet facilities, and access to academic publications through digital libraries that allow its students to connect with the world beyond its borders considering their context of not being able to physically send many students out on study abroad programs as their means of gaining international exposure. Both institutions apply internationalization in their unique context of what is relevant, possible, and most importantly, needed in their individual situations. Basic academic facilities which are crucial in every academic setting but are most of the time not available often limited or in poor condition in many institutions in developing countries due to lack of funding and the increase in the number of students demanding education at the post-secondary level. As one faculty member put it:

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Ashesi is well resourced in terms of textbooks and access to computers and the internet, which is not the case in other institutions in some developing countries. We also have unlimited access to journal publications, which makes our work easier because I can have all the good intentions as a faculty but if the students do not have these tools to learn with, it is pointless! (Interview, June 2011) Another reality this study brings to light is the assumption that governments all over the world are involved in the internationalization discussion in all contexts, and that governments view internationalization as a means of developing their national human resources. This is often the case in developed countries, and indeed there have been several studies that showcase various government initiatives to support institutions that endeavor to internationalize, and give students an international exposure. The Fulbright Program in the U.S. and the Erasmus Mundus Program in Europe are examples of such government financially supported programs to encourage international education and to give international and intercultural exposures to its students. This is, however, not the case in most developing countries especially in Africa. With the exception of full sponsorship programs like the Ford Foundation International Fellowship program, the Hubert Humphrey Program and the bilateral nature of the Fulbright and Erasmus programs which supports the sponsorship of African scholars abroad, individual African governments often do not have adequate funding to support such significant internationalization efforts as are being done in developed nations like the U.S. and Europe and even in instances when such regional decisions have been taken in regions like Africa, it has not been carried out. It is very important for example to note that despite the seemingly ad-hoc way Africa is presented to be approaching internationalization as presented by the IAU’s 3rd Global Survey Report, Africa as far back as December 1981 had developed the Arusha Convention, which is supposed to be the blueprint to guide the harmonization and internationalization direction of higher education on the continent. Among the many things the Arusha Convention of 1981(revised in 2002) seeks to achieve is to strengthen and promote inter-regional and international co-operation towards recognizing educational qualifications, and the facilitation of exchange and greater mobility of students, teachers and researchers on the continent and the diasporas. This unfortunately to a large extent has not happen yet.

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The Secretary General of the Association of African Universities provided insights into this situation confronting many African universities, by explaining how internationalization is developing broadly in institutions on the continent and the barriers that are slowing down the process. He expounded that there is generally a lack of commitment on the part of African government’s efforts to internationalize and harmonize higher education on the continent. (Interview, July 2011). Giving a picture of how internationalization is being embraced on the continent he said: Internationalization of higher education in Africa means three things: 1) Send your child to the nearest African country where your money can buy good education because you can’t afford to take him/her to U.S. or Europe. 2) Send your child to the nearest country where there is no disruption in the academic calendar of the university because faculty or students are on strike for better pay or provision of academic facilities. And 3) send your child to the best university on the continent e.g. University of Ibadan in Nigeria, University of Ghana, Legon , Makerere University in Uganda or University of Cape Town in South Africa. (Interview, July 2011) The African perspective of internationalization through this case study and insights shared by the Secretary General of the Association of African Universities helps to give important understandings to how internationalization is developing on the continent which fills a missing gap in the literature on how internationalization is developing in some African institutions of higher learning. This is very significant especially for policy makers who seek institutional partnerships and collaborations on the continent. This study fully recognizes that many universities in Africa are not liberal arts colleges like Ashesi and have longer-standing internationalization efforts that have been accepted by government officials. Hence, some of the findings from this study may be unique to Ashesi or specific to universities that are trying different approaches to higher education. However, the concepts and purpose of internationalization can be applied to any institutions, whether public or private and with or without a liberal arts focus. More African institutions need to join the internationalization discourse and let the rest of the world know about their unique experiences with and interpretations of the concept of internationalization.

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Conclusion The aim of this study was to analyze stakeholder interpretations of the concept of internationalization at Ashesi University College, a private liberal arts college in Ghana. The research tried to understand how the concept of internationalization was evolving at Ashesi to paint a vivid picture of how internationalization is occurring in a region which has seen little research work done on how the phenomenon is affecting their unique situation as an African institution. Ashesi and other institutions of higher education in Africa are experiencing new pressures from stakeholders to internationalize their campuses. This study highlighted some of the unique interpretations stakeholders are assigning to internationalization and how they are addressing the challenges of internationalization and meeting similar goals as is expected in other developed academic environments. In summary, there is much to be gained from an ‘internationalized’ campus, and this study suggests ways to achieve those ends, some of which closely align with previous theories and others that reflect the unique context in an African institutions.

References Adjei, M. (2012). “Internationalizing a private liberal arts college in Ghana: A stakeholder analysis”. MA thesis. University of Minnesota. http://purl.umn.edu/130855 Ashesi University College, http://www.ashesi.edu.gh/. Association of African Universities. “Arusha-convention,” http://www.aau.org/?q=arusha-convention. Childress, Lisa K. (2009). “Internationalization Plans for Higher Education Institutions.” Journal of Studies in International Education 13, no. 3: 289 –309. doi:10.1177/1028315308329804. European University Association. “What Is the Bologna Process?” http://www.eua.be/eua-work-and-policy-area/building-the-europeanhigher-education-area/bologna-basics.aspx. Genzuk, M. (2003). A Synthesis of Ethnographic Research: Center for Multilingual, Multicultural Research Digital Papers Series. Center for Multilingual, Multicultural Research, Los Angeles.: University of Southern California. Harari, Maurice. (1989). Internationalization of Higher Education: Effecting Institutional Change in the Curriculum and Campus. Long Beach. California: Center for International Education California State University.

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Hayward, F. M., and L. M. Siaya. (2001). “Public Experience, Attitudes, and Knowledge: A Report on Two National Surveys About International Education.” http://www.eric.ed.gov Institute of International Education. (2012). “Lead Your Campus to the Top: Best Practices in Internationalizing the Campus”. http://www.iie.org/Who-We-Are/News-and-Events/Events/2012/BestPractices-Conference-2012. International Association of Universities and Eva Egron-Polak. (2010). Internationalization of Higher Educationࣟ: Global Trends, Regional Perspectives -- IAU 3rd Global Survey Report. Paris: International Association of Universities. Knight, Jane. (2008). Higher Education in Turmoilࣟ: the Changing World of Internationalization. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Lambert, Richard D. (1989). International Studies and the Undergraduate. Washington, DC: American Council on Education. Merriam, Sharan. (2009). Qualitative Researchࣟ: A Guide to Design and Implementation. San Francisco Calif: Jossey-Bass. Mestenhauser, Josef. (1998). Reforming the Higher Education Curriculumࣟ: Internationalizing the Campus. Phoenix Ariz.: Oryx Press. Yin, Robert K. (2009). Case Study Research: Design and Methods. 4th ed. Applied Social Research Methods v. 5. Los Angeles, Calif: Sage Publications.

CHAPTER FIVE ARAB ESL STUDENTS AT AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES AND THEIR IDENTITY FORMATION PROCESS GAMIL ALAMRANI

“Can the Subaltern Speak?” by Gayatri Spivak (1988) raises a philosophical question that keeps haunting social and cultural conversations since then. The subaltern cannot speak, and once she speaks, she loses her subalternity. Spivak’s female subaltern, Bhuvaneswari Bhudari, an active Indian nationalist, commits suicide, transforming the dreadful social text of “sati-suicide” (an expression of wife’s grief) into a radical rejection of the colonial situation, and of the inaccurate representations of women in the dominant masculine discourse of her time. Similarly, minority groups have always been represented, spoken for, and ultimately silenced, further emphasizing their subordination. The modern social critic unconsciously objectifies the experience of the minorities, depicting them as victims of a linear dominating and hegemonic power of some external force, usually the majority. What is lost in these depictions is a deeper understanding of the ambivalence of the colonial situation, the anxiety of the dominant majority, and the power, diversity and resistance of minorities. In schools, colonial cultural models of educations have dominated western academia for decades. Standardized channels of learning (dialects, exams, publications, etc) have marginalized subaltern groups much further, creating a suffocating environment for the subaltern’s learning and economic advancement. As a result, a new paradigm of literacy studies emerges, the ideological model of literacy, which emphasizes the social and cultural nature of learning processes, as well as the complicated progression of identity construction. This new approach, though still another attempt by the intellectual left to speak for the subaltern, strives to highlight minorities’ perspectives about learning and the diversity of their population and expectation. The following study describes one of these

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subaltern groups, Arab ESL students at the University of Arkansas, questioning some of the common representations of this minority group in the dominant political and cultural discourses. First, the study defines this minority group, analyzes the power relations that define this minority group in the predominantly Christian, mainly Southern Baptist, culture of the University of Arkansas. The study then proceeds to describe how these minority students’ cultural identities are conflicted, questioned or compromised in the larger social context, and how the customization of their social identities is reflected in their classroom performance.

Literacy and Identity The study is situated within two closely related theoretical discourses, namely the ideological model of literacy and the post-modern definition of identity. The ideological model of literacy highlights minorities’ interests and learning perspectives and simultaneously questions the supremacy of the dominant white middle class model of literacy. Au, for example, (1993) observes that “literacy practices are very much a part of culture” (34), and Gee (1990) emphasizes that "literacy has no effects--indeed, no meaning--apart from the particular cultural contexts in which it is used, and it has different effects in different contexts" (61-2). Similarly, Street (1995) describes literacy practices as the "behavior and the social and cultural conceptualizations that give meaning to the uses of reading and/or writing" (2). Millard (1997) argues that factors such as family, friends and peers can influence the person’s attitudes towards reading. And Nieto (1999) explains that “learning emerges from the social, cultural, and political spaces in which it takes place and through the interactions and relationships that occur among learners and teachers” (3). She also adds that some cultural groups “do not conform to the way that schools define learning" (67). In similar studies within the new ideological paradigm, Heath (1980) concludes that literacy activities are shaped by the need and preference of the members of society, as reflected in her study of the Cherokee community: When the population recognized that they remained poor despite their sons’ learning to read and write, they withdraw from literacy and maintained it for only selected purposes in religious ceremonies...The Cherokee do not expect all the members of their community to become literate; instead certain individuals who play specific rules become literate, so that virtually every household has access to someone who can read and write. (126)

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Similarly, Graff (1979) unveils the “literacy myth” that was embedded in the traditional definitions and practices of literacy. He argues against the social and cultural dogma that literacy and advancement go together; the former initiates and perpetuates the latter. Literate people are always portrayed as good, prosperous, and ambitious while illiterates are negatively re-presented as poor, doomed and as social and cultural threats to civilizations; examples can be seen in associating illiteracy with criminality, misbehavior, and public unruliness. Illiterates are seen as inferior, “alien to the dominant culture, and discursive to the social order” (51). Contrarily, his study proves that the relationship between literacy and development is much more complicated than such assumptions. In his study on the three cities of Hamilton, London, and Kingston in North America, he explains that illiteracy was not the dominant factor behind the social disadvantage of many illiterate groups in those cities. Some of these groups, though illiterate, have progressed in the social hierarchy, owned some properties, and secured a better future for their kids. On the other hand, literacy did not help advance the social conditions of other groups, or at least some of them due to many other reasons, most remarkably race, sex, ethnicity, religion, etc. The second theoretical approach adopted in this study is the postmodern definition of identity and identity construction. Definitions of identity have ranged from the traditional meanings of fixed, social, cultural, mostly historical, notions of the subject to a post-modern, deconstructive notion of an endless continuum of performative changes of the self. Hall (1996) summarizes these two sides of identification as: [the traditional definition] a recognition of some common origin or shared characteristics with another person or group, or with an ideal, and with the natural closure of solidarity and allegiance established on this foundation…to [the postmodern] a discursive approach [that] sees identification as construction, a process never completed-always ‘in process.’ (2)

Identity according to Hall is a very complicated notion of attachment and detachment at the same time, not the linear narration of the self unfolding from the beginning to the end of its history, or the collective self which “can stabilize, fix or guarantee an unchanging ‘oneness’ or cultural belongingness underlying all the other superficial differences” (4). Identities are produced within discourses of power and difference: I use ‘identity’ to refer to the meeting point, the point of suture, between on the one hand the discourses and practices which attempt to ‘interpellate’, or

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Similarly, Aronowitz and Giroux (1991) assert that factors such as race, class and gender can have different effects on identity constructions in different social contexts. Egan-Robertson (1998) defines identity as "the intersection of a myriad of complex sociological factors (e.g., race, class, gender)" (455). Mishler (1999) argues that identity is the "dynamic organization of sub-identities that might conflict or align with each other" (8). Gee (1990) describes identities as “the different ways of participating in different sorts of social groups, cultures, and institutions, for example ways of being a ‘good student,’ an ‘avid bird watcher,’” (1). Our identities are shaped by how we see ourselves, and how the world sees us, particularly through certain features such as religion, race, gender, age, social and cultural status, sexual orientation, etc. (Erikson 1968; Tatum 1997). Sarup (1996) argues that “"identity is a construction, a consequence of interaction between people, institutions and practices" (11). Bakhtin (1981) suggests that we are constructed though the many internal dialogues and voices that we have encountered in the past. And finally, Anzaldua (1999) emphasizes the same Bakhtinian philosophy when she stated that "we are clusters of stories we tell ourselves and others tell about us" (15). In case of Arab ESL students, it very useful to look at their identities as amalgams of the different historical, social and cultural sites of contact and power relations that define their local (home) identities and those identities developed in the west. Many of these students come from previous English or French colonies, for example Egypt, Morocco, and Yemen. Some have incorporated western cultural and linguistic identity markers before their arrival at the new environment (universities in the USA, for example), and many have developed their own impressions about the west. Bhabha (1994) advances this argument of the mixedness and impurity of cultures: What is theoretically innovative and politically crucial is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes of cultural differences. These in-between spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood-singular or communal- that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining society itself. (1-2)

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Similarly, language becomes a central issue in constructing the social and cultural identities of Arab ESL students, assuming that English has a colonizing history in many Arab countries. The amount of English or Arabic spoken by these students in different social contexts situates them differently in different context. Fanon (1976), in his research of the psychology of the colonized, argues that “to speak means to be in a position to use certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of civilization” (18). He explains how language (in this case it is French) can emphasize certain identities: the “black man is supposed to be a good nigger” (35). And this goodness, for the white man, comes from living among the whites, speaking their language, acquiring their culture and tradition, and at the same time divorcing anything that relates him to his black origins. Fanon (1976) explains, “There is nothing more exasperating than to be asked: ‘how long have you been in France? You speak French very well.’” (35). Therefore, these ESL students negotiate their identities as they participate in literacy activities in both English and Arabic. Their involvement in a linguistic community defines the level of their relation to that linguistic group.

Methodology I adopted the tools of critical ethnographic method, field notes and interviews, described by Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (1995); Hammersley and Atkinson (1995); and Spradley (1979). I also applied a wide methodological approach that relies on thick description (Geertz 1973) based on thorough observation, formal interviews, and informal conversations. For data analysis, I adopted Gee’s (1991) methods of discourse analysis where I transcribed the participants’ conversations and interviews. Then I divided them into idea units and stanzas, coding and analyzing major references and themes. I then analyzed the relationships, politics, identities, and connections as reflected in those lines. I also used critical discourse methods (Fairclough 1989, 1999; Gee 2004; Rogers 2004), analyzing the participants’ speeches, how they were said, and the larger conversations and ideologies they reflected. Triangulation of codes and themes was applied among interviews, field notes, and various artifacts. During the study, I was a participant observer of this community in three locations: the Mosque, the Arabian school, and the University of Arkansas Student Union. I selected these three locations because of the different literacy experiences they provided, the degree of comfort, and the

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number of gatherings I observed of some of the students. The first location was the Mosque, where many students attended regularly. It was a comfort zone for the religiously conservatives; the second, the Arabian School, a traditional Arabic cultural model; the third, the Student Union, poses a counter-cultural model to the Arabian School and, from the perspective of traditionalists and religious students, a cultural threat to their home identities. I believe I had the advantage of belonging to all three locations. I am a regular attendee of the Mosque and have served in many administrative positions, namely the treasurer, the public relation representative, and the organizer of most of the Mosque’s celebrations. My children attended the Arabian school, and I attended most of its meetings and gatherings. My wife was also a very active member in the Arabian school’s activities. I was also a regular visitor to the student union. Both my wife and I are from Yemen, and we have lived in this community for five years. However, my methodical observation began two years ago, taking systematic notes after most major events at the mosque, the Arabian school, and the student union. I recorded most of the activities and meetings in the mosque, but I did not tape or take pictures of major religious activities because of the sensitive nature of these activities. However, I did tape most of the social gatherings and other literacy activities at the three locations. At the end of the observations, I conducted interviews and follow-up analyses of four selected Arab ESL students (two graduates and two undergraduates) from United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Morocco. I interviewed each student twice, in a semi-structured interview format (open-ended questions and unlimited answers by the subjects). The first interview addressed background information: age, citizenship, family, first experience in the United States regarding language, and cultural shock; the second addressed questions about their experience as ESL students, their cultural perspectives about classroom structure and teacherstudent relations, and their fears, hopes, and other concerns regarding learning. Some of the interview questions took the shape of scenarios where students explained their preferences regarding the nature of learning, teachers and texts, or in the shape of follow-up comments on behaviors I noticed during my observations. Both interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. In addition, I taught and tutored many students in this community, observed and facilitated their different learning activities and their children’s at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville public schools, and Northwest Arkansas Community. I collected writing samples from the

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papers and dissertations, their scholarship booklets, photos and videotapes of some of their parties and other activities. I collected data in different ways and forms for triangulation purposes, and also to serve a longitudinal project. However, in the case of this paper, I mainly focus on the observation of the three above mentioned locations for most of the analysis, and a few interview answers to explain some of these behaviors.

Who is an Arab? The question, “who is an Arab,” is one of the most controversial issues in Arabs’ history. Several attempts to answer this question have concluded that Arabs are the people who speak Arabic, inhabit the Arab Peninsula and the Middle East, or come from Arabic speaking decedents. Still, these definitions are not coherently satisfying. Can we call a westerner an Arab just because he or she speaks Arabic? Or call the Copts of Egypt, the Berbers of Algeria, and the Kurds in Iraq Arabs given that they inhabit those Arab and Middle Eastern Countries? How much of an Arab remains in a third or fourth generation immigrant in the USA or UK of Arab decedents (most of them do not even speak Arabic)? These and many other questions remain unsolved. Some historians associate Arabism with Islam but fail to address Arab Christians and Arab Jews. Others define Arabs based on feelings and emotions: an Arab is a person who feels and behaves like one. For example, Jabra I. Jabra defines an Arab as, “anyone who speaks Arabic as his own language and consequently feels as an Arab” (qtd in Patai 13). This makes the term, Arab, as blurry and inconsistent as emotions can get. Finally, some elevate the term, Arab, from ethnic into a quality term where a person is called an Arab if he or she adheres to some of the core values of the Bedouin tribal society, values such as Murua “ready response to help”, Nakhwa “readiness to volunteer out of pride”, Wafa “a good deed is often repaid doubly”, and Ma’ruf “disinterested help” (Hamady). According to this group, the quality of being an Arab can be lost if the person violates or fails to behave according to the ideal social and cultural codes of Arabism. The following chapters do not attempt to define the term, Arab; however, for some needed clarification later in the discussion, they just summarize some of widely known cultural markers of Arabism. First, a sense of Arabism undoubtedly exists that transcends all the geographical, national and religious distinctions. Bernard Lewis defines an Arab as follows:

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The Arabs may be a nation; they are not as yet a nationality in the legal sense. A man who calls himself an Arab may be described in his passport as of Syrian or Lebanese, Jordanian of Egyptian, Iraqian or Arabian nationality. There are Arab states, and indeed a league of Arab states, but as yet no single Arab state, of which all Arabs are nationals…But if Arabism has no legal content, it is none the less real. The pride of an Arab in his Arabdom, his consciousness of the bonds that bind him to other Arabs, past and present, are no less intense. (qtd in Hamady 1960, 18) .

Despite the dividing politics of Arab governments, and the international pressures and alliances, most Arabs dream of an Arab unity; some swear this unity is happening one day. Whether in the cold mountains of Yemen, or the hot deserts of Egypt and Sudan, a sense of pride of Arabism and a deep sympathy with Arabs’ problems are widely felt; examples can been seen in angry street demonstrations in many Arab cities responding to any major political or military attack on Arab land or people. This sense of Arabism increases as Arabs cheer their history- the golden age of Islam (8th to 14th centuries), when the Islamic empire dominated most of the planet and pioneered in philosophy, science, arts, navigation and technology. When Arabs speak of Avicenna, al-kindi, Ibn khaldoon, or Abbas ibn firnas, their pride has no limits: There are probably no people more proud or more convinced of the merits, and even superiority, of their religion, customs, tradition, and ways of life. Even the Bedouins, who live a hard life with few worldly goods or comforts, are extremely proud of their background, freedom and selfdependence. (Lebkicher et al 1952, 162)

In most of their conversations, there is a sense of nostalgia and romanticism of their past glories, traditional heritages, ancient civilizations, etc. They escape their harsh contemporary realities of divided politics, weak economies, and repressed cultures by reminding themselves, and the people around them, of the greatness of their ancestors and the hope of regaining a fading glory. In terms of their physical description, it is very hard to make generalizations about their looks. Arabs have imported many genetic features of almost every race and ethnicity as a result of hundreds of years of Islamic empires ruling over different countries and regions, and during many regimes of colonization and invasions of Arab lands, producing a mixture of colors and shapes.

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Social and Cultural Characteristics of Arabs In discussing the cultural and social characteristics of Arabs, I fear running the risk of generalization and stereotyping. However, I will attempt to summarize only few commonly known behaviors that would be useful in my discussion of Arab ESL students later in the paper. First, a common cultural marker that unites Arabs is their language, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). MSA is diglossic, meaning Arabs use two different languages: a colloquial version for speaking, and a formal standard version for reading, writing, and other formal registers. In some Arab countries, these two versions are almost two different languages. Colloquial versions are mostly pidgins and creoles of Arabic and other foreign languages or dialects as a result of direct contacts, for example, Arabic and French in Morocco and Algeria, earlier French colonies. On the other hand, the standard Arabic version represents a modernized version of the Classical Arabic Language, the language of the Quran. It is the standard language for academia, publication, media, business, etc. This standard version is identical in all Arab countries, creating one of the most important components of an Arab Identity. Arabs, especially the majority Arab Muslims, rejoice their language, mainly because it is the language of the Quran (God’s revelation to the prophet Mohammed through Gabriel). The Quran was sent in Arabic as a linguistic challenge, and a prophet’s miracle, to the dwellers of Mecca and the Arabian Peninsula, who claimed to be the masters of Classical Arabic linguistics and poetics as reflected in their pre-Islamic poetry, “Indeed we have sent it down as an Arabic Quran, in order that you may learn wisdom” (Yusuf; 12:2). Then, the Quran challenges them to a linguistic and poetic competition: And if you are in doubt about what We have sent down to our servant (Prophet), then produce a chapter like it and call your witnesses besides Allah if you are truthful. But if you do not do it, and you can never do it, then fear the Fire whose fuel is men and stones, prepared for the disbelievers. (Al Baqara; 2:23-24)

Islamic history is full of stories and anecdotes of people converting to Islam, enchanted after listening to some verses from the Quran. This connection between Arabic language and the Quran constitutes a long lasting relation; “Indeed we have sent down the Reminder, and surely we will preserve it” (Hijr; 15:9). During the golden Age of Islam, Arabic language spread into many countries and regions, achieving an international status. Believers of the

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new religion had to learn Arabic for their religious duties, mainly the recitation and memorization of Quran for the daily prayers. Moreover, a majority of Muslims believe that Arabic is the language of paradise, or the language in which God spoke to Adam. Prophet Mohammed said “I love the Arabs for three things: because I am an Arab, because the Quran is Arabic and because the tongue of those who go to paradise, once in paradise, is Arabic” (Ibn Manzur 1955, 7). The philologist, al-Tha’alibi said: Whoever loves the Prophet loves the Arabs, and whoever loves the Arabs loves the Arabic Language in which the best of books was revealed. ..Whomsoever God has guided to Islam….believes that Mohammed is the best of prophets….that Arabs are the best of people…and that Arabic is the best of languages. (qtd in Patai 44)

This is said, most Arab intellectuals, writers, and philosophers believe, even swear, that Arabic, with its abundance of imagery, figures of speech, and diction is the most poetic and beautiful language in the world. Sociolinguists who believe in Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, (linguistic relativity: linguistic behaviors affects how people think and behave), have concluded that the linguistic nature of Arabic Language affected some traits in the Arab personality and behaviors, mainly the emotional nature of Arabs and their tendency to exaggerate and elaborate in both speaking and writing. For example, Edward Atiyah argues that “It is a characteristic of the Arab mind to be swayed more by words than by ideas, and more by ideas than by facts” (qtd in Patai 48). Similarly Philip K. Hitti states; No people in the world have such enthusiastic admiration for literary expression and is so moved by the word, spoken or written, as the Arabs. Hardly any language seems capable of exercising over the minds of its users such irresistible influence as Arabic. (qtd in Patai 49)

A close analysis of Arabs’ conversations and presentation can assert these conclusions. For example, the Arab, before he speaks of his history or culture, starts his sentence with the phrase, ?andina Ihna al-Arab, which literally means “with us, we, the Arabs.” Whether in the market or at one’s home, the Arab loves negotiations, bargaining and debating. A simple friendly invitation to a meal goes as follows; A: We would love you to have dinner with us tonight? B: Thank you very much; I really cannot do it this time; I have to do some work.

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A: Come on! You are already here, and the food is almost ready. B: I swear I would love to stay, but I really have to do something important. A: No way! What do you want people to say about us? We let you go without dinner! Besides, you have not been to our place since ever! B: OK! If you insist! This insistence and negotiation might seem unnecessary to the western observer; however, for the Arab, it is the most important part of the invitation. A knows that B has nothing to do and maybe would love to stay for dinner, but B cannot immediately accept the invitation and has to create a situation where A insists, maybe swears, to convince him. In such a conversation the word, no, has no negative meaning but becomes a form of negotiation and politeness. In the same way, the Arab values words more than action; a nice word or gesture is as good as a good deed, and vice versa regarding bad words. Many a time a word begins a fierce fight or ends in a long lasting friendship. In terms of the social life, the Arab is a part of a larger group, a family, tribe, and community. He is always expected to help his fellow members, to answer their questions, to invite them to his house and to get invited. His sense of devotion and loyalty to the family or the tribe is deeply mixed with a sense of dependency, gratefulness and mutual trust. He shares with his Arab fellows what he has and expects to receive something in return. This communal cohesion of the Arab society dictates most of its rules, behaviors and values. The Arab behaves according to public pressure and expectations. Codes of Arab morality, such as Sharaf (honor and reputation), Ird (sexual behavior of women), Rujulah (manliness), and Karamah (dignity) are all decided by the public opinion of other members of the tribe or community. The Arab shapes his social life and actions along with what his society expects from him and avoids, or at least hides, those desires or actions that bring social criticism and shaming. Repeatedly, an Arab invites people when he cannot afford it, rejects an invitation when he badly needs it, or suppresses his emotions just to please his community. Sania Hamady (1960) illustrates how Arab women are more comfortable in foreign environment, when they are unknown: Women who usually live in segregation do not hesitate to take off their veil and to mix with the men in the company of foreigners. They trust that their own people would not know that they were violating their custom and blame them for doing so. (38)

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This collective social morality holds every member of the group responsible, not only of his own actions, but of his other fellow members’ as well. Thus, the Arab is always judgmental of himself and of others. There are no boundaries between him and the other members of the family or the tribe. They visit each other without any previous notice, discipline each other’s children, comment on personal staff, and ask very personal questions, etc (Hamady 1960, 33). Arab society is largely a masculine society. Gender roles are intricately connected to the tribal nature of the Arab society, to the Islamic jurisprudence regarding male/female’s duties and responsibilities, and to the social and cultural codes of behaviors. Men largely dominate most of the academic, business, and social aspects of everyday life. They provide for and protect the family, while women take care of housekeeping, mothering, and childrearing. Men keep their power and honor only if their women follow the social, cultural and sexual codes of behavior prescribed by their society. The worst nightmare for an Arab is to see his women breaking those codes, especially the sexual ones. And his best weapon against his enemies is to find any means to shame their women. Consequently, honor crimes, though rare in modern Arab cities, still dominate Arab conversations and behaviors. Finally, the Arab’s sexual behavior and sexual honor (Ird) control most of his actions and behaviors. Though the discourse of sexuality is consistently repressed as a taboo (Arabs avoid to talk about their sexual needs and desires in public), it seems that sexuality surfaces in most of their daily talks and actions. Their honor is judged by their sexual restraint, their shame by sexual transgression; they praise or shame each other based on the chastity of their women, they dress according to the sexual and gender rules (women have to cover most of their bodies), etc. Edward Atiyah, discussing some of the Arabs’ social and cultural behaviors, concludes as follows; There was one that overshadowed them all, the One, the Sin of Sins, Sex. Sex, I gradually imbibed the notion, was altogether something to be ashamed of, a thing to be kept in the dark. In the bonds of holy matrimony it might become just permissible, a sort of legalized offense; but outside those precincts, even a kiss was a pretty scarlet affair, unless with a view to immediate marriage…The net result of all these influences had been to develop in my mind a general and acute feeling of shame about the whole subject of sex, sex in all its aspects, legitimate and illegitimate. It had seemed to me that even when you were married you could not approach the matter save in an apologetic matter. In my first days at school I was too shy even to mention girls (Patai 129)

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These social and cultural characteristics of Arabs are not identical in many Arab societies. Codes of sexuality and gender, for example, are enormously different in many Arab countries due to some complicated social and cultural networks, such as the dominating religious conservative discourse in Saudi Arabia, tribalism in Yemen, or the biculturalism of Lebanon and Morocco. However, I believe such a brief summary of Arabism facilitates the discussion in the following chapters and explain how different groups of Arab ESL students shape their identities in the new environment (The University of Arkansas).

Arab ESL Community The community considered in this study included 73 ESL male students (female students were not included, a gender issue that is covered later in the paper). These students were sponsored by different scholarship programs, in different disciplines and programs. Many of these students completed an intensive language program at the Spring International Language Center housed on the University of Arkansas campus, or in other similar institutes in the country; some took the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) as a partial requirement for the university admission, or had the test waived after finishing the sixth level of the intensive language program at Spring International (by agreement between Spring International and the University). Thirty two of these students were from Saudi Arabia, 20 from Jordan, 5 from Qatar, 4 from United Arab Emirates, 3 from Syria, 4 from Egypt, 2 from Libya, 1 from Kuwait, and 1 from Morocco. In this group, 27 students were graduate students (ages 2635 years), and 46 were undergraduates (ages 17-24). Twenty of the graduates were married and had their families with them in Fayetteville, and their children attended Fayetteville public schools. Married graduate students from the Gulf countries (Saudi, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar) lived in townhouses at the southwestern part of Fayetteville, creating a small Arabic neighborhood. Many of their spouses attended the University of Arkansas, and their children went to the same schools or preschools, as they usually car-pooled their children’s transportation. They were sponsored by their embassies, and their scholarships covered all their tuition fees, insurance, and annual tickets to visit their home countries. They also received various awards and promotions according to their academic performance and research achievements. Single undergraduates from the same countries received the same benefits, except for their annual allowances (married students received a 50% to 80% increase in their annual allowances based on the

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number of family members accompanying the student). Undergraduates lived in small apartments in different areas in Fayetteville but often gathered in one or two apartments during the weekends, playing games, watching movies, and having parties. Students from Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Libya, and Morocco, graduates and undergraduates, were sponsored by different scholarships, for example, Fulbright, Ford and Clinton scholarships from the State Department, or the University of Arkansas (Assistantships and other financial aided). They lived in different areas in Fayetteville, mostly in small apartments. Most of them were married; their wives attended the University of Arkansas, and their children attended Fayetteville public schools as well.

Arab ESL as a Minority Minority groups generally lack a sense of “recognition” from the dominant culture. Hegel (1931), describing the psychology of the oppressed in his Phenomenology of the Mind, argues that for any individual to have a human identity, there must exist a sense of recognition of this identity by others in his or her society. This recognition can be absent, or rather unbalanced among different social groups. Minorities have to recognize the existence of the majority, while their own identities, most of the time, remain questioned or unnoticed. Consequently, as they work to exist within the dominant culture, they reshape some of their social and cultural identities in accordance with the hegemony of the majority, beginning with a total compliance to the subversive supremacy of the new linguistic system, their L2, in this case, English. Not only do they need to speak and perform most of their daily routines in English, they also need to change the ways they think, feel and express themselves. Ahmed (1992) argues: The liberal university is usually, for the nonwhite student, a place of desolation, even panic; exclusions are sometimes blatant, more often only polite and silent, and the documents of one’s culture become little sickles to clear one’s way through spirals of refined prejudice. Most such students never quite manage to break through these ambiguities of enticement and blockage; some return, but many get lost in the funhouse of disagreeable habitations and impossible returns. (84)

Examples of these exclusions can be seen in the way their names, dress, behaviors, rituals, social and religious activities are perceived by the dominant culture. Moreover, their L2 schooling is usually contextualized

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within the dominance of L2 culture and politics. Street (1995) defines this literacy as a “Dominant Literacy…where some degree of indigenous differentiation of power and control means that the recipients of literacy campaigns are in practice experiencing ‘foreign’ cultural forms” (37). Therefore, these minority groups are always in a process of negotiation between their home cultures and what the dominant school culture dictates. At the University of Arkansas, student minority groups make up to 14.3 % of the total enrollment: students from foreign countries 5.8%, African Americans 5.2%, Hispanics 3.5%, Asian Americans 2.4%, American Indians 1.7%, and Hawaiians 1.7% (Voorhies, 2009). They respond to the dominant culture of school in many ways and forms, ranging from an almost total resistance to an unexpected approval of it. Those who resist (in some cases, it is only some members within a particular group) see in the dominant culture a threat to their existing social and cultural identities (for example, the religious identity of a conservative Muslim student); therefore, they attempt to avoid contact with the majority. They adhere to their cultural traditions, use their L1 for most of their daily activities, and live in as much cultural isolation from the dominant culture as possible. Generally, this avoidance results in literacy resistance in school as well. In the later sections, the study explains how this avoidance is manifested in some of the students’ responses to collaboration and study groups. On the other hand, some minorities, or a few members in a particular minority group, accept, and sometimes even celebrate, the dominance of the majority and subsequently adapt their local social and cultural identities to find a place in the “new” culture. They keenly acquire the new linguistic system, eventually to the neglect of their L1, drastically change their looks and behaviors, and compromise most, if not all, of their social and cultural identities. Arabs make up a distinctive minority in the United States in many respects. They are widely misrepresented in the dominant mainstream culture, and their cultural and religious identities are frequently attacked in public discourses and the media. This discourse of representations of the Orient (Arabs and Muslims in particular) is not a new one. Edward Said (1978) argues that the western image of East, the “other”, has always been a history of representations and misrepresentations. He claims that this history is mostly a creation of the western mind, or at least a political appropriation of eastern history, culture, and art to serve the interests of the westerners’ realization and definition of the self, as well as an extension of economic and political power. The Orient, according to Said, is “a fragment of a text” (177). Easterners are depicted as weak and

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cowardly, illiterate and uncultured, primitive and undisciplined, emotional and hyper-sexual, and most emphatically, dark, mysterious, and exotic. Arabs and Muslims are presented as anti-Semitic and anti-American, and Islam is seen as a major threat to Christianity. In Said’s words, Islam in the west is always presented as “a lasting trauma” (1978, 59). After the attacks of September 11, the popular media in the United States mercilessly damaged the Muslim identity. Muslims were regularly portrayed as antiAmerican terrorists, and their social and cultural practices became highly questionable. Television shows and newspapers showed passengers leaving an airplane or customers evacuating a mall because a Muslim was praying or had a long beard. In the 2008 presidential elections, Barack Obama had to confront the rumors that he was a Muslim (coming from a Muslim father) to prove his Americanness and patriotism, even though millions of Muslims are citizens of the United States. At school, Arab students are usually described as a homogenous group. For example, Ried (1987), studying the learning style preferences among ESL students, concludes that Arabs are strong visual learners. Meleis (1982) explains some of the social problems and dilemmas of Arab students in the west, assuming that Arabs share what he calls the “social properties that represent a core of Arabism” (3), not to mention Kaplan (2001) who classifies, or rather generalizes, “oriental” students’ patterns of thoughts in writing as indirect and circular, in comparison to the straightforward style of thought of the native English writer. Contrarily, in this study, Arab ESL students reflected a wide spectrum of reactions to the dominance of the cultural model of school. One group, the older, more conservative (mostly married) graduates, expressed a strong adherence to their home culture and a vehement resistance to L2 culture; the other group, the young single undergraduates, celebrated the dominance of L2 culture and accordingly re-shaped most of their perspectives about learning.

The Environment of the Study The Mosque Located on campus, the Mosque is the only Islamic center in Northwest Arkansas, and the place where all Muslims in this area met, prayed, and held their religious and social celebrations. The major event in the Mosque was the five prayers of the day: Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Isha. Very few members came to the first four prayers. However, a large number (especially the graduates) attended the Isha prayer. After

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every Isha prayer, there was a small social talk for 10 to 15 minutes. The other major event in the Mosque was Friday prayers, around 1.30 pm every Friday (Muslims have their weekly sermon, Khutbah, on Fridays). Almost every member of the two groups attended this event. The sermon was given in both Arabic and English, but prayers were always in Arabic. The Mosque, a highly sex-segregated site, had two levels, one for men’s prayers and gatherings, and the other for women’s. Still, many small issues regarding “appropriate” dress, behaviors, and children’s proper ages to follow gender rules remained a heated topic in the Mosque. Some of these differences came from the diverse social and cultural backgrounds of Muslims in this community (the community includes Muslims from the United States, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Iran, Morocco, Gulf countries, Syria, Lebanon, and other countries). Arab students always congregated in small groups and had most of their conversations in Arabic; still, they frequently switched to English when they discussed university policies, exams, or other university business. Out of politeness, they switched to English whenever a non-Arab Muslim joined the conversation. The Mosque had no assigned Imam, the person responsible for all the religious activities and prayer-leading; therefore, some qualified students (those who memorized chapters of the holy Quran and have some knowledge of the Islamic jurisprudence) could alternate in leading the prayer and giving the Friday sermon. However, there was no collaboration during the sermon or the prayer; only one student was assigned the Imamship every week. Some graduate students often did the Imamship/teaching. They were very eloquent in Arabic, memorized several chapters, if not all, of the Holy Quran, and also constituted a majority of all the administrative committees in the Mosque: the board of trustees, the executive committee, the legislative committee, and the jurisprudence committee. The Mosque carried out some other literacy events including Quran Recitation every Saturday night, reading from the Prophet Mohammed’s Sayings (Haddiths) after every Isha prayer, and summer Arabic School for children and non-Arab Muslim adults. All these literacy events, except the Friday sermon and some English explanations of the Prophet’s sayings, were in Arabic. The bilingual sermon raised some uneasiness among Arab Muslim students, especially new comers, who, due to a lack of proficiency in English, felt isolated during such a major religious event. One Saudi graduate student told me, “Now I realized what it means to be an Indian Muslim in Saudi Arabia during a Friday prayer.” The Mosque held most of the religious and social celebrations of Muslims in this area. There were mainly two big celebrations (Eids) that

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the Mosque conducted: first, Eid ul-Fitr, which comes after a whole month of fasting (Ramadhan), and the second, Eid al-Adha, the 10th day of Dul Hijjah (the twelfth month of the Muslim Calendar) which comes at the end of the annual Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca, where Muslims sacrifice some domestic animals commemorating the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son to the obedience of Allah (God). For both occasions, Muslims in the area gathered in the morning for a long sermon, the Eid prayers, and then a big breakfast. Then, they had some gatherings, games and a number of competitions at the Eid nights, where gifts and greetings were exchanged. The mosque also arranged for small parties when a new Muslim joined the community, especially those who converted from other religions, when a family received a new baby, or when students first came to campus or completed a degree. The community as a whole enjoyed a relatively peaceful religious atmosphere. All members of this group were Muslims (no Arab Jews or Christians), a majority of Sunnis and very few Shiites. Both Sunnis and Shiites in this community practiced their religious activities in the same Mosque, celebrated their religious and national holidays together at the Arabian School, and had intimate social relationships. Their religious solidarity was maintained partly as a reaction to the dominant evangelical protestant (mostly southern Baptist) culture of the University of Arkansas.

The Arabian School The second major location of the study was the Arabian School, a small building located at the south-western part of Fayetteville, and funded through the Saudi Embassy. The school, which taught Arabic and held the community’s meetings and social gatherings, consisted of two apartments; one was for boys’ schooling and men’s gatherings, and the other was for girls’ schooling and women’s meetings. It taught the Saudi Arabian elementary school curriculum, having the books shipped to the United States. Teachers used some chapters of the Holy Quran to teach the students reading and memorization, along with some basics of praying and worshiping. Some of the Saudi graduates were selected for the school administration work: a president, a vice-president, and a treasurer. The faculty included male Saudi graduates teaching the boys, and their spouses or other Saudi women teaching the girls, particularly the wives who were not taking classes at the University. Faculty and administration staff were paid for their work by the Saudi Embassy. Students in each classroom did not exceed four or five (in many cases, a parent taught his or her own children).

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The school was used for prayers and social gatherings as well. Because of its location near their homes, graduates who lived in the same area performed most of the prayers at the school (except the Friday prayer where everyone came to the Mosque). They often gathered, inviting other Arab students to big dinners. These graduates had many meetings and parties, especially when a new student came, graduated, or left the United States. All schooling and socializing in this site was performed in Arabic. Many literacy activities were held in the Arabian school. In addition to the regular schooling schedule that the school maintained (teaching the Saudi Arabian curriculum), Gulf students gathered to do their homework, discuss their readings, and plan their presentations and projects. There were also meetings to discuss school policies, to elect school staff and to revise enrolments, curriculum and grading. Many parents met to discuss their children’s schooling (both in the Arabian and Fayetteville public schools), applications, problems, etc. Some met after prayers to discuss religious issues, to consult with each other regarding scholarships, projects, and everyday life. Others remained after prayers to recite the holy Quran. For example, to refresh their memories, Yazan and Khalifa, who memorized the whole Quran, recited and listened to each other after every Isha prayer. In this location, food was very important. In most gatherings and parties, they served traditional dishes, giving the members of this community a taste of home. Graduates, who had their families with them, prepared traditional food such as hummus, tabuleh, foul, different soups, kabsah, salads, and falafel. There were parties where they would bake a whole lamb or cook fifty pounds of rice and chicken. They bought live domestic animals from nearby farms and butchered them according to the Islamic Law (Halal meat), a major concern for the religiously conservative members.

The Student Union The third major location was the University of Arkansas Student Union. Located at the center of campus activity, the student union provided services for students, staff and faculty, housing several restaurants, cafés, shops, book stores, gift shops, computer labs, salons, banks, a technology center, a post office, a mini-cinema, and a theater. There was a multi-cultural center, several rooms for students’ activities, offices for different student organizations, and administration offices. The union had two huge lounges (usually used for cultural activities such as

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music performances, dances, and fashion shows), a TV room, and a large hall for students to study and socialize. Many of the young undergraduates gathered at the union during the day, sometimes at night, had some of their daily meals, and did their studies. They dressed the way they liked, usually in jeans and t-shirts, listened to popular American music, and “hung out” with girls; most of these activities were considered by the older, more religious, graduates as socially unacceptable, or even morally and religiously forbidden. In their conversations, especially with American friends, young undergraduates were very informed about local cultural events, restaurants in town, movies and video games. They were very interested in events such as Thanksgiving, Christmas and Halloween (One student spent 100 dollars for a Halloween costume). Some of these undergraduates had nicknames: Mohammed became Mooh; Isam, Sam, and Abdullah, Abdool. A Few even changed their names to James or George. Furthermore, the student union was an Arabic-learning environment, where American and international students met with Arabs and practiced their Arabic. Moh (a nickname for Mohammed) entered the Student Union, wearing a white Polo shirt and a pair of black jeans; his eyes were looking for something. He saw Ali and Sameer sitting with two international girls. Moh joined the group. He shook hands with everyone. The group exchanges two minutes conversation; then, they went back to study. Sameer was working on his laptop, with his headphones on. Ali and one of the girls were reading books and taking notes. Moh took his notebook and started writing. The other girl went to the lab. Ten minutes later, the girl in the lab returned. Moh joined her, and they left for a smoke. (Field notes, 11/15/09)

Literacy activities in the student union were very diverse. Students gathered in groups and did their homework, presentations, and projects. Many believed that the student union was a good place to practice spoken English and to have conversations with native speakers. Arab students in the language school met their conversation partners, native speakers who volunteer to help international students with their spoken language. Every conversation partner had one or more students. They made small groups and talked about school and other issues. Some students were assigned to watch a TV show or read a newspaper and write a summary or a critique about it. The student union TV room was the ideal place. Others stopped between classes, talked about classes, exams and teachers, or had some snacks. Many students preferred to study in the union, closer to the union computer lab, where students had access to the internet, printing and copy

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machines. The union also had a technology center where students can borrow laptops, cameras, projectors, and other study related technology.

Fragmented Identities Previous research about Arab students in the west mostly depicts this group as homogenous and identical. Writing in response to the dominant western cultures, scholars seem to emphasize racial discrimination, Islamophobia, and minority representations, ignoring any discussion of these minorities’ complex cultural backgrounds, ethnical differences, linguistic variations, class, gender, family, and religion. In many of these depictions, Arabs assumingly share the same lifestyle, school experience, cultural reactions, etc. Unfortunately, these presentations are not accurate. Within every minority, there are subdivisions of more or less powerful, more or less educated, upper and lower classes, religious conservatives and liberals, etc. In case of this group, there is the religiously conservative, monolingual, married, high class student and the very liberal, bilingual, single middle class student. There are many others in between, and some completely different. As these students come to the west, they form, and modify, their identities according to the new social and cultural challenges and expectations. Some reject the new culture, or a part of it, clinging to their traditional home values. Many celebrate the new environment and its freedom. They admire its fascinating advancement, cleanliness, friendliness, adventures, and experimentations, reshaping their identities and priorities. In the following section, I developed some personality models that reflect the diversity of this group. These models do not represent particular individuals, rather accumulative images and behaviors shared by many members in a larger group. I tried to avoid unique personal behaviors and listed only common ones, each shared by a reasonable number of individuals. I need to emphasize here that these models are not the only ones in the community; these are just broad examples of noticeable differences. The first group is the traditionalists, a religiously and culturally conservative group. The traditionalist carries his home traditions with him, his dress, habits, and worldview. To this group, tradition represents the highest qualities, originality and the purest forms of literature and philosophy. The new to them is always unauthentic, less genuine, strange, threatening, and a deviation. The traditionalist comes to the west for a necessity, mostly study or work, and he is determined to go back home someday. He has no ambition in pursuing naturalization process in the west and fears to bring up his children in it. He is very religious, and

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usually married. If not married, he has a specific picture of a would-be partner, mostly a Muslim woman or a Christian willing to convert to Islam. He is very ideological, having one worldview, one cultural model, and a very strict dichotomy between right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, religious and irreligious. He is very strict about traditional gender roles and sexuality, and has very little tolerance to opposite views; usually, he avoids conversations in these topics, except with some other fellow conservatives who share the same beliefs. He is very private and sensitive about his views, and he does not accept compromise. He speaks Arabic in most of his daily activities, especially at home, and English only when he has to. Traditionalists frequently gather at the Arabian school and the Mosque. They consider western culture as a threat to their home cultural background and fear any integration with it. They are very active in Arabic and Muslim cultural and religious traditions, Eid, welcoming or farewell parties, hospitality parties, etc. Therefore, the traditionalist is rarely social with foreigners. He spends most of his time with his family or his fellow conservatives, consistently discussing the cultural “invasion” of the west, ridiculing some of the western social and cultural aspects, or nostalgically remembering some back-home experience, activities or news. This type rarely participates in western religious or cultural festivals, such as Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas. In the same way, he avoids any social activity in schools, games, parties, or cultural events. His relations with westerns are edgy and quick, and he does not have many western friends. Omar, one of the participants, said that he goes to school only for class and spends the rest of his day with his wife and daughter. In his shopping activity, he is very careful about his religious dietary restrictions, no pork or any of its components. No alcohol beverages. He is not a frequent restaurant diner, and he travels miles for Halal meat, usually buying and butchering his own meat. He does not buy clothes with logos or pictures that violate his principles and values. He checks trademarks and investigates where his money goes, and which cause it supports. His children have to learn Arabic and Islamic traditions and values at an early age. He sends them to Arabic and Islamic schools, no matter how much it costs him. His daughters have to wear the veil as soon as they reach adolescence, if not before. He does not allow his children to participate in western school cultural activities, such as father’s day, mother’s day, Halloween. He does not celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Yazan refused to send his four-year old daughter to a neighboring preschool. He believed that some of the school activities violated his

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principles, such as the video cartoons they show to kids which frequently have singing, dancing and other “foreign” cultural behaviors. The second group is the westernizers, who try to escape the limiting social, cultural, and religious traditions of their home cultures. Their journey to the west is one of pleasure, a dream come true. The westernizer is ready to change; he is looking for change. Moh said, “The first thing I saw as I left the airport is a couple kissing each other, I loved it.” This comes as a reaction to the strict traditional cultural model that prohibits any public display of passion: In a traditional Arab society, a man with his wife would never dream of walking together in the streets, side by side, let alone arm in arm or hand in hand. Such behavior would be considered an indecent display of intimacy whose proper place is at home, in the privacy of the bedroom. (Patai 131).

The westernizer wants to forget his painful past, to satisfy his unfulfilled wishes, and to restore his suppressed identities. He changes his name or picks a nickname. For example, Mohammed become “Moh"; Abdulrahman, “Abdool,” etc. He claims another country of origin; a Morrocan or Algerian may claim that he is French, Palestinian, or Australian. He pursues a naturalization process through marriage or workrelated visa applications. He clings to the new environment with his teeth and nails. He makes the second environment his home, an ideal home, and fears going back to his native country. This model is the least religious. He questions most of the traditional religious views about life. He doubts his home religious restrictions; especially those related to drinking alcohol, dating, or marriage. He lives in a constant inner conflict between fear and desire. Ultimately, he abandons his traditional religious discourse and develops his own vision and personal interpretation of religion. He makes the rules as he goes, based on his needs, his failure and success, and his experience. He discusses his religious beliefs with people, only to get some self-assurance from his fellow liberals. He enters the new environment with a secret pleasure of independence, a new sense of freedom, a total absence of religious and social restrictions. He has a strong desire for adventure and exploration, especially of things that his traditional cultural and religious discourse forbids. He wears latest fashions, braces and tattoos. He dates, drinks, and gambles (all considered irreligious in traditional view). This group dominantly gathers at the university student union, parties and gathering at their apartments, and the city’s downtown bars and clubs. This model is young, mostly single, looking for romantic and sexual adventures. He is very friendly, outgoing, bicultural, compromising, and

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has an enormous zest for life. He is very active in the social and cultural activities in the new environment, an avid participant in most of these activities, and a frequent attendant of the city’s clubs, theatres, and restaurants. He celebrates Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, anniversaries, and birthdays. Aziz, for example, has two birthdays (one in every calendar, the Gregorian and the lunar Islamic calendars), Nabeel has a party every Friday night, and Moh’s apartment is never empty; friends come to smoke Hookah every night. The liberal lives in continuous struggle, and an uneasy consciousness. He strives hard to become western but never belongs. He is always different, and he loses a sense of his tradition in every endeavor. Stories of love ending in fights and jail are numerous. The third model is the ambivalent, a mixture of the first two models. He is moderately religious, practicing the necessary; however, he abstains from any major violation of his religious belief. For example, he does not drink, gamble, or date. He is very adamant about the importance of religion and teaches it to his children. He talks and explains his religion rationally, accepts other religious beliefs, and attempts to find a common ground. He has some reservations about his religion but is generally proud of it. He is a utilitarian, using his religion and culture to advance his personal gains in the west. He builds on cultural and religious holidays to advance his agenda, increases his social networking, and receives more recognition in both communities. Fauzi, for example, dresses in his traditional costume to the Eid prayer, extravagantly spends on the Eid party, and invites all his western friends to a big dinner. This model seems to be very successful in the west. He embodies what the new environment desires of him, the moderate reasonable other. He brings diversity, experience, and a fresh worldview; in addition, he is harmless, understanding and peaceful. Both at school and work, he is handy for any curious question about his ethnicity or religion, no matter how silly the question is. He is never angry. Westerners like him, because he understands their good intentions. If he is an academic, his works are usually about the east, or Islam, a glimpse to the east from a western perspective. His works combine the two worlds; approving or criticizing one world or another becomes just a reaction. He asks the westerner’s questions and answers them. He easily finds a job and publishes his works. As he advances, he becomes more argumentative, ultimately a narcissist. He does not like competition, especially from his own people, who react differently to his success: new-comers admire his success; his fellow ambivalents envy and hate him.

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This type is usually middle aged. He has lived quite some time, and tastes the pleasure and pain, in both worlds. He is a family person. He brings his wife with him, finds a Muslim wife here, or marries a Christian woman and ultimately converts her. If she does not convert, he insists that his children become Muslims, at least in belief. His home combines his traditional valuables and other western artifacts. He is traditional in issues related to family values, gender roles and sexuality, but shows some tolerance if his children violate them. For example, his wife and daughters can wear jeans and t-shirts; drop the veil or the niqqab, and/or attend their western friends’ parties. He celebrates anniversaries, Valentine’s, and Thanksgivings. He, along with his family, is a frequent attendant of the city’s cultural events, theatres, and restaurants. This model is usually careful about the Islamic dietary rules regarding pork and alcohol. However, he does not have a problem being in parties and gatherings where drinks and pork are served. He is uncaring about possible pork components in candy, cooking oils, or other food items, as long as it does not say pork on the label. He buys his meat at the local store; it does not have to be Halal. He has his philosophy, and religious resources, about how and what makes food Halal. In addition to the above three personality models, there is the roleplayer, who for some peer pressure or partner’s expectation, plays the role of a traditionalist or westernizer. He, usually a new comer, is oppressed in one cultural model. He has two different lifestyles and easily adapts to any environment. Some of these role-players are married and their spouses belong to an opposite personality model. For example, Tamer , 50 years old, spends the night with his younger friends, drinking alcohol and playing poker; however, he changes his clothes, has some mouth fresheners, and goes home to his very religiously conservative wife. Khalid, on the other hand, a twenty three year old undergraduate and a very religious person, attends mixed parties and pretends that he has a girlfriend, just to fit in the culture of his young liberal friends. Finally, this ethnic group is much more complex and diverse; there are conservatives among the liberals and vice versa; there are the secretive and the rogue; the believer and the faker. There are mixtures of two or more models, and some entirely different. Besides, these personality models are not fixed and static; they change based on experiences, situations and the length of stay in the USA. Many traditionalists have loosened their values to adjust to the new environment, in the same way that some westernizers return to their home religious and cultural values after some cultural shock in the new environment. Moh stopped drinking after he had a fight in the bar where he “was almost killed!”

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In terms of their literacy in school, their new identities shape their perspectives about the nature of learning, the role of teachers, texts, and their social and cultural involvement on campus. For example, religiously conservative traditionalists, who are deeply immersed in the literacy activities held in the Mosque and the Arabian school, still adhere to the lecture format; they express a high respect for the figure of the teacher, and an extreme sacredness of texts. Westernizers, on the other hand, expressed an enormous comfort in collaborative learning environment and study groups, welcomed the friendly social nature of such learning activities, and used these social occasions to make more friendship. A detailed description of these students’ learning behavior and literacy acquisition is included in a separate article, soon to appear in The Journal of Literacy Research, entitled “Literacy Acquisition among Arab ESL Students.”

Conclusion Though, there could be some agreement that a sense of oppression and transition exists in being a minority, the question remains of how much of these processes are imposed by the majority and how minorities themselves advance or resist these processes. In the case of Arab ESL students, as this study mentions above, some of the transitions they experience are direct results of their desires and ambitions, regardless of the dominance of the majority. On the other hand, some students remain faithful to their cultural models and express only a little to no compromise. In some cases, these cultural and religious conservatives impose their home identities and cultural legacies on the dominant culture and demand some sort of acknowledgement. Many a time the governor, the police chief and many citizens of the city are invited to the Mosque, listen to Islamic lectures and abide by the religious and cultural codes of dress and behaviors at these locations. Arabic restaurants and Hookah cafes fill the city and lately receive a large population of admirers. Some Arabic dishes, such as hummus and falafil, have made their way to typical American restaurants. In the case of Arab ESL students, the study shows that they represent a very complicated and heterogeneous group who respond to the new environment in many different ways. Some students come with preconceived ideas about the west, as pleasure adventure or a necessary evil, and develop their identities accordingly. The social external pressures become just reinforcement to perspectives that the students already developed. In the process of identification, most of these students lose

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their sense of communal cohesion. They associate more with people who share their personality traits. A religious conservative Arab might spend more time with a conservative religious Indian, or Bangladeshi, than with a younger less religious Arab. In the same way, the young liberal Arab spends more time with internationals or Americans who share his interests. This study is entirely based on the observations of the Arab (Muslim) students at the University of Arkansas and may not apply to other Arab student populations in the United States. Still, the study can be useful in understanding some common background behaviors of this ethnic group, and for other future research. It is also obvious that this study does not cover the female students of this community, mainly because of the highly sex-segregated nature of this group. I could not have any access to observe or interview some of the female students in this community. I also believe that a male research speaking for female students may misrepresent their experience, or further marginalize them. I suppose a female student can have much better access to this community’s female students and a much better understanding.

References Ahmad, Aijaz. (1992). In theory: classes, nations, literatures. New York: Verso. Anzaldua, G. (1999, October). Nos/otros: "Us" vs. "them," (Des) conocimientos y comprisos. Presentation at the Conference of Territories and Boundaries: Geographies of Latinidad, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Aronowitz, S., & Giroux, H.A. (1991). Postmodern Education. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Au, K. (1993). Literacy instruction in multicultural settings. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bhabha, Homi K. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Egan-Robertson, A. (1998). Learning about culture, language, and power: Understanding relationships among personhood, literacy practices, and intertextuality. Journal of Literacy Research, 30, pp. 449-487 Emerson, R.M., Fretz, R.I., & Shaw, L .L.( 1995). Writing ethnographic field notes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Erikson, E.H. (1968). Identity, youth, and crisis. New York: Norton. Fairclough, Norman. (1989). Language and Power. London: Longman.

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—. (1999). Linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis. In A. Jaworski & N. Coupland (Eds.), The discourse reader. (pp. 183– 211). London: Routledge. Fanon, Frantz. (1976). Black skin white masks. New York: Grove Press. Ferdman, B.M. (1990). Literacy and cultural id entity. Harvard Educational Review, 60, pp. 181-203. Fowler, Sherri B, and Victor Villanueva. eds. (2002). Included in English Studies: Learning That Favor Racial and Ethnic Diversity. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education. Gay, G. (1994). A synthesis of scholarship in multicultural education (Urban Monograph Series). Oak Brook, IL: North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Retrieved from http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/leadrshp/le0gay.htm Gee, J. (1991). A linguistic approach to narrative. Journal of Narrative and Life History 1(1), 15–39. —. (2004). Discourse analysis: What makes it critical? In R. Rogers (Ed.), An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education. (pp. 19– 50). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. —. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. London: Falmer Press. Graff, Harvey J. (1979). The literacy myth: literacy and social structure in the nineteenth-century city. New York: Academic Press. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Haddad, L. I. (2005, January). Middle East presence thinning on US campuses. Retrieved August 15, 2010, from http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E4D19123-9DD3-11D1B44E006097071264.htm Hall, S. (1996). “Who needs identity?” Questions of Cultural Identitie. ed. S. Hall and P. du Gay. London: Sage. 1-17 Hamady, Sania. (1960). Temperament and character of the Arabs. New York: Twayne Publishers. Hammersley, M. , &A Tkinson, P. (1995). Ethnography: Principles in practice. London: Routledge. Heath, Shirley Brice. (1980). The Functions and Uses of Literacy. Journal of Communication. 30.1, 123-33. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm and Sir, J B Baillie. (1931). Phenomenology of the Mind. New York: Harper & Row. Ibn Manzur. (1995). Lisan al-Arab.Beirut: Dar Sadir

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Kaplan, R. B. (2001). Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education. In Tony Silva & Paul Matsuda (eds.) Landmark Essays on ESL Writing. (1-20) New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Lebkicher, Roy, George Rentz, and Max Steineke. (1952). Saudi Arabia: Background and Culture of Arabs. New York: R. F. Moore Company. Meleis, Afaf I. (1982). Arab Students in Western Universities: Social Properties and Dilemmas. The Journal of Higher Education.53, 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1982), pp. 439-447 Millard, E. (1997). Differently literate: Gender identity and the construction of the developing reader. Gender and Education, 9, pp. 31-48 Mishler, E.G. (1999). Storylines: Craftartists' narratives of identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nieto, S. (1999). The light in their eyes: Creating multicultural learning communities. New York: Teachers College Press. Patai, R. (2010). The Arab Mind. Recovery Resources Press. Reid, Joy M. (1987). The Learning Style Preferencesof ESL Student. TESOL QUARTERLY. 21,1. Rogers, R. (2004). An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education. In R. Rogers (Ed.), An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education. (pp. 1–18). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Sarup, M. (1996). Identity, culture, and the postmodern world. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press Spivak, G.C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak?. Marxism and the Interpretationn of culture. 271-313. Spradeley, J.P. (1979). The ethnographic interview. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Street, Brian V. (1993). Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy. London: Cambridge U P. —. (1995). Social literacies: critical approaches to literacy in development, ethnography, and education. New York: Longman. —. (1984). Literacy in Theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge U P. Tatum, B. (1997). "Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?"New York: Basic Books. “U of A International Student Enrollment Report.” (2010). Retrieved September 11, 2010 from http://iss.uark.edu/Fall_2010_Country.pdf Voorhies, Steve. (2009). University of Arkansas Enrollment Sets New Record, Approaches 20,000 Students. Daily Headlines. September 11. Retrieved from http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/15647.htm

PART II: IN THE CLASSROOM: GLOBALIZATION AND EDUCATION

CHAPTER SIX AFRICAN AMERICAN ENGLISH AND CODE SWITCHING IN SCHOOL JEANNIE WALLER

In the United States, Standard American English (SAE) is the language of the market place; however, SAE is a version or dialect of Standard English (SE). In addition, SAE is further broken down into four regional dialects (Northern, Western, Midland, and General Southern). These dialects are distinguished by their accents caused by the variations in the way that the speakers pronounce certain groups of letters or words, and the dialects are distinguished by subtle deviations in usage. While the speakers of the four dialects follow the basic rules of SAE, there are groups of speakers who speak dialects that use a different standard than those standards prescribed by SAE. For instance, African American English (AAE) speakers are identified not by their dialect alone but by the various standards that rule their language, and AAE speakers not only speak AAE but they also speak AAE within the regional accents found in the location where the SAE speakers were born and raised. (So AAE speakers’ language rules, like SAE speakers’ language rules, are consistent throughout the four regional dialects found in the United States.) AAE speakers’ identity is often tied to AAE, and that identity is often antithetical to some of the other identity constructs AAE speakers may develop. For instance, Vershawn Ashanti Young (2009) relates how AAE or “talking black” is a part of his identity, and speaking AAE is expected in some groups and prohibited in others. For Young, talking black or using AAE allows him to negotiate the projects in which he was raised, yet adopting SAE allows him to negotiate the education system that is a permanent part of his life. He writes, “[t]his issue of trying to fit in but never succeeding, of being perpetually on the margins of various communities and never finding a way into any one of them, is the trope of my life, making me something of a black Sisyphus” (15). While Young rejects the ideology of bidialectilism or code switching—the movement

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from one language to another—in favor of code meshing—what he defines as mixing two languages — he admits that academia prefers the two languages to remain separate and not equal, or for him to practice linguistic restraint (63). The ideology of the two languages remaining separate is present in the United States’ public education system where most teachers prefer that AAE speakers leave their AAE at home and use SAE in the classroom. In fact, there are many scholars, according to Young, (John Russell Rickford, Russell John Rickford, Geneva Smitherman, and Lisa Delpit) who push for bidialectatism or code switching (2009, 559). Young suggests that code switching does the following: Code switching reinforces notions of “acceptable limits” and “acceptable prejudices” by telling people of dialect difference that there is an acceptable way to communicate in this nation, and that their way isn’t it— at least not in official, graded school assignments, in public, or at work. It gives teachers permission to fail students who display linguistic differences in their speech and writing. It gives employers permission to place limitations on workers’ promotional opportunities or permits them not to hire diverse speakers (64).

Code switching is difficult for the very young student; furthermore, many teachers are not equipped to adequately assist students in maneuvering the complicated issues that relate to code switching. In addition, code switching has political implications that place AAE as the substandard language, so to students whose parents, extended family members, and community members speak AAE, the message they receive is that AAE is bad and SAE is good. For young students, switching can be confusing, and so much stress is put upon correcting usage errors, that often learning the fundamental skills of reading is difficult and they are often acquired poorly. Lisa Green (2002) suggests that most teachers, in their efforts to force students to code switch, over correct students to the point of silencing the students. Green references an AAE speaking child telling a story to her teacher and after attempting to tell the story, the teacher continued to over correct until the student lost the desire to continue (231233). Silencing students can cause the student to stop participating and eventually the student will develop an academic failure to thrive which is manifested by students who are no longer interested in participating in class and who will eventually totally disengage in all classroom activity. Green also references educators who have negative attitudes toward AAE speakers. She references William Labov’s work, “‘Experimental approaches to the effects of speech on teachers’ attitudes show that it is the most powerful single factor in determining teachers’ predictions of student

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performance”’ (qtd in Green 2002, 231). Pushing students to code switch is often a result of negative teachers’ attitudes toward AAE as well as negative attitudes toward the speakers of AAE; consequently, the negative teacher attitudes toward the AAE speaker can foster lower expectations of the AAE speaker’s performance. Arnetha Ball and Ted Lardner discuss the double sword of low expectations. They write that “teachers who are not connected to the students and are disconnected with their communities are susceptible to entering the classroom with reduced expectations—of their own ability to teach all students well as well as of their students’ potential to achieve at the highest level” (2005, 126). The results of teachers’ negative attitudes can be manifested by excluding students during question and answer time, assigning students work that doesn’t motivate the student, and focusing so intently on the language that the content of what the AAE speaker is saying or writing is ignored while the language is picked apart. The idea that currently, there may still exist teachers whose negative attitudes were holding students back from reaching their potential prompted me to look for areas in our state where these attitudes may exist. By coincidence, at this time, the National Council of Teachers of English proposed that the high schools, in honor of Black History month, choose a black author and celebrate in a month long literacy event using the author’s work as a means to plan activities based on the literacy event. I used this proposal as an opportunity to approach one of the high schools in the Arkansas Delta in hopes of having it participate in this project under my direction and to use this literacy event as a means to test Green’s theory that negative teacher attitudes toward AAE and AAE speakers can result in forcing students to switch from AAE to SAE and that this switch could hinder students’ progress in class. During my observation, I had hoped to observe the effects of language, of the teacher’s expectation based upon language, of the social interactions in the classroom, of the students’ reading functions as they relate to literacy, and the students’ developing literacy identities. For the month long literacy event, I chose Sharon Draper’s novel, Copper Sun. This adolescent novel is a slave narrative that tells the story of the kidnapping, enslavement, and ultimate escape of a young African girl. While the majority of the students participating in the event were African American, there were a few whites and one Hispanic student. I did have reservations about choosing this particular novel. One concern was that I was not sure the students would be able to relate to the historical concepts of slavery that Draper reveals. Also, I wanted to avoid labeling the students; I wanted to see the individual literacy identities emerge and did not want to implicitly suggest that they should read only books that

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contain themes or motifs that are racially directed—slave stories for example. Louise Rosenblatt writes, “A steady diet of books about the students’ own age group, their own minority or majority group, their own social or psychological problems would probably result in the reading of the works simply as sociological or psychological documents” (66). Ultimately, I chose this novel because it was historically correct, had the potential to give rise to diverse topics for classroom discussions, and the protagonist and her friend were both adolescent girls: one a black slave and the other a white indentured servant. While I wasn’t sure that the students could relate to slavery, I thought they might relate to the motif of unlikely friendships and the struggles for happiness.

The School The school that served as my observation site is situated in the Arkansas Delta, and the town is a remnant of a once active agricultural area that employed many men and women as farm workers. Farmland and the White River border the town. The farms that once employed the people are now factory farmed, and newer technology has replaced many of the human farm hands; consequently, jobs are scarce and poverty is high. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2009, this particular rural town has a population of 2000 and the average income per capita is $15,575; the race divide between whites and black is marginal with 49.8% white and 46.6% black (City-data.com). With poverty levels high, 100 % of the students receive free or reduced lunches (Arkansas Department of Education and Public Schools). Racially, the town is almost equally divided; however, the school has a majority of African American students because of the consolidation of another school, which was primarily an African American populated school. Consolidation was a move by Arkansas to close some of the smaller, poorer schools by consolidating two schools together, where the poorer and much smaller school is closed and the students are bussed to a school located in a larger and sometimes more thriving town. Consolidation was an economic choice for the state to save money; however, the choices for which schools were consolidated and where was political. When the African American students were transferred to the school in my study, many of the white parents removed their children in order to either send them to private schools or to home school. Many of the students who attend the school come from homes where one or both parents did not graduate from high school. Jolliffe, Hayde and Waller wrote that the research suggests that “in all 20 counties of the delta,

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14 percent of all adults have only a ninth-grade education or less” (2011, 59). In 2009, on the Grade 11 Literacy Examination, which focuses on reading comprehension and writing, the students in the study area scored 24% below basic literacy and only 22 % fitting into the advanced literacy (Arkansas Department of Education). These results relate to the testing that categorizes students into one of four categories: below basic, in which students are unable to show mastering skills in reading and writing; basic, reveals substantial skills in reading and writing; proficient, reveals students having a solid academic performance and are ready for the next level; advanced, superior performers. While the basic literacy scores in the area are improving, the school is still struggling to improve the students’ basic proficiency.

The Teacher Ms. Smith (not her real name), like many of the other teachers in this school, is a middle class, nearing middle age, white woman. While she teaches in this town, she lives in another much larger town nearly thirty miles away, and her only child left at home attends school in the town where she lives. She told me that she is a math teacher who teaches English because there was no one else able to do it, and she needed the job and the money. By her own confession, she doesn’t know grammar well. Her husband, she said, makes more money than she, and he is less educated. She said she earns the least amount possible for teachers of her education and experience in Arkansas. She is taking graduate school classes in special education so she can make more money, and since she teaches one class of the special education students anyway, she said she might as well get her masters in that area. Ms. Smith speaks SAE and enforces the speaking of SAE in her classroom. She told me that she tells her students that speaking non Standard English is wrong and that they have two ways of talking: the way you are supposed to talk in class and the way you talk at home. She insists, as do the rest of the teachers, the students speak or attempt to speak only SAE. Even though there is a racial and economic difference between Ms. Smith and many of her students, she attempted to provide a learning environment that fostered a biracial representation. For instance, she decorated her walls with portraits of both white and black authors and included a variety of books in her class library that she proudly reported would be attractive to both races. All the students seemed to approach her equally, and she talked to the students outside of as well as inside of class. In spite of her seemingly good relationship with the students, she says that

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she is underpaid and over worked and has tried to get hired at other schools without success. Her first teaching job was at another Arkansas Delta school, and she says that while she would like to get hired in another town, this school is much safer than her last job. In the Arkansas Delta, the teachers are paid less than in most areas of the state. According to the Arkansas Department of Education, the recommended salary for a BA with zero work experience is $29,244, an MA, $33,630, and a PhD, $41, 130. In the school in which I observed and conducted the literacy event, the starting teacher’s pay follows the State’s recommendation for starting pay: in more prosperous areas, the starting teachers’ pay can be as high as, BA $41,310, MA $44,778, and a PhD is $70, 176. This can lend to a reading that the more ambitious teachers, or teachers who can compete in the job market, go to more prosperous cities, leaving the Arkansas Delta with those teachers who are fixed in where they want to live, or those teachers who could not get hired in the higher paying prestigious schools. Ms. Smith does not attempt to reach outside of her allotted funds for improving her classroom. For instance, she compliments the librarian who wrote a grant and was given money to improve the library, and she says that she knows money is out there, but she doesn’t have the time to work on grant writing. Moreover, many of the desks in her room are chipped or broken, the books in her library are worn out, and while she has a computer, she is still waiting on a smart board for her classroom. She says she doesn’t ask for better desks because the students don’t take care of the equipment. Likewise, The Brown Chair from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville provided our literacy event with the funding to buy each student his or her own copy of the novel. Ms. Smith refused to allow the students to remove the books from the classroom, choosing instead, to read aloud to the students with the students following along in the book. Her reasoning was that she didn’t think they would read the books on their own, and she wanted them to do well; in addition, she said they either would lose the books or tear them up.

The Students The students in Ms. Smith’s ninth-grade-English class are majority African American, and both the black and white students speak AAE. Therefore, identifying the students by dialect alone will not predict their race. While some of the AAE speakers, both white and black, code switch effectively in class, they revert back to AAE when they are in the hallway between classes. Most of the students, though, do not code switch inside of

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class; consequently, Ms. Smith spends a great deal of time asking the students to either rephrase their sentences or to identify what they said that was wrong according to her interpretation of SAE. While the black and white students talk together in class and outside of class, it is interesting that during breakfast and lunch, the black students sit in one area of the cafeteria and the whites in another. Those couple of students who mix during lunch do so on the border of where the whites and blacks sit. As previously stated, my function in the classroom was strictly as an observer. I began my visits to the school in January 2009, and on my first visit, Ms. Smith encouraged her “better readers” to come to the back of the class for one-on-one discussions. Caught off guard and having my observation status changed, I talked to the students because I was, after all, curious at the descriptions that Ms. Smith chose to describe her students with: better readers, problem kids, and difficult kids. Ms. Smith referred to her better readers as those students who read outside of class, who participated in classroom discussion, and who came to school with their homework completed most of the time. In addition, she said they acted right. When I asked her to be more specific, she said, “they are more respectful and don’t act out in class. And they talk a little better”. The better readers consisted of five boys and two girls. One of the boys was from Chicago, and he said he missed the after school programs that were common in the Chicago school districts. He said, “I read but we don’t have books in our house, only a bible.” The other children who were good readers used the time at the end of class to go to the school library and check out books. Most of this group told me that they had books but not bookshelves. One of the girls said that she kept all of her books under her bed in a box to keep her younger siblings from tearing them up. Also some said that their mothers and grandmothers had Sunday school material and bibles, but said they don’t see them read very often. Ms. Smith had a small group of students that she referred to as her “problem kids.” These students were well mannered she said “but just don’t do their work and spend a lot of time during class talking to each other or loud talking”. She said they rarely read and only do the work that is assigned as in-class work. This group seemed interested in what I was doing and engaged in conversation with me after class. They all said they hated reading, but they did tell me they read what is going on with their friends on Facebook, (the online social network). While few of the students have computers at home, they say they use the town library computers and the school library computer.

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The finaal group, the “difficult kid ds”, was thosse students Ms. M Smith identified ass “the studentts who were involved i in gaang behavior and who were sure too drop out”. Inn her ninth graade class, shee had two boys that she classified ass difficult. Shee said, “they slleep during cllass, are impossible to engage, andd have a high absenteeism””. Of the two,, she reported d that she had one of tthe boy’s oldeer brothers, an nd he had droopped out at th he end of his ninth graade year, and she said that she s expected tthis brother would w too. Neither of thhe two from thhis group wan nted to talk to me.

Negative N Teaccher Attitude

Low Expecctations

Negative Seelffullfilling Prophecyy

Fig. 6-1: Neggative Self-fulfillling Prophecy

During cclass, Ms. Sm mith read to the t students. She would have them follow alongg in the book and some, I noticed, n were reading ahead d and one of the studeents who seem med to be reading ahead w was one of thee difficult

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kids. At the end of a set amount of pages, she began asking questions. She tried to engage the students in a discussion about the text. Ms. Smith’s student expectations, however, were low. Evidence of her low expectations can be seen in the type of questions she asked: short answers and concrete questions demanding concrete answers. Note the question: “What words do you think Amari needed to be taught first?” (I should note that this was my second visit to the school and while some of the students may have been uncertain about my presence; many talked to me before class). Some of the students looked up from their books before one of the students answered, “Water. She should learn to say water.” One of the students looked at the girls sitting next to her and rolled her eyes. One of the boys snickered. The teacher went back to reading. By aiming low, she was doing what Ray Rist (1970) says of teachers who do not expect high performance from their students, this, he says, causes the students to become disengaged (412-3). At the end of the day’s reading, Ms. Smith closed her book and told the students what they were going to read the next class period and gave them a writing assignment based on her question in class. “Write a paragraph about what you think is the most important word or words that Amari should learn to say.” After the students left class, the special education students came in for their math class. Ms. Smith gave the students an in-class assignment based on a handout that she had provided. She and I sat at the back of the classroom and discussed her interactions with the English class. I asked her: “Is this the way your discussions go? You ask a question, one of the students will answer and that ends the discussion?” MS: “I have to be careful how I ask questions. Many of the students don’t speak Standard English and for them classroom discussion is difficult.” Interviewer: “Is it difficult because they don’t understand the questions?” MS: “Partly that and partly they are not able to answer in Standard English.” Interviewer: “If they cannot answer in SE, they are not allowed to discuss?” MS: “Not really. But some of them speak real heavy dialect and I try to encourage them to speak SE. When they cannot, I try to pick a couple of things to correct them on and then it just becomes so

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difficult. Plus, this book is really racial. I have to be careful. We have a lot of racial tension in this area.” Interviewer: “Have you tried more complicated questions?” MS: “No. I stick with what I know works. And, they are limited at what they understand. I don’t mean that to be ugly, but they have a hard time reading. My next group is more energetic. They discuss more.” The next group of students entered the room, and they all opened their books and just like the previous students, some followed along in their books, and some read ahead, and some slept. At the end of the reading, the teacher asked the same question: “What words do you think Amari should be taught first?” No one answered. This group, Ms. Smith had said, was her really smart class. She told me that she was certain that the students would be more apt to talk. Finally, she looked at me and asked, “Would you like to say something?” I was reluctant to end my position as an observer; however, I was curious at how the students really were interacting with the texts. The literacy transaction, according to Rosenblatt, was individual but because of this month long literacy event, I’d hoped that the students might have some similar identity constructs that would make discussion easier. Since language is where Ms. Smith started and since language plays so heavily upon the students’ ability to navigate the classroom, I decided to aim high and ask about linguistic acquisition. Previous to being asked to speak, I thought about what opportunities are being missed by asking the watered down questions. For instance, I wanted the students to really discuss the middle passage. I wanted to know what they knew about the passage and what they thought about it. Plus, I thought what a great time to introduce new words and new ideas: Linguistics, acquisition, and migration. Interviewer: “Hey. What do you know about linguistics?” The students looked at me. Interviewer: “There’s no wrong answer. Just tell me what you know.” Student 1: “It about how we talk.” Student 2: “It’s language.” Interviewer: “Good. What about acquisition? Do you know what that word means?” Student 1: “To take something.” Student 2: “Nah, man, it mean to learn. Amari learn something.”

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Student 3: “Boy, you so thick. It mean to get.” Interviewer: “You’re all right. It means to acquire or learn or get. So linguistic acquisition means to learn to speak another language. How do you do that? How do you, for instance, learn to speak Spanish?” One of the boys said, “You take a class. Like Spanish or something.” Many of the students gave their ideas on language acquisition. I then had the students compare language acquisition in a formal classroom setting to language acquisition on the slave ships and how the way the slaves acquired English might have affected the way they would use the language. Many of the students gave examples of Amari not being taught the words in a nice way but how the sailors were mean to her, raping her, or beating her. Class ended and we were still discussing linguistic acquisition. Later, Ms. Smith told me that she didn’t think her students were ready for that kind of discussion. I asked her what she meant, and she said that she didn’t think they were smart enough. She was surprised that they were so engaged. She also said that she felt like racial topics were difficult because she didn’t want to make the blacks hate the whites any more than they already did. In this example, it is clear that Ms. Smith’s academic aim for the students was too low for a group of ninth graders. Her teacher-student relationship led her to have a low expectation for the students. Rist (1970) would say that this low expectation causes the self-fulfilling prophecy to develop within the students which can predict failure. In addition to having little expectation for the students, Ms. Smith read to the students, which disallows the students practice with reading. It also implies that their reading skills are not good enough to do so publicly. Ms. Smith’s low expectations negatively affected the students in three ways: 1. The students’ self-esteems are insulted because they realize they are being asked questions that are below their intelligence; hence they do not participate. 2. They lose interest in the discussion because they are not stimulated by the question. 3. They fail to see themselves as successful students. The negative self-fulfilling prophecy has been reinforced. The next meeting with the ninth graders was more productive. Over the weeks between my visits, Ms. Smith and I kept in touch through email and

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phone calls. She and I discussed areas where the students might be challenged, assignments that might spark discussions, and we examined the author’s website for further ideas on projects. For Ms. Smith, the opportunity to connect with a peer and bounce ideas back and forth made a big difference in her teaching strategies. In addition, Ms. Smith’s negative attitude about her students based on their language led to some false assumptions about the students’ ability. By asking challenging questions to the students, I was able to demonstrate to Ms. Smith the effects of challenging the students through class discussion and written assignments. The next meeting, the students were more engaged and the questions and assignments were more challenging. In addition, we divided the children into groups. In their groups, we asked that they answer the question of why most of the slaves did not try to run away. Many of the students responded with provocative answers ranging from the white men having guns to the Africans not knowing the geographies of America. At this time, we talked about assimilation and how difficult it was for the African slave to assimilate as opposed to the indentured servant based on the slaves’ color, their linguistic differences which marked them as slaves, and the fact that they were not literate. The students also discussed how literacy could have made it easier for the slaves to find their way or even write notes that explained what they were doing away from the plantation. One of the students mentioned Fredrick Douglass’s use of writing when he tried to run away. The students’ racial and linguistic identities set the pace for the classroom dynamics of Ms. Smith’s ninth grade English class. First and foremost, the teacher’s attitudes about race and the students’ cognitive abilities were based almost entirely on the students’ linguistic distance from SAE. For instance, the way the students’ language caused the teacher to evaluate them on a level lower than their real or potential cognition. She bought in the assumptions that AAE speakers are cognitively lower than SAE. Ms. Smith desired that the students speak SAE and considered those who didn’t code switch to be a literacy liability, meaning they will neither succeed in school nor in the market place; therefore, it is imperative for the success of the school that the students switch. However, after the month long literacy event, Ms. Smith relaxed her stance on code switching. In addition, she agreed that challenging the students academically resulted in a much more engaged classroom.

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Conclusion Our views of language are often based on our own national and racial identity because language is the one identity construct that connects us. In the case of the students in the Arkansas Delta, their language can put them at a disadvantage if their teachers have negative attitudes about AAE. Negative attitudes about AAE are not unique to teachers nor or they unique to white Americans. Bill Cosby, an African American actor/comedian, categorizes AAE as speaking incorrectly. Young quotes Cosby’s efforts to belittle AAE speakers when he writes, “‘it’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English,’ Cosby continues to say as he objectifies and dehumanizes the black underclass. He claims, ‘I can’t even talk the way these people talk’” (qtd in Young 2007, 75). Likewise, Rickford and Rickford provide the response of Jesse Jackson, an African American religious and political figure, as he responded to a question from Tim Russert on Meet the Press on whether Black English (Ebonics) should be taught as an official language by saying “that the very suggestions was ‘an unacceptable surrender border lining on disgrace’” (2000, 188). But language, particularly the English language, is being used by a variety of people and the ways in which many people appropriate it are changing the language in order to meet the needs of the people who are using it. With the globalization of the market place, more and more people are making English their own and like speakers of African American English and Standard American English, they are appropriating English in a way that is assessable. Many people embrace English as the language of the international marketplace while some of the native English speakers are not so eager to see the language appropriated by others if it means changing it from what they are used to. Some fear the move of English to the World stage will change the very nature of English, relating their suspicions on the evolution of English from its earliest forms and based on the influences of other languages on the evolution. It is true that the English language has changed considerably from its earliest forms, but since the eighteenth century, there has been little significant changes in the foundational aspects of the language. Considering SAE and AAE, one can see that neither version has impacted the foundation of Standard English. E.D. Hirsch, Jr. (1977) says that English is doubtful to change because of the increase in literacy, mass education, and mass publication. He writes, “if the grammar and the phonetic conventions of the national written language had become fixed, then the grammar and sounds of the national spoken language had become fixed as well”(36-7). What we witness

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happening in the United States is the addition of words and phrases and these additions have improved instead of harmed our language. World English has opened English speakers to the idea that language is meant to be used as a means to communicate and not as gate keeper. We cannot make language the stumbling block to communication whether that stumbling block comes from direct or indirect effects of language use. In the words of Vershawn Ashanti Young (2009) “Code meshing is so very important to our work with minoritized peoples, to those who cannot or will not extract their use of standard English, to folks who speak and write with accents, really, to the majority of American citizens and English speakers across the globe” (72). We owe it to all dialectical speakers to allow their literacy development through whatever means is necessary. Language should never be the place where learning ends, but it should be the means for continual learning, increased growth, and global understanding.

References Augusta, Arkansas. (2010). City-Data.Com. City-Data.Com. Ball, Arnetha and Ted Lardner. (2005). African American Literacies Unleashed: Vernacular English and the Composition Classroom. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Green, Lisa. (2002). African American English. New York: Cambridge. Hirsch Jr., E.D. (1977). The Philosophy of Composition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Jolliffe, Donnellyey Hayde, and Jeannie Waller. (2011). “A Tale of Two Regions: Politics and Language in Belize and the Arkansas Delta.” Code-Meshing As World English. Ed. Vershawn Ashanti Young and Aja Y. Martinez. Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 5577. Ray Rist. (1970). “Student Social Class and Teacher Expectations: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Ghetto Education,”Harvard Educational Review, 40/3: 412-413. Rickford, John R, and Russell John Rickford. (2000). Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Rosenblatt, Louise. (2005). Making meaning with texts. Portsmouth: Heinemann. School Lunch Program. (2010). Arkansas Department of Education and Public School Review. Testing. (2010). Arkansas Department of Education.

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Young, Vershawn A. (2007). Your Average Nigga Performing Race Literacy and Masculinity. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. —. (2009). “Nah, We Straight”: An Argument Against Code Switching.” jac 29 1(2), pp.49-76.

CHAPTER SEVEN INTEGRATING APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY TO TEACH GENDER ROLES IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION URSULA BERTELS AND NOÉMIE WALDHUBEL

Racial and ethnic integration in a multicultural society is a complex and challenging matter. The process of acculturation into a new society often mainly involves children and teenagers as willing or unwilling participants. This is especially true for Germany, a country where individuals from190 different countries currently live. In Germany, education is the responsibility of the states; the federal government only plays a minor role. In this light, this paper offers insight into a three-year project currently taking place in the city of Münster, Germany, called Wann ist ein Mann ein Mann (When is a man a man, WIEMEM). This project aims to contribute to the identity formation of boys and girls in German society through a positive view of gender roles. WIEMEM is implemented by the NGO Ethnologie in Schule und Erwachsenenbildung (Anthropology in School and Adult Education, ESE e.V.) in cooperation with the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Münster. Over the past twenty years, ESE has developed and taught intercultural competence trainings aimed at children and adults. ESE’s WIEMEM project seeks to enhance children’s active role in building an equitable society by realizing one’s own stake in it.

Teaching Intercultural Competence in the School Taking into account social changes over the past decades, living in a multicultural society has become an omnipresent fact. Due to the increase of globalization and migration, contact between people of different cultures is constantly increasing. Intercultural competence has become a buzzword.

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Politicians recognize the importance of intercultural competence for a multicultural society. Thus, the Ministers of Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany recommended as early as 1996 to teach intercultural competence within school curricula (Sekretariat der Ständigen Konferenz der Kultusminister der Länder 1996). After all, the task of the school is to prepare children to live in the society, and if this society is multicultural, the task of teaching intercultural competence is imperative.

Multicultural and Intercultural Competence – Some Definitions Although the topic of intercultural competence has steadily gained importance in recent decades, there is still no universal definition for the terms intercultural and multicultural. Therefore, it is essential to clarify how concepts of multicultural, intercultural and transcultural are understood within this article (Bertels and Bußmann 2013; Bertels 2011). ESE’s working definition is as follow: A multicultural society is understood as a society where many different cultures live together, whereby an individual may choose to belong to several cultures simultaneously. These cultures and these individuals share both similarities and differences. Therefore, members of different cultures may choose to use their respective similarities within a transcultural space. However, to deal with the differences, it is necessary to engage with each other interculturally (Steiner 2009, 271-83). These above mentioned definitions can all be traced back to ESE’s working definition of culture: Culture is created by man. It is constantly changing and does not follow rigid rules, nor is it confined to boundaries. People differ in their culture. They live and interpret it on their own terms. This definition of culture makes clear that culture is dynamic and ever changing, an aspect which in a context of globalization and migration takes an increasingly important role. On the other hand, this definition also encompasses individual cultural diversity and its interpretation of the latter (Bertels and Bußmann 2013, 12). At the same time this definition complies with the Allgemeinen Gleichbehandlungsgesetz (AGG) (Equal Treatment Act) which translates: § 1 “The purpose of the act is to prevent discrimination on grounds of racial or ethnic origin, gender, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual identity.” In view of the second part of this article and more specifically in light of the project “Wann ist ein Mann ein Mann?”, the definition of culture, shows that intercultural competence is not just essential for people of different ethnic origin, but also for people of different genders.

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But, what exactly is intercultural competence? There is no clear definition of this term yet, but rather various interpretations depending on the field, such as in education, psychology or communication studies (Bertels, Eylert, Lütkes, & de Vries 2004, 26-30). ESE has developed a definition of its own: Intercultural competence is the capacity to cope directly or indirectly with other cultures. Intercultural competence is the ability to engage with members of these different cultures, while achieving a high degree of understanding for the other. It is understood as a lifelong learning experience (Bertels and Bußmann 2013, 33-35).

Some terms in this definition can be clarified in following ways: Learning Experience: The acquisition of intercultural competence is seen as a lifelong learning experience, since cultural misunderstandings can always occur. Directly or Indirectly: Directly means immediate contact and/or personal encounters with people of other cultures, indirectly means dealing with “knowledge” of these cultures, for example in the form of media reports or information in textbooks. Understanding: Understanding is necessary in order to work and live with people from different cultures. Perfect understanding of people from other cultures is not possible, since even the understanding of people within one’s own cultural group can be difficult. Nevertheless, through intercultural competence the gap between different cultures can be reduced (Bartmann 2012; Maletzke 1996). A foundation for intercultural competence is the exposure to other cultures (Bertels and Bußmann2013, 9). This exposure (or meeting with other cultures) can happen by direct contact (encounter). Another possibility is to put a given culture that learner/students have not been exposed to and which are not part of their daily lives, into the center of interest. This method, also called “third culture perspective”, has been developed and used by ESE since its foundation (Bertels and Bußmann 2013, 10; Gudykunst 1977, 99-109). The “third-culture-perspective” is a theoretical approach and consists of dealing with cultures that one has not had a personal encounter with so far. The second step is to come up with strategies, in order to deal with other cultures in one’s own country. By dealing with regions that are far removed (away) from one’s own cultural upbringing and everyday life (such as Papua New Guinea or Tonga), the participant has little or no preconceived notion and is more “open” to imagine a situated cultural

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encounter.1 If, however the cultural encounter reflects the culture of the students who have a “migration history” (term used in Germany to refer to people (and/or immigrants and foreigners) who arrived after 1949 where at least one parent was not born in Germany, and or infants of immigrant families), the students might feel “exploited.” By using the “third culture perspective” one can avoid this kind of situation. At the same time, pupils with a migration history are given the opportunity to contribute to the classroom conversation, by integrating their own cultural insights if they wish to do so.2

Intercultural Competence in the Classroom In order to convey intercultural competence in the classroom, the following learning goals should be achieved:

1) Goal: Collect Information and Develop Interest In this learning objective, scientifically-based knowledge about foreign cultures is taught. Furthermore, pupils should be encouraged to acquire this kind of information themselves. It goes without saying that an interest in other cultures is an important prerequisite. This interest can be fostered by giving authentic reports or objects to the pupils. Methods to implement this learning objective can include various examples of intercultural encounters, reports of personal experiences, the use of role models, the use of images, and texts.

2) Goal: Initiate a Change of Perspective In the forefront of this learning objective is the aim that the pupils ask themselves the questions “how do others see us?” and “how do others see themselves?” and, lastly, “how do we see others?”. By using the “thirdculture perspective” students are first encouraged to look at their own culture, which is not “taken for granted” anymore after the comparison with other viewpoints. In addition, students are encouraged to question

1

The project “Vielfalt tut gut” tried to integrate people of the margins, such as homeless people and prisoners. 2 As an example, during lesson 6, which focused on family and kinship, one student said:“Where my family comes from, you are named after the day you are born; so Monday or Wednesday.”

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their viewpoint of foreign cultures. The ultimate goal is that students come to realize the cultural relativism of each viewpoint. Methods to implement this learning objective, may include the use of comic strips, whose processing requires different perspectives, or looking at personal reports or citations by members of others cultures about their own culture.

3) Goal: Recognize and Overcome Ethnocentrism Ethnocentrism is based on the assumption that the values and codes of one’s own culture are universally valid. Ethnocentrism often times implies the valuing of one’s own culture as superior to others. To overcome ethnocentrism, pupils are encouraged to deal with other cultures in order to realize that one’s opinion is largely enculturated by one’s own cultural upbringing and therefore has to be analyzed critically. Methods to implement this learning objective can be looking closely at prejudices and “quick judgments”, and the analysis of citations in travel guides, the press, or literature.

4) Goal: Reflect on Intercultural Encounters The main learning goal is the competent encounter with members of other cultures. Concrete situations of cultural encounters are analyzed and reflected upon. Thus pupils can develop strategies to enable a mostly conflict-free and successful communication. Methods to implement this goal can be the analysis and reflection of students’ own experiences, or learning behavioral strategies, such as in “role” plays.

5) Goal: Promote Attitudes and Values Values and attitudes (such as Openness, Tolerance, Acceptance or Respect) are a necessary foundation to acquire intercultural competence. Thus, since values and attitudes can only change through a long-term education (Schlöder 1998, 66-98), in the long run probably only little change in trends can occur. Although each of these five goals partly builds on the other goals, these five steps cannot always be implemented in this order while teaching in the classroom. As the following learning units will exemplify, it is still frequently possible to integrate several of these goals into one class unit.

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The Project Wann ist ein Mann ein Mann? Especially for children and young people, it is a real challenge to position oneself in society. Therefore, in order for children and young people to carry out their particular role in an immigration society, it is essential, among other things, to help them deal with their own (gender-) role in society. In the project “Wann ist ein Mann ein Mann - Promotion of identity formation and understanding of gender among boys and girls in a multicultural society through intercultural competence trainings with a focus on gender roles,” students learn to deal with their self-image (selfperception) and the image ascribed to them (the way others see you) that specifically children and young people with a migration history in Münster are faced with (see Huxel 2013). Their self-awareness is strengthened, while recognizing the relativity of their own self-perception.

Project Design The project “Wann ist ein Mann ein Mann” is funded by the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) and is conducted by the Anthropology Institute of the Westfälische Wilhelms University in Münster and the NGO Anthropology in School and Adult Education (Ethnologie in Schule und Erwachsenenbildung e.V.) from September 1, 2012 until August 31, 2015.3 Partnering schools in Münster are Waldschule Kinderhaus, Hauptschule Coerde. Geschwister- Scholl- Realschule and GeschwisterScholl- Gymnasium. All four schools are in neighborhoods where a high percentage of people live with an immigration history. All fifth graders of the participating schools in the 2012-13 school year received eight lessons (90 to 120 minutes each) on intercultural competence, with a focus on gender roles. To strengthen the focus of this project and to sustain continuity of learning, the pupils continue to have classes now that they are in sixth grade (the 2013-14 school year), as well as next year (the 2014-15 school year) in seventh grade, each receiving again eight lessons of 90 to120 minutes. The trainings are designed and implemented by three ESE trainers (two females and one male). Usually up to three trainees also participate in these trainings. 3

Funding source istthe Deutscher Bundestag.

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In order to address the different learning styles, the trainings focus on group work, as well as on learning in one’s own gender group. All classes are evaluated in matters of content, method, and material, and if needed changed accordingly. Once the project is finished, the plan is to make all course material accessible for downloading, in order for other schools to take advantage of this project and ensure its continuation.

Contents and Methods To give an insight into the first year of this project during the school year 2012-13, all eight lessons will be described briefly. A special emphasis is given here on lessons, where the pupils are confronted with so-called “anthropological input.” The confrontation with alien cultural phenomena is a way for the students to reflect on their own cultural background. Lesson 1: The students are introduced to the project. Subjects such as anthropology, as well as concepts such as culture, are defined. From the start, the first game to help all become acquainted with each other corresponded with the overall theme of the project. The pupils were asked to take a position to the following statements: Dad cooks at home, Mom goes to work, I like to look at myself in the mirror, etc. After the pupils were reminded of the class rules (I listen when others speak, etc.), pupils had to share their associations with male and female, which were then collected and written down by the trainers. The learning goal for this first lesson was to collect information and develop interest. Lesson 2: Typical man - typical woman? The second lesson started with an intercultural encounter. In this game, called the “marketplace game,” the students were given the following task: Imagine you are at a market. While strolling around, you have to follow specific instructions (Bertels and Bußmann 2013, 41-42). 1. The pupils walk around, but should look down at the floor. 2. When they meet someone, look over the other person’s right shoulder. 3. Next, greet each other by looking into the eyes and placing a hand on the right shoulder of their counterpart. 4. All students touch the earlobe of the other person when they encounter someone. 5. Next, greet the other person by shaking the other person lightly by holding onto their shoulders.

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After the students welcomed each other this way, following issues were addressed. 1. What was your experience? 2. How did you feel during these various forms of greetings? 3. What options are there to counteract discomfort and uncertainty? Conclusion: 1. The first encounter is often decisive in matters of sympathy or antipathy. It is with a certain expectation that one enters into a greeting situation – if one gets disappointed, it is not an ideal continuation for another encounter. 2. Feelings such as uneasiness and uncertainty play a major role. 3. Each person tends to take unpleasant encounters personally. 4. The notion of physical proximity and distance plays a major role and is very strongly influenced by culture. 5. The aspects of gender, status or age may influence various types of greetings. Following this exercise, the class was separated into boys and girls. Both groups worked on the following questions: What is a woman? What does a woman need to be a woman? What should a woman look like? What should a woman know? What is a man? What does a man need to be a man? What should a man look like? What must a man know? Initially the results were collected on worksheets. Afterwards, the statements were classified by gender and according to “appearance clothing - beauty” and “work - hobby - roles”. The results of the boys and the girls groups, which had been written on pink and blue cardboard, were then placed side-by-side, still keeping the same categories as above. The ESE speakers discussed the results and the different perceptions that the groups had about the sexes. This lesson ended with various images, where not the whole picture, but only a detail was shown (a muscular arm of a woman or knitting hands of a man) with

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the request to designate the gender. Thus one student replied: “Women do not get those arms.” In response to the knitting hands, one student said: “I believe that is a man, because the grandfather of my friend also knits.” Subsequently, the entire image was shown. Thus, the students learned that the muscular arm was the arm of a woman and the knitting hands belonged to a man. Learning objectives of lesson 2 were the acquisition of information and practicing a change of perspective. Lesson 3: Appearance - clothing - beauty served to illustrate that the ideas of these subjects change widely around the world. Ethnological material was used to share various perspectives about appearance, clothing and beauty. First, the students were divided into four groups. The members of each group were trained as experts for an ethnic group. The following ethnic groups were later presented with the rest of the class: Tuareg (Algeria, Mali, Niger and Nigeria) Tonga (Tonga) Kayan (Thailand and Myanmar) Wodaabe (Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and Chad) The students received both images and worksheets for the respective ethnic groups. ESE trainers and interns were on hand to answer questions to the pupils. The aim of the group work was to prepare an expert lecture, which was then shared in front of the class. After all the groups were finished with their presentations, the cardboard display from lesson 2 and the categories “appearance - clothing - beauty” were re-introduced to the classroom. By comparing the comments of lesson 2 with the aspects of appearance, clothing, and beauty in lesson 3 and the various ethnic groups, it was possible to introduce the idea of cultural relativism. Pupils realized how perspectives can vary severely and how important it is to question one’s own point of view. Learning objectives of lesson 3 were developing interest, acquisition of information, practicing change of perspective, as well as identifying and overcoming ethnocentrism. Lesson 4: Typical/atypical occupations started with following question, “Are there typical career fields for women and men?” Students were then introduced to different professional fields which they had to classify by assigning either blue stickers (typical man) and/ or red stickers (typical woman) or green stickers (both sexes). After briefly discussing the results, students started a “museum tour”. Divided in two classrooms, four

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three-sided stands (posters), on which “atypical” career fields for women and men were presented (a male beautician, a female jet pilot, a female car mechanic, and a male secretary). At the end of the day, the students were given a worksheet on the different questions about their current career aspirations (for example, “What profession would you choose?” Or “Do you know someone who has this specific occupation?”). Last but not least, the posters that had been used in lesson 2 were re-introduced again (subjects in lesson 2 were work hobby - roles), in order to point out the significance of the change in perspective again. Learning objectives of lesson 4 were the acquisition of information and practicing change of perspective. Lesson 5: Family and kinship. First, in lesson 5 as part of a traffic light game (“agree”/ “disagree” / “do not know”) basic concepts, such as the term “generation” had to be defined. After that, the class was divided into six groups. Each group received a children's biography. The three children biographies all had different concepts of family, separation of work and duties, etc. The following biographies were used: Ayarik for Bulsa (Northern Ghana) Yagshim for the Khampa (Tibetan Highlands) Cedar for the Mohawk (U.S. and Canada) Every group received a biography and a specific worksheet describing the family system (e.g., splitting generations). Groups were then asked to draw a family house on cardboard, to show that concepts of family differ according to various cultures. Lesson 6: “Family the same worldwide?” was introduced via insights of lesson 5 and short video clips about family in Germany since WWII. By using a worksheet students had to write down how family has changed since that time. Key questions such as “what is a family?” or “who lives with whom?” were addressed. Thus, the cultural changes which had taken place in Germany since WWII were summarized on the black board. At the end of the lesson, students were given the task to write a fictional letter to one of the children whose biography they had read in lesson 5 by describing their own family. The pupils who wanted to share their letter with the class could do so on a voluntary basis. Learning objectives of the lesson 5 and 6 were the acquisition of information, practicing change of perspective, as well as identifying and overcoming ethnocentrism.

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Lesson 7: “Intercultural Understanding.” In the beginning of the lesson a photo from Bangladesh showing two adult brothers holding hands was shown to the class. The topic of family (for example, “Who can show affection to whom?”) was discussed. Different remarks by pupils ranged from "they are gay" to "maybe this is normal in Bangladesh." By drawing on the experiences of the marketplace game in lesson 2, it was made clear that different notions of proximity and distance can lead to cross-cultural misunderstandings. This was then the subject of another game: Imagine you are at an international meeting and have the opportunity to share your experiences with people from around the world. At the beginning of each meeting is the greeting. And as you all know greetings can be very different cross-culturally. We ask you now to take on the roles of different participants from all over the world. We have prepared role cards for each participant describing a “typical” greeting. We ask you now to greet each other accordingly. Some students had the same greeting forms. This, however, they did not know. They should make their own personal experiences. Examples of the different greetings: 1.

In the Netherlands it is common that friends embrace and kiss three times on the cheek to greet each other. 2. In Romania, it is quite common that men kiss women's hand in order to greet. 3. The Tuareg greet each other by shaking hands, while the fingers are “hooked” into each other. This is repeated several times while they inquire about the well-being of the person and their family. 4. In Turkey, it is common for younger people to greet older relatives or people of higher social status with a kiss on the hand. The hand is first lead to the lips and then to the forehead while saying “Merhaba”. In the subsequent class discussion (see also evaluation of the marketplace game) it was clarified that it is important to also show and articulate one’s own limits when experiencing an intercultural encounter. The aspect of articulating one’s own limits were deepened with another exercise. Students were separated into groups. Within their group they had to come up with a ranking of different statements by classifying these in following way “Is ok for me” and “Is not ok for me.” For example:

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1. You (boy) are with your family on vacation in Scotland. You visit a village festival, where a dance competition is held. You notice that even boys and men participate. After some time, a Scottish boy asks you if you want to join the dance and put on a kilt. 2. One of your classmates invites you to a sleepover after her birthday. All the girls have brought a sleeping bag. You forgot yours, but the birthday girl offers you to sleep in the same bed with her. The rankings were then presented to the whole class. Here it became clear that everyone has personal boundaries and that it is important to articulate these. The only way to succeed in an intercultural encounter is to remain authentic and to feel comfortable with the situation (Bertels and Bußmann2013, 102-103). Learning objectives of lesson 7 were thus re-practicing change of perspective as well as reflecting situations of intercultural encounters. Lesson 8: This lesson served as a summary for the previous lessons. Topics such as appearance - clothing - beauty, work - hobby - roles, and family and kinship were once again deepened. Again, pupils received the statements from lesson 7 in regard to “limits”, as well as selected photos of various lessons, which they then had to assign to three different categories, which were put up on the board. Following this exercise, the students were asked to share their thoughts about the first year of this project on a postcard, in order to give positive and negative feedback of the trainings. Wishes of pupils were taken into consideration for the design of the second year. The curriculum for the second year (2013-14) is as follows: Lesson 1 Introduction Lesson 2 Separation of work by gender Lesson 3 Representation of men and women in the media Lesson 4 Ethnography: Men and women in Germany - Introduction Lesson 5 Ethnography: Men and women in Germany - Findings Lesson 6 Religion and Gender roles - Part 1 Lesson 7 Religion and Gender roles - Part 2 Lesson 8 Summary During the second year, one could realize that the pupils’ perspectives had changed overall. The students had already received a full year of WIEMEM lessons in regard to gender roles and they were one year older,

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beginning puberty. An example of change in perception can be drawn from lesson 3 during the second year. A striking finding is that most of them now realized how male and female roles were stereotyped in the media. “It was more a cliché,” one pupil said and “the picture shown (of male and female) was more an outdated one.” Consequently, the typical male and female roles they associated with men and women in the first year during lesson 2 had changed drastically. Since the first two years of this project looked at a binary distinction of gender, we are planning to look at gender diversity more holistically and once again cross-culturally (such as: 3rd gender, multigendered, homosexuality, two-spirit, etc.). The goal is here, once again, that pupils realize that many gender roles exist cross-culturally. By conveying different forms of meaning, one can see that gender diversity operates simultaneously within the local and the global. Germany’s recent change to move beyond the binary model is just one example of this. By moving away from this dichotomy, people who had been part of the margins are invited to be part of the whole.

Evaluation All lessons were evaluated with two different methods: ESE trainers, as well as teachers in the classroom were asked to use a standardized evaluation sheet for each lesson, in order to give feedback in regard to the learning goals, the materials, and the methods used. Furthermore, observations and notes regarding all lessons were recorded by participant observation of the trainees. Important for this task was to know how was the overall atmosphere (mood) in the classroom, as well as the collaboration and the interest of the students. In addition, relevant statements were written down. Some lessons were slightly changed after they had been evaluated, in order to ensure that future schools can implement this project successfully when the materials are made available for downloading as planned.

Conclusion In all societies there is an idea and perception as to who is defined as a man and a woman and which role one holds in the family and in the society. In a multicultural society, these perceptions can vary so significantly that misunderstandings in regard to gender roles are inevitable. This is also the area where a lot of prejudices are maintained, which should also be questioned on and on.

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In this project, the boys and girls are given intercultural competence trainings with a focus on gender roles, in order to prepare them for a life in a multicultural society. These trainings contribute to critical reflection on one’s own perception of oneself, as well on male and female gender roles in a multicultural society. These intercultural sensitivity trainings empower the students to find their place in society, which might best be exemplified by one’s student feedback of the Geschwister-Scholl Realschule: “I have learned, that there are many different cultures and that there is nothing wrong with being different.”

References Bartmann, Sylke. (2012). "Nicht das Fremde ist so fremd."Das Vertraute und das Fremde. Differenzerfahrung und Fremdverstehen im Interkulturalitätsdiskurs. Ed. Sylke Bartmann, and Oliver Immel. Bielefeld: transcript. 21-36. Bertels, Ursula. (2011)."Einleitung. "Interkulturelle Streitschlichter. Interkulturelle Kompetenz als Schlüsselqualifikation für Jugendliche. Ed. Ursula Bertels, and Irmgard Hellmann de Manrique. Münster: Waxmann. 4-10. Bertels, Ursula, and Claudia Bußmann. (2013). Handbuch Interkulturelle Didaktik. Münster: Waxmann. Bertels, Ursula, and Sabine Eylert. (2005). "Die Vermittlung Interkultureller Kompetenz in der Schule – ein ethnologischer Ansatz." Tsantsa (Zeitschrift der Schweizerischen Ethnologischen Gesellschaft) 10. 111-122. Bertels, Ursula, Sabine Eylert, Christiana Lütkes, and Sandra de Vries. (2004). Ethnologie in der Schule. Eine Studie zur Vermittlung Interkultureller Kompetenz. Münster: Waxmann. Gudykunst, William B., Mitchel R. Hammer and Richard L. Wiseman. (1977). “An Analysis of an Integrated Approach to Cross-Cultural Training”. International Journal of Intercultural Relations V. 1. 99109. Huxel, Katrin. (2013). "Geschlecht und Ethnizität im Feld Schule" Humbolt Universität zu Berlin. Maletzke, Gerhard. (1996). Interkulturelle Kommunikation. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Sekretariat der Ständigen Konferenz der Kultusminister der Länder. (1996). Empfehlung ‚Interkulturelle Bildung und Erziehung in der Schule‘. Beschluss vom 25. http://www.kmk.org/doc/beschl/6711_Interkulturelle%20Bildung.pdf. Web. 2 December 2008.

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Steiner, Martina I. (2009). "Interkulturelle Kompetenz aus anthropologischer Perspektive. Anthropologie der Migration. Theoretische Grundlagen und interdisziplinäre Aspekte. Ed. Maria Six-Hohenbalken, and Jelen Tošiü: .Wien: Facultas. 266-283. Schlöder, Bernd. (1988). "Soziale Vorstellungen als Bezugspunkte von Vorurteilen." Vorurteile und Einstellungen. Ed. Bernd Schäfer, and Franz Petermann. Köln: Deutscher Instituts-Verlag. 66-98. Authors’ Note: Parts of this article have previously been published in German by transcript, a publishing house in Germany.

CHAPTER EIGHT STUDYING ARABIC ABROAD: A TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE SALAH AYARI

Data from the 2012 Open Doors Report published by the Institute of International Education about American students studying in the Arab world reveal two important facts: First, the number of American students studying in Arabic-speaking countries has increased ninefold to 5,134 in 2010 from 567 in 2002, making the Arab world one of the fastest growing regions for study abroad in the world. Second, despite this increase, the number of American students studying in the Arab world still accounts for less than 2% of the total number of students studying abroad, making the Arab world one of the least popular destinations for American students. Despite the exponential increase in the number of students learning Arabic in American colleges and universities and subsequent increase in the number of students studying in Arabic-speaking countries as shown in figures 1 and 2 below, little scholarly attention has been devoted to thoroughly investigate the impact of study abroad in Arabic-speaking countries on students’ language proficiency and intercultural competence.

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Fig.8-1: Arabic language enrollment in American colleges and universities (2002 – 2009)

Fig.8-2: Growth in study abroad in Arabic-speaking countries (2002- 2010)

There have been a few sporadic articles recently that have shed light on the growth, challenges and opportunities of study abroad in Arabicspeaking countries. For instance, Sawaie (2006) describes the linguistic, cultural, and logistical challenges of studying Arabic in Jordan. Sawaie’s description, however, is based on his 20-year experience directing the University of Virginia’s Arabic program in Jordan, and not on empirical data. Brookin-Weiner et al (2010) provide a thorough overview of the history and the growth of study abroad programs in the Arab world, program types, the factors driving or impeding participation in study abroad programs, and the challenges and constraints facing these programs, among other things. In 2008, The Hollings Center for

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International Dialogue and the Institute of International Education convened a workshop at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, to explore the challenges and opportunities in expanding American study abroad in the Arab world. The participants included 33 senior-level administrators and faculty from U.S and Arab world-based higher education institutions, program provider organizations, and Arabic language centers. Data collected from the participants reveal that U.S.based respondents cited student and parent concerns about safety as the leading reason why relatively few American students study in the region. Other reasons limiting student numbers have to do with students’ lack of advanced Arabic skills and cost. Given the dearth of scholarly research on study abroad in the Arab world, and in view of the complexity of the linguistic and cultural landscape in the Arab word, there is a dire need to examine the impact of the study abroad programs in Arabic-speaking countries on students’ language and culture learning outcomes. The overarching question guiding this study, therefore, is whether, to what extent, and in what ways study abroad in an Arabic-speaking country contributes to growth in students’ language proficiency and intercultural competence. To answer these questions, a qualitative approach was used to gain valuable insights from the students themselves about their experiences. Data consisted of students’ statements about their motivation and rationale for studying Arabic overseas, reflection journals produced while in the host country, and post program interview protocol conducted upon the completion of the program.

Research Questions The research questions driving this study are: 1. What are students’ motives for studying abroad in an Arabicspeaking country? 2. What are students’ perceptions about the host country prior to departure? 3. What impact, if any, does the study abroad experience have on students’ intercultural competence? 4. What impact, if any, does the study abroad experience have on students’ language proficiency?

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Review of the Literature With the steady increase in short and long term study abroad programs in different parts of the world, researchers have sought to measure the impact of these programs on students’ linguistic and cultural gains. There has been mixed results with respect to language gains. For instance, Carroll’s (1967) study of the language proficiency of 2,782 college seniors majoring in French, German, Italian and Russian found that time spent abroad was one of the major predictors of overall language proficiency. Similar findings are reported by Freed (1995) who claimed that “students who have been abroad appear to speak with greater ease and confidence, and display a wider range of communicative strategies and a broader repertoire of styles.” Other researchers, such as Brecht and Robinson (1993) argued that study abroad experience is more beneficial linguistically to learners with higher level of language proficiency because they are more likely to interact with native speakers than do learners with lower level of language proficiency. Some researchers have questioned the linguistic benefits of study abroad, however. For example, Huebner (1995) concluded that students studying abroad for one semester reached a score of Intermediate-High on the Oral Proficiency interview (OPI) versus Intermediate-Mid for a comparable group of students who studied for the same period of time in a traditional program at home, a difference that can hardly justify the time, effort and cost of studying abroad. While the impact of study abroad on language learning may be inconclusive, its impact on the development of intercultural competence seems to be more evident. Substantial body of research shows that study abroad experiences, regardless of their forms and lengths, often result in significant gains in intercultural communication competence (for example, Williams 2005; Khel and Morris 2008; Lee 2012). To measure the impact of study abroad programs on the development of intercultural competence, researchers have used quantitative and qualitative approaches and a variety of measurement tools. One of the most popular tools with well- established literature is the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDC) developed by Hammer et al (2007-2009). The IDC identifies specific orientations or mindsets ranging from more monocultural to more intercultural or global mindsets. Individuals who have a more intercultural mindset tend to have a greater capability for responding effectively to cultural differences and recognizing and building upon commonalities. The IDC consists of a fivestage developmental progression of increasingly-complex perceptions of diversity and cultural difference, and explains how people tend to think

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and feel about diversity and cultural difference. These stages are described below: 1. Denial: It is the state of being comfortable with the familiar and maintaining separation from others who are different. Someone in a state of denial may recognize observable cultural products, such as food, but tends to avoid or withdraw from cultural practices and perspectives that are different from his/her own. 2. Polarization: a strong commitment to one’s own thoughts and feelings about culture and cultural difference. Someone with this mindset is aware of other cultures around him/her, but with a relatively incomplete understanding of them, and has strong negative feelings or stereotypes about some of them. Someone with this mindset views cultural differences in terms of “us” and “them”. This can take the form of: defense (an uncritical view towards one’s own cultural values and practices and an overly critically view towards other cultural values and practices) or reversal (an overly critical view towards one’s own cultural values and practices and an uncritical view towards other cultural values and practices.) 3. Minimization: People with this mindset are aware that other cultures exist all around them, with some knowledge about differences in customs and celebrations. They do not put down other cultures, and consider people from other cultures pretty much like them, under the surface. They treat other people as they like to be treated. This orientation or mindset highlights cultural commonality and universal values and principles that may also mask deeper recognition and appreciation of cultural differences. 4. Acceptance: People with this mindset are aware of their own culture(s). They see their own culture as just one of the many ways of experiencing the world. They understand that people from other cultures are as complex as themselves. Their ideas, feelings, and behavior may seem unusual, but they realize that other people’s experience is just as rich as their own. They are often curious about other cultures, and seek opportunities to learn more about them. 5. Adaptation: This is an orientation that recognizes the value of having more than one cultural perspective, an orientation that is able to “take the perspective” of another culture to understand or evaluate situations in either one’s own or another culture. It is also an orientation that is able to intentionally change one’s own culturally based behavior to act in culturally appropriate ways outside one’s own culture.

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The IDC will be used in this study as a framework to capture the extent to which the study abroad program in Tunisia has contributed to the development of students’ intercultural competence. The degree to which students who participate in study abroad programs are able to develop intercultural sensitivity and move from more monocultural to more intercultural and global mindsets can be assessed through self-reports data, including diaries, interviews, case studies and other “introspective” means. These tools are considered valuable because they give special importance to the actual experiences and perspectives of the students as they are being removed from their home culture, and immersed in a new language and culture. Due to their idiosyncratic nature, however, case studies, personal diaries, and interviews are often criticized for being unscientific. Despite the apparent scientific limitations of qualitative methods, research on study abroad has increasingly recognized the unique insights introspective techniques can provide concerning students’ language and culture learning experience (Bailey, 1983). Laubscher (1994) argues that “students’ perceptions of the experience will help educators gain valuable insights into what happens to students while enrolled in an education abroad program.”

Program Structure The extent to which students benefit from their study abroad experience linguistically and culturally depends on a host of variables, notably housing arrangements, program length, formal language instruction during the course of the program, academic expectations, and the degree of interaction with native speakers, among others. With this in mind, the Tunisia program was restructured in the summer of 2012 to maximize the linguistic and cultural impact. Since its inception in 2009, the program had run for six weeks, but in view of the positive feedback received from former students about the value of the language and cultural immersion experience, it was decided to increase the program length from six to ten weeks in the summer of 2012. With respect to living arrangements, every two students were put with a host family selected based on a set of criteria (proximity from the Center where classes were held every day, availability of adequate space, ability and willingness to help students with their language skills, etc.) Students were informed about the possibility of switching to a different family if they requested it. Prior to program start, host families received a letter from the program director explaining the objectives of the program, the linguistic needs of the students and some cultural differences.

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To help prepare the students for their experience abroad, three predeparture orientation sessions were held during which students were given an overview of the host country, provided with cultural tips, and academic expectations. They were also able to meet former students who had studied in the host country before as well as students and families from the host country. Upon arrival, every two students were placed with a host family. There were weekly excursions to different parts of the country, especially to sites with historical and political significance. For example, students visited the national TV channel, the house of parliament where a new constitution was being written, the town of Sidi Bouzid, which is the birthplace of the Tunisian revolution and where students met with and spoke to college students about their views and perspectives on the Tunisian revolution. During the first five weeks of the program, students received formal classroom instruction for six hours per day, Monday through Friday. During the second five weeks, students received three hours of formal instruction per day in addition to choosing between doing an internship with a local institution or writing a research paper on a topic of their choice. The topic had to do with the host country and required interviewing native speakers. Depending on their major field of study and their interests, students had to select a topic, come up with an outline, and discuss it with the program director prior to departure. The purpose of the research paper was to maximize student exposure to the language and culture of the host country by “forcing” them to interact with native speakers in meaningful ways. For example, some of the research topics consisted of interviewing Tunisians about whether their life was better or worse after the 2010 revolution; investigating the extent to which social media contributed to the success of the Tunisian revolution; surveying people about whether religion should play a role in the new Tunisian constitution; examining the economic impact of tourism on the Tunisian economy, and reviewing the history of the US-Tunisia relations, among others.

Methodology Twenty undergraduate students participated in the faculty-led summer program in Tunisia. Among the participants, fourteen had taken Arabic before (six for two semesters and eight for four semesters). Seven participants had no prior experience with Arabic. The group was quite diverse in terms of gender, race, and academic majors, consisting of 10 males and 10 females, 14 white, two black and four Hispanic students.

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Their ages ranged from 18 to 24. Half of the participants (10) were International Studies majors, four Political Science majors, two History majors, two Psychology majors, one Economics major, and one Agriculture major. Most participants (18 out of 20) had never been to an Arabic-speaking country before.

Data Collection The methodological approach used in this study seeks to understand the rich and multilayered nature of the study abroad experience by examining students’ journals in the host country and post-program face-toface interviews. These tools helped to capture students’ inner thoughts and their linguistic and cultural profile before, during and after the program. These tools are described in more details below: 1. Students’ motives: As part of the application process, students were asked to explain their reason(s) for participating in the Tunisia program: “please explain your motivation and interest in this study abroad opportunity. Please include what you hope to gain and learn by participating in this opportunity abroad.” 2. Students’ journals: Writing a journal was one of the program requirements. In their journals, students were expected to describe and critically reflect upon their daily encounter with Tunisians from different walks of life, their experience with their host families, their visits to different places in Tunisia and the extent to which the overall experience helped to alter or reinforce their perceptions about the host country. 3. Follow-up Interview Protocol: Upon the conclusion of the study abroad program, students were invited to participate in a face-toface interview with the program director. Because the interview was optional and some participants were not available, only eight students out of 20 were able to participate. The interview was semistructured, approximately 30 minutes in length. The protocol includes nine questions regarding: (1) the reasons for participating in the Tunisia program; (2) what the students thought about the host country prior to departure; (3) what worries and concerns they had; (4) how their experience in Tunisia reinforced or changed their views about the country; (5) what aspects of the program had the biggest impact on them; (6) what memorable incidents had the biggest impact on them; (7) what they learned about themselves as

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a result of this experience; and (8) how the experience will impact them personally and professionally.

Findings and Interpretations A thorough examination of students’ data obtained from application materials, journal entries, and follow-up interview protocol helps to (1) capture students’ motives for choosing to study in an Arabic-speaking country, (2) understand students’ perceptions about the host country, (3) assess the impact of the study abroad experience on students’ intercultural competence, and (4) assess the impact of the study abroad on students’ language growth. Each of the research questions will be addressed below: Research question # 1: What are the students’ motives for studying abroad in an Arabic-speaking country? Review of students’ application materials shows a great deal of enthusiasm among the students to enhance their language proficiency. Every participant indicated in his/her application materials that their primary goal for participating in this study abroad program was to improve their language skills. The second most cited reason has to do with students’ desire to experience and better understand the Arabic culture, especially through their home stay experience with a Tunisian family. The homestay experience was particularly appealing to all the students because of the linguistic and cultural immersion environment it offered to them. In fact, homestay was one of the most valuable aspects of the study abroad experience, as was expressed by one the program participants who stated in her interview that: The best part of the study abroad program was homestay because I got to talk to them. I got to compare everything more. I got to see what their perception was of America and compare it with what my perception was of their life. And it was extremely far off. I mean in other places I would work on the language and get small aspects of the culture, but a lot of people weren’t comfortable enough with me to discuss things in depth or I wasn’t comfortable with them to ask some questions. I was comfortable enough with my host family that I could really ask any question that I wanted to, and they had no problem answering it. They would be really honest about it, and ask me a lot of questions about our country.

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Another student who never traveled to an Arab country before, and who had no prior experience with the language, stated that “this particular study abroad program can help me gain understanding and insight into a culture commonly misrepresented here in the States.” In addition to language and culture learning, several program participants indicated during the interview that they were not only eagerly seeking to understand the Tunisian culture, but were equally eager to be understood by Tunisians and project a positive image about their country. These students viewed the study abroad experience as an opportunity to serve as ambassadors for their country and to dispel stereotypes about America. One student stated: “I also hope that during the duration of my stay I can try to help change the image of Americans that people overseas hold, and particularly in the Middle East.” Another student wrote in the application form: “I want to be an ambassador for my country. As much as possible, I want to possess the ability to move through the language and cultural barriers present between the West, the East, and the Mideast.” Upon completion of the program, the same student stated in the followup interview: I had a humorous exchange where somebody asked me about Jersey shore. No…that does not represent the United States of America. It was nice showing them what just an average American is, and not a celebrity American that a lot of them know. I mean a lot of them are exposed to celebrities just through the media. I am an American college student, and being able to meet a Tunisian college student or a Tunisian high school student and just say - hey we are just students. Overall, there was a common expectation among the participants that such a language and culture immersion experience would enhance their career goals, as one student clearly stated: “Speaking Arabic would also allow me to conduct business in a developing region of the world.” Another student enlisted in the US Army expressed similar sentiment: “I believe the cultural and language experience I gain from this will help me with my career goals of being in the Army.” Research Question #2: What are students’ perceptions about the host country prior to departure? Pre-departure anxiety is part of the study abroad experience, especially for those students with limited or no experience traveling abroad. In the case of students participating in the Tunisia program as well as their

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parents, the level of anxiety was heightened because of the notion that the Arab world is not a safe place. Even though such a concern about safety was not explicitly articulated in student application forms, it transpired in many students’ journals as well as during the post program interview. For example, one student described his perception about the Arab countries in the interview by stating: “I always felt Arab countries are hostile to America…”. This perception, however, was dispelled as a result of his experience in Tunisia. The same student went on to say: “but we were actually greeted with open hands … The media really shapes the way you think about the people.” Another student wrote in his journal: “Pulling into the driveway on May 21st, I definitely felt nervous. I was in a foreign land and staying with a family I had no idea about.” The student’s anxiety, however, was quickly removed thanks to the warm welcome he received from his host family: “As soon as I pulled up to the house though, I was greeted with smiles and hugs...” Parents’ concern about safety seems to be the main obstacle to student participation in study abroad in Arabic-speaking countries. In commenting on his parents’ concern, one student stated: “for my parents, it’s been a place of conflict … definitely my family was worried about it. There is some war going on not too far away … in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Another student who was anxious about safety seems to have found refuge in the fact that the program was faculty-led, as she indicated during the interview: “I felt reassured because A&M had a lot of procedures. The program was faculty-led. I felt safe.” Research Question #3: What impact, if any, did the study abroad experience have on student intercultural competence? The development of intercultural competence is by far the most salient outcome of the study abroad experience in Tunisia that students have articulated through their journal entries and face-to-face interviews. One example showing the development of intercultural competence among many students is their growing awareness of the assumptions and generalizations they held about the host country. One of those misguided assumptions about the host country transpired during the first encounter of two students with their host Tunisian family. The two students were trying to transfer their prior knowledge about Jordan to their new environment, only to find out that their assumptions about their host country, Tunisia, were simply misguided: Our experience in Jordan did not help us completely as some of our preconceived notions were apparently very wrong, and as it turns

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out entertaining and slightly offensive for our host family. At supper our first night, we were trying to figure out the showering situation. The places where Irene and I had each stayed in Jordan had water tanks supplying the whole apartment building with water. If the building used up all the water that was in the tank, there would not be any more until the next week when the tank was refilled. Making assumptions, which is a bad thing and should not be done as we soon found out, Irene and I figured that this was just the way of the Arab world. We did not want to use up our family’s weekly water supply so we asked them about the size of their water tank. Our host brother explained in Arabic to our mom and sisters what we meant and soon the whole kitchen had erupted in gales of laughter. The incident described above shows how the two students were trying to act responsibly while staying with their host family, but in the process of doing so, they made some misguided assumptions about the water situation in Tunisia, something that helped them to learn an important lesson: I will be the first to admit that I figured Tunisia would be exactly like Jordan because I stereotyped the Middle East and the Arab World as all being the same and if you had been to one country, then you had been to them all. Simply put, I was wrong. Even within the same country, there is a great deal of diversity in cultural practices, as another student came to learn from her stay in Tunisia, leading her to conclude that one should not make assumptions and generalizations about life in the Arab world. She stated in her follow-up interview: I didn’t expect to see as many people there with boyfriends as I did, so that was a shock to me. There was a huge gap in the beach. I would see some girls in the beach in bikinis hanging out with men, and then I would see another woman on the other side of the beach swimming in a burka essentially, and there was a huge difference between the two. The development of intercultural competence during the course of the study abroad experience can also be seen in student willingness to recognize, accept and even appreciate religious difference. Kate, who

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earlier described how she made a wrong assumption about water availability in Tunisia, went on to describe her positive interaction with her host sister when she and her other American roommate wanted to go to church. She wrote: Irene and I had both been slightly hesitant about asking if it would be okay for us to attend church on Sunday mornings because we were not sure how they would react, but they were happy to see that we would be “saying our prayers” on Sundays. One of our sisters, Leila, even went with us to the church, St. George’s, the first Sunday we attended. Her reason for going was to make sure that the taxi took us to the right place, and she had planned on waiting outside until the service was over, but everyone was so welcoming when we got there, and we were able to convince her to come in with us. I am so glad that we were able to be the ones to share such an experience with her. Even though she is a practicing Muslim, Leila sang every song, read every prayer, listened intently to the sermon asking us about certain “Christian” terms, when she did not quite understand them. The above quote shows how the two students tried to maintain their religious practices while in the host country, and how they tried to find a culturally appropriate way to broach the subject with their host family. They were pleasantly surprised that their host family not only encouraged them to attend Sunday service but also escorted them to church and attended the service with them. Here, both the students and their host family demonstrated a high level of intercultural sensitivity. The students then described the receptive and tolerant attitude of the host sister, who was a practicing Muslim, and who was eager to learn about Christian religious practices. This positive interaction seems to have helped both sides understand and appreciate each other’s religious practices. The interpersonal relationship between these two students and their host family has grown stronger and there was a lot of learning going both ways in terms of language, culture and mutual respects. Kate describes this strong relationship: Throughout our stay, just as we have been slowly picking up Arabic, Chereefa has been slowly catching onto some English, enough to tell me this past weekend that she loves me like her own sister. This is something that I did not come into the program

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expecting, but I will be leaving Tunisia with that moment as one of my most prized possessions. As a result of this experience, some deeply-rooted stereotypes about the Arab world were challenged. One student described in his journal one of those common stereotypes: “I came fully expecting a male driven society.” This stereotype, however, was quickly dispelled as a result of the student’s home-stay experience and daily observations. The student went on to say: “I was wrong. Women here very much do have rights and opinions just like in America, and if our host family is any indicator, women may be even more vocal about their opinions.” Another student came to the conclusion that his perceptions about Tunisia were far off the mark and that his experience in Tunisia was so enlightening to the point where he felt an obligation to correct other people’s perceptions about Tunisia. He wrote: We came to Tunisia with so many expectations on how life was going to be, but after 5 and 1/2 weeks of living here, waist deep in this rich culture, we cannot help but realize how far off the mark we were. It is safe to say that many Americans are ill informed on the true culture and language of Tunisia, therefore we feel an obligation to the generous people of Tunisia to inform Americans on the enlightenment we received in Tunisia. Gaining intercultural empathy is another outcome of the student experience that was articulated in several students’ journals. Intercultural empathy is the ability to respectfully observe and react to the other’s communication process through verbal and non-verbal sensitivity. It is the ability to see from others’ perspectives and to respond to them according to the way in which the other person desires to be treated (Deardorff, 2008). While reflecting on their daily interaction with Tunisians from different walks of life and in different settings, some students seem to have gained a new perspective on why people behave the way they do and demonstrate empathy to practices that may otherwise seem irritating, such as bartering in the Souk. One student wrote: Tunisians like any people want to provide for their family, put food in their bellies, have a place to live… The bazaar is one thing more than any other, a means to an end. If you look at the yelling …, it becomes so glaringly obvious, this salesman just wants to live. I have come to the conclusion that sometimes rather than looking at a

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situation in a micro-view, if I stepped back and tried to understand it in a broader sense they, like myself and any person in the world, are basically wanting the same thing. It is evident from the above quote that this student observation reflects a great deal of empathy. Rather than complaining about the seemingly aggressive attempts of venders in the Souk to sell him their product, he sympathizes with them and considers this business practice as a survival technique used by local venders to “put food in their bellies.” Further evidence about the impact of the study abroad experience on the development of intercultural empathy comes from another student. In describing the rioting that took place in Tunisia during his sojourn, he stated in the interview: It’s cool being there during the rioting… It left a mark on me. People are trying to stand up for what they believe in. Hopefully in the future their views and what they stand for will be in the constitution … It opened my eyes for what I do in the future and what I want to stand up for. Rather than viewing the rioting as a safety issue, which is usually the way it is depicted by the media, he sympathized with the rioters and their demands, and hoped that they will be able to accomplish what they believe in. Another example of the growth in intercultural competence is the broadening of one’s perspectives. Learning about different perspectives was one of the experiences that caught the attention of one of the students because of her home stay experience. She stated how she lived with a family “full of women” and how she was struck by the fact that the girls were afraid to go out without men not so much because of radical groups such as the Salafists, but because they were afraid of young boys harassing them: They called them trouble makers within the society. They weren’t worried about Salafists, they were worried about young boys who are taking advantage of the state of the country during the revolution. I didn’t expect that. I was thinking more about radical groups causing problems. That wasn’t how they saw it. Research Question#4: What impact, if any, did the study abroad experience have on student language growth?

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Both journal entries and post-program interviews reveal perceived gains in language fluency among the participants, who indicated that their speaking and listening language skills have been enhanced thanks to the rich language environment surrounding them. One student wrote: Hearing how people speak with their friends or colleagues at the table, or the customers’ interactions with the waiters, phone conversations, the music being played, or the television show that is on, everything that can be picked up on is a great teaching implement. One student tried to be proactive and take advantage of the abundant opportunities to enhance his language fluency. He describes how he found a way to practice what he was learning in class in ways that increased his comfort level with language use: There was a shopkeeper down the road from the Center where we studied the language and I was able to take whatever I learned during the day and talk to him … we had a good conversation about where I am from, what I am doing … I was able to make a bit of connection to the man. Another student found that using Arabic with merchants in the souk was an effective strategy to negotiate prices and to handle the pressure exerted by the merchants on the customers. In the incident below, the student was successful in conveying to the merchants the message that even though he was not Tunisian, he understands the language and culture well enough to be treated differently from a regular tourist: Merchants in the souk would speak to us in French, English, German, Spanish, and other languages. When we used Classical Arabic with the locals, they were clearly impressed, and would help us with the Arabic. When we used Tunisian Arabic, it went from surprised to shocked. When I told a store owner that I didn’t want anything in colloquial, he laughed a bit and left me alone. On the other hand, if I would have said that in English, he would have kept trying to sell me something for as long as possible. One female student explained how she took a proactive stance to increase her learning of the language, by offering to help her host mother in the kitchen. Her involvement in the kitchen seems to have helped

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interact with members of her host family in meaningful ways, which in turn allowed her to enhance her language learning (learning names of spices, kitchen items, names of dishes, etc.) She stated: Every morning, I would wake up when the sun came up and my host mom and I would be doing a lot of work in the house … I would go into the kitchen and help her cook and eat breakfast – I learned a bunch of words, and got more comfortable with it … The above quotation also provides evidence that one of the important linguistic outcomes of living with a host family is the ability to gain a higher level of self-confidence, a linguistic feature that is much easier to acquire in an immersion environment than in a traditional classroom environment. It is important to note that an Arabic immersion experience has its own challenges. While most students appreciated the opportunity to interact with native speakers of Arabic at the personal level and the ability to listen, hear and view Arabic in a wide variety of settings, many found Tunisian Arabic to be quite challenging because of the frequent occurrence of French words and phrases. Like any other spoken variety of Arabic, Tunisian Arabic is quite different from standard Arabic in terms of its structural properties (phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical features), posing a challenge for learners of Arabic whose knowledge of the language is limited to the standard variety (Modern Standard Arabic). This situation was best described by one student who wrote: Learning Arabic here in Tunisia forces us to practice at all times of the day, whether in class, going out for lunch, shopping, or at home with our host family. This is total immersion into Arabic. However, practicing the language outside of class can get complicated when we are using Fus’ha, but the locals are using a combination of Fus’ha, Tunisian dialect, and French. This is the point at which I generally have to force myself to take a deep breath and stop myself from bursting into tears of frustration. Getting to live in a region that does use colloquial Arabic and French right alongside Fus’ha, brings to light interesting aspects of language. The above quotation shows that for a student who has been studying Modern Standard Arabic, as is the case for most American students, coming into contact with a spoken variety of Arabic could be a challenging and even painful experience. Painful as it may be, however,

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such an experience is important in order to fully understand the diglossic nature of Arabic (the existence of two varieties, one is spoken, informal and used in everyday life, and the other is, formal, usually written and used in formal settings), as well as the phenomenon of code switching between Arabic and French (borrowing of lexical items), which is quite common in North Africa. The complexity of the linguistic situation in the Arab world in general, and in North Africa in particular, is a reality that most learners of Arabic are not aware of, but need to grapple with in real life in order for them to reach higher levels of proficiency in Arabic.

Limitations and Recommendations for Future Research This study has several limitations, including the fact that it is focused on one program type (faculty-led program) from one specific university (Texas A&M) and in one specific country (Tunisia). The other limitation has to do with the use of self-report data in lieu of direct measurements of students’ linguistic performance and intercultural development. In order to make the findings about the linguistic and cultural impact of study abroad in Arabic-speaking countries more generalizable, future studies can use an experimental approach, with pre- and post-test scores of students from multiple institutions who studied in different Arab countries, and compare their test scores with a control group (i.e., comparable students who studied at home).

Implications Despite the limitations described above, findings of this study can provide guidance to university officials and policy makers involved in study abroad programs, especially in Arabic-speaking countries. Firstly, faculty-led programs may be a more attractive alternative for students and parents who are concerned about safety and security. Secondly, when making living arrangements, home stay may be the most effective way to promote language and culture learning. Thirdly, student interaction with native speakers and local experts can be enhanced through internship opportunities or research projects that require engagement with native speakers. Finally, students of Arabic traveling to the Arab world need to be made aware of the linguistic challenges they will encounter because of the diglossic nature of the language and the phenomenon of code switching.

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Conclusion This study helped to highlight the benefits of a study abroad experience in an Arabic-speaking country. These benefits include linguistic gains, such as improved listening and speaking skills, higher level of linguistic self-esteem and the ability to cope with code switching and diglossia, as well as cultural knowledge, skills and attitudes. Journal and interview data collected from the students show that home stay, engagement with native speakers in a variety of settings, and other structured activities exposed students to the language and culture of Tunisia and helped to dispel stereotypes and misperceptions and develop intercultural communication skills.

References Bailey, Kathleen and Robert Ochsner. (1983). “A methodological review of diary studies: Windmill tilting or social science?” In Second Language Acquisition Studies, 188-198. Edited by Kathleen Bailey, M. H. Long, and S. Peck. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1983. Brookin-Weiner, Jerome and Majdoubeh Ahmed. (2010). “Advancing U.S. Study Abroad in the Arab World”, In Innovation Through Education: Building the Knowledge Economy in the Middle East. Edited by Daniel Obst and Daniel Kirk. Institute of International Education. Carroll, John. (1967). “Foreign language proficiency levels attained by language majors near graduation from college.” In Foreign Language Annals 1 (131-151). Deardorff, Darla. (2008). “Intercultural Competence: A Definition, Model and Implications for Education Abroad.” In Developing Intercultural Competence and Transformation: Theory, Research, and Application in International Education, 32-52. Edited by Victor Savicki. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Freed, Barbara. (1995). Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. —. (1995). “What makes us think that students who study abroad become fluent?” In Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context, 123-148. Edited by Barbara F. Freed. Philadelphia, John Benjamins. Hammer, Mitchell and Milton, J. Bennett. (1998-2001). The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) Portland, OR: Intercultural Communication Institute.

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Huebner, Thom. (1995). “The effects of overseas language programs: Report on a case study of an intensive Japanese course.” In Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context, 171-194. Edited by Barbara F. Freed, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. IIE. (2009). Open doors report. New York: Institute for International Education. IIE. (2009). Expanding U.S. Study Abroad in the Arab World: Challenges and Opportunities. Khel, Kevin, and Jason Morris. (2008). “Differences in global-mindedness between short-term and semester-long study abroad participants at selected private universities.” In Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, no. 17: 67-79. Laubscher, Michael. (1994). “Encounters with Difference: Student perceptions of the role of out-of-class experiences in education abroad.” Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Lee, Lina. (2012). “Engaging study abroad students in intercultural learning through blogging and ethnographic interviews.” In Foreign Language Annals, no 45. 7-21. Sawaie, Mohammed. (2006). “International Arabic Language Programs.” In Handbook for Arabic Language Teaching Professionals in the 21st Century, 371 – 378. Edited by Kassem Wahba, Zeinab Taha and Liz England. Lawrence Erebaum Associates, New Jersey. Williams, R. Tracy. (2005). “Exploring the impact of study abroad on students’ intercultural skills: Adaptability and sensitivity.” In Journal of Studies in International Education, no 9. 356-371, Association for Studies in International Education.

CHAPTER NINE THE GLOBALIZATION OF POETRY ST IN THE 21 CENTURY ANDY TREVATHAN

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

The preceding quote from the popular movie, Dead Poets Society, illustrates a rather important point: Poetry is, like these other noble pursuits, necessary to life. It helps us answer the question of why we live our lives. Yes, engineering, science, medicine, law, and business are indeed honorable professions, and they benefit our lives in many ways. But, poetry has the unique ability to unite us by making us consider the common ways we are all related. Poetry allows us to connect in the globalized world; it teaches close reading (especially the ability to read sub-text), enhances creativity, and benefits critical thinking skills. Before advancing this discussion, I feel that I should define poetry in relation to other subjects studied by university students. The sciences deal with what we can call universals: the universal law of gravitation, for example. These universals are abstract ideas which are often produced by creative minds. History, however, deals with particulars, which are concrete; these concrete facts are represented by such historical occurrences such as the first man on the moon in 1969. Unlike the sciences, “Poetry is the art of representing universals concretely in the medium of language. It may be said to deal with universals because its characters are not individuals but types, and its incidents not things that have happened but the kinds of things that may happen” (Buongiorno 1947, 500).

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While poetry has been a staple of language, literature and culture within the global community for centuries, we now see a significant decline of poetic offerings in publications, large-scale booksellers, and university classrooms. One study shows that fiction now outsells poetry 51:1 (Wilson 2010, 53). Similarly, poetry is often considered unsuitable in composition or writing classes; although, for many years, poetry was taught under the classic liberal arts education model. The United States First Lady, Michelle Obama, writes that “Poetry helps us connect. When you write poetry, you're not just expressing yourself. You're also connecting to people. And that's the key to everything we want to be and do as human beings - is our ability to connect to one another” (Obama 2011). Unlike the hard sciences, poetry admits to not have the answers; nevertheless it provides some anyway. It reminds us of our responsibilities as citizens in the world: to engage with it, to think deeply about it and to interrogate it. The reading and writing of poetry conveys other skills and tools, and many of these spill over into other writing forms. Nobel Prize-winning chemist, Roald Hoffman states that he has “no problems doing research as a scientist and trying to write poetry … Both science and poetry emerge from an attempt to understand the universe around us – and from a wish to share that understanding with others in words” (Hoffman 2002, 140). While poetry might not be some students’ favorite form of writing, reading poetry, working through some writing exercises, analyzing and engaging in poetry, can improve student writing. A professor at Park University conducted a study and asserts that her “freshman students developed positive expectations for writing a paper about a difficult poem (Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”) by helping each other map strategies for reading and writing” (Ockerstrom 2007, 50). This particular college writing instructor uses Donald Murray to reinforce her premise that poetry can benefit the teaching of freshman writers. Murray’s book, A Writer Teaches Writing, describes practical advice on helping to motivate student writers, and he advocates for the relatively simple practice of enthusiasm for student accomplishments and sharing excitement about writing and reading (Ockerstrom 2007, 52). Poetry is a good medium for teaching students how to perform a close reading of a text, especially if one is excited about poetry and can pass that enthusiasm on to his or her students. In performing a textual analysis of a given poem, college writers can discover the sub-text as well as the “voice” of the poet; thereby developing an increased sense of voice, audience, and a critical awareness of social realities” which connects them to their communities.

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Researchers relate that the development of personal voice unfolds in conjunction with a sociocultural connection to the community (Fishman and McCarthy 1992, Newkirk 1997, Gradin 1995, Bishop 1999). For these researchers, voice is a “process of personal discovery while engaging and sharing with others” (Iida 2010, 29). Students can develop voice and a sense of audience through writing and engaging with poetry. Social expressivist-based instruction allows a person to “negotiate between themselves and their culture which requires first developing a sense of one’s own values and social constructions, and then examining how these interact … with other value systems and cultural constructs” (Iida 2010, 29). In this sense, using poetry for writing instruction is an ongoing process of negotiation to make meaning, which develops voice and a sense of audience in a specific community. This practice creates a “crucial place for students to decide where to stand with consideration to others in the world” (Iida citing Bishop 29). In the social expressivist pedagogical model, composition skills and creativity are benefitted by writing a particular kind of poem after it has been introduced and using imitative strategies for composing their own poems (Iida 2010, 29). There are numerous ways for students to study, write, and even translate poetry. Additionally, by using meter and scansion, which has a mathematical basis, STEM-centric students who might excel in mathematical concepts can engage those skills with poetry. Willis Barnstone, in Poetics of Translation, proposes that “Translating from one language to another is a mathematical task, and the translation of a lyrical poem … into a foreign language is quite analogous to a mathematical problem” (1993, 19). Furthermore, poetry gives voice to the human condition, and to our hopes and dreams. The human condition is a term frequently used in writing and analyzing poetry, but it also applies to other disciplines. As the poet, Naomi Shihab Nye writes, “Skin had hope, that's what skin does. / Heals over the scarred place, makes a road. / Love means you breathe in two countries (Nye "Two Countries"). Poetry gives us the ability to breathe in two countries, or to inhabit the skin of both worker and artist; poet and professional; scientist and dreamer. Richard Blanco, inhabits both ‘skins’ as a respected poet and a successful civil engineer. Blanco writes, “One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat / and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills / in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands / digging trenches, routing pipes and cables … “ (Blanco, “One Today”). Blanco expresses through poetry the oneness of our communities that build toward a common purpose.

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Our common purpose as academics and as teachers, especially in the Liberal Arts is to “mold students into well-rounded, well-informed global citizens with a wide skill set … [and] to advocate for the value and necessity of a broad, liberal education rich in both technical subjects and the humanities” (Khemani 2012). Poetry is critical for what it offers the imagination. Whether that imagination exists in a poet, a scientist, or an engineer, creativity and imaginative integration benefits our students and greater mankind. As Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world” (Einstein, 1929). Sadly, many university students are not afforded the possibility of studying poetry, especially if they are specializing in the technical or scientific fields. The courses typically devoted to the analysis or writing of poetry are special topics or upper-level courses geared toward literature majors, and poetry is now phased out of most college composition courses. This is unfortunate. Mehrdad Massoudi, a mechanical engineering professor writes, even “a person with scientific tendencies also has the ability to observe, is generally endowed with a (vivid) imagination, … and a process of critical thinking to make sense of these observations” (2003, 115). Massoudi, like chemist Roald Hoffman, establishes a distinct correlation between creativity, critical thinking, scientific study, and poetry. It is difficult to define creativity in scientific terms; however, we can acknowledge that poetry and creativity inhabit the same spheres. Massoudi uses a definition of creativity that suggests it “is a special state of mind, fully aware and fully open, without projecting or without judging.” (2003, 117). If we accept this rather fluid definition of the creativity in relation to the sciences, we can see how if an engineer or scientist is personally familiar with poetry as a creative act, he or she can apply that same creative process to their profession. Reading and interpreting poetry is sometimes difficult; however, plenty of us would agree that the most difficult things in life are often the most rewarding. Poetry is like that, too. As Rainer Maria Rilke, writes, “have patience with all unsolved problems in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, or books that are written in a foreign tongue” (Rilke 1943). Engaging with an art form that does not immediately yield its meaning, while also requiring work on the part of the reader, can teach us to remain content in uncertainty, and to work for what is valuable, much like the work a scientist or engineer might do. Part of the work in the sciences is being patient with uncertainty. Poetry offers an intellectual challenge that even science and technology students can learn

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by working through a poem in a writing class, so that they, too, can learn to love the questions themselves. Mark Edmundson writes that Samuel Taylor Coleridge believed that philosophy and poetry could answer certain questions while also attempting to “solve each other’s problems … through the exercise of the poetic imagination, and more specifically through the imagination’s symbol-making power” (1995, 33). Coleridge’s systematic method for describing and evaluating poetry, and his theory of the secondary imagination with its capacity to idealize and unify the affirmation of the cohesive symbol, helps define poetry as the “creative activity of genius and one of the simplest acts of thought [which] are but products of the laws of universal logic” (Edmundson 1995, 34). Poetry aids the creative imagination through the use of symbols and logic, both of which are excellent tools for critical thinking essential for success in the technical and scientific fields. Poetry, and the education one receives in the liberal arts, helps us understand the questions of civilizations, and of scientific and cosmological inquiry: Who are we? What is the cosmos? What is our place in the cosmos? In a 1915 letter to Harriet Monroe, Ezra Pound describes his activities as a poet and writer as an attempt to "… set the arts in their rightful place as the acknowledged guide and lamp of civilization” (Pound 1950). By using poetry in the writing class, we enable our students to negotiate intellectual challenges – a skill necessary for future success. Poetry’s intellectual challenge fosters creativity, allows us to connect to the globalized world, and enhances critical thinking. Words and ideas can change the world.

References Barnstone, Willis. (1993). The Poetics of Translation. New Haven: Yale U.P. Bishop, Wendy. (1999). “How to Design Our Teaching Lives: Building Connections Within and Beyond the Writing Classroom through Methodological Believing.” Journal of Teaching Writing, 17:1, 1 – 12. Blanco, Richard. (2013, Janurary). “One Today.” President Barack Obama’s Swearing-in Ceremony. Buongiorno, Andrew. (1947). “Poetry as an Educational Instrument.” Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors, 33:3. 500-509. JSTOR. Dead Poets Society. (1989). Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke, and Josh Charles. Touchstone Pictures.

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Edmundson, Mark. (1995). Literature Against Philosophy, Plato to Derrida: A Defence of Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P. Einstein, Albert. (1929, October). “What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck.” Saturday Evening Post. Fishman, Stephen and McCarthy, Lucille Parkinson. (1992). “Is Expressivism Dead?” College English, 54:6. 647 – 661. JSTOR. Gradin, Sherrie L. (1995). Romancing Rhetorics: Social Expressivist Perspectives on the Teaching of Writing. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook Publishers. Hoffman, Roald. (2002). “On Poetry & the Language of Science.” Daedalus, 131:2. 137 – 140. JSTOR. Iida, Atsushi. (2010). “Developing Voice by Composing Haiku: A SocialExpressivist Approach for Teaching Haiku Writing in EFL Contexts” English Teachers Forum. 28 – 24. ERIC. Khemani, Vedika. (2012, February). “Why a Liberal Arts Education Matters.” India Blogs, New York Times. Massoudi, Mehrdad. (2003). “Can Scientific Writing Be Creative?” Journal of Science Education and Technology, 12:2. 115 – 128. JSTOR. Newkirk, Thomas. (1997). The Importance of Self in Student Writing. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook Publishers. Nye, Naomi Shihab. (1995). "Two Countries.” Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Portland: Far Corner. Obama, Michelle. (2011). “Poetry Helps Us Connect.” The St. Louis American. Ockerstrom, Lolly. (2007). “Positive Expectations: A Reflective Tale on the Teaching of Writing.” Student Motivation. 2:1. 50 – 56. ERIC. Pound, Ezra. (1950). Selected Letters of Ezra Pound 1907 – 1941. Ed. D.D. Paige. New York: New Directions Publishing. Rilke, Rainer Maria. (1943). Letters to a Young Poet. Trans. K. W. Maurer. London: Euston Press & University College London. Wilson, Anthony. (2010). “Teachers’ conceptualisations of the intuitive and the intentional in poetry.” English Teaching: Practice and Critique. 9:3. 53-74 ERIC.

CHAPTER TEN WHY DO DESIGNERS HAVE TO TAKE WRITING CLASSES? MOHANALAKSHMI RAJAKUMAR

The mission of the multi-varsity campus known as “Education City” is an unusual one even within the globalization of American education (Asquith). The six branch campuses offer degrees indistinguishable from those offered to students attending their American-based institutions. Unlike NYU-Abu Dhabi, for example, which clearly refers to the location of the satellite program in its name and on its diploma, the project in Qatar is bifurcated. The branches each have a Qatar suffix (e.g., Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar), but their diplomas are not differentiated from those of the main campus recipients. Establishing their programs in successive years, dating back to 1998, the campuses include VCUQatar (1998), Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (1999), Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (2004), Texas A and M University at Qatar (2003), Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service in Qatar (2005), and Northwestern University in Qatar (2009), and represent a relatively new arrangement in higher education. While other emirates and countries have branch campuses, this is the first gathering of numerous institutions in adjacent buildings. Admitting an incoming class and matriculating their first graduating class four years later, the faculty and staff of the various branch campuses share knowledge in a variety of areas, from recruitment strategies for students and faculty to the practicalities of everyday life in a new country for expatriate members of the community. Chief among these concerns is an ongoing discussion about the expectations of students in the particular context of Education City. The academic culture of the Middle East is replicated in Qatar; most students enrolling in university are encouraged by their parents towards a particular discipline because of the future professional possibilities. University education is geared towards vocational pursuits; the Education City model reflects this design as each university offers one or two

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specific disciplines which will equip students to enter the workforce as a politician, engineer, computer scientist, doctor, or in the case of VCUQatar a fashion, graphic or interior designer. The orientation of education is towards a career path and within this structure the “liberal arts” or social science curriculum, including anthropology, sociology, literature or writing seems out of sync with the development of a set of profession driven skills. Students notice and often value these differences: “Qatar's Carnegie Mellon students say Arab universities typically focus on hard sciences at the expense of softer sciences, such as psychology and philosophy. They are enjoying Carnegie Mellon's diverse curriculum, which recently added a creative writing class” (Asquith 2006, 24).

Same Degrees, Different Students The students must match the caliber and abilities of their Americanbased counterparts. The implications of such equality raise a host of related issues, which can elicit colonial-like replies. Can Arab or foreign students fulfill the requirements of American degrees? Are the students on these campuses being treated in the same pedagogical manner as those enrolled at the relative home institutions? These debates are outside the scope of this discussion but serve to establish the context for the expectations of this population of students. Each branch campus boasts a multinational student body with over twenty nationalities from all over the globe, including South Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and even North America. What are the implications for students in such an arrangement? Of particular interest to EFL research and pedagogy is how the second language context affects students in classrooms where more than half the learners are studying in their second language. Indeed, many students have three or more languages, with English among them. The insistence and contractual obligation of the universities to offer the same degree, and presumably the same pedagogical approaches, leave the individual faculty member to grapple with the variances in language abilities among their students. Some faculty members mimic the attitudes of American-based colleagues who feel that language ability is the responsibility of the English courses. Others make accommodation for students’ abilities, or encourage students to utilize resources on campus, such as writing centers. Educators are choosing strategies that are unique to the parameters of the Education City project, which provide new angles to the existing landscape of EFL teaching. While there are many nationalities enrolled in the various disciplines, classrooms are filled with a majority of students

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from across the Middle East. Nationality in the Arabian Gulf context is simultaneously multi-layered and yet flat as nationality is passed on from the father to the child, no matter the place of the birth. Therefore, an Indian student who has lived in Qatar all her life will remain Indian, rather than become Qatari. There is no naturalization process for anyone without a Qatari father. The social structures of the various nationalities living in the country can be preserved within one’s ethnic identity; parents can send children to schools with the curriculum from their home country, attend functions organized by their embassy or cultural group, shop at stores carrying their products, and in the case of the various Christian denominations, worship in structures dedicated to their faith. Despite this holistic approach to identity, there are exceptions, and one of these is primary and secondary schooling. (Another is privatized health care.) Many Arab, even Qatari, families send their children to international primary and secondary schools instead of the independent or government schools overseen by the Supreme Education Council. These students are educated by expatriate teachers with an expatriate curriculum that is often more similar to the expectations/materials of the universities in Education City. That they are in classrooms with students who have attended an ethnically identified school, such as the Modern Indian School, or Middle East Technical School, further diversifies the university setting. Perhaps more than in most cases, a students’ secondary school preparation can affect their university success, at least in the first year. Faculty comment that while students may enter the branch campus at different levels, after four years, each cohort leaves with the skills expected of graduates from a North American environment. The varied level of the secondary experience is a cause of academic intervention by the various institutions. Weill Cornell Medical College, for example, has instituted an intensive two-year pre-medical program with a considerable liberal arts requirement in an effort to standardize student abilities prior to beginning the medical program. Some argue this disadvantages the students as they are completing four years of a standard North American bachelors program in two; on the other hand, these students can transfer after two years to another university, as do Biology majors at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, and have been well prepared with solid academic credentials. The addition of Biology at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar is an example of the ongoing curricular negotiation and adaptation happening across Education City as the entire project continues to mature and develop. The secondary school backgrounds, academic abilities, and language capacities of students in Education City vary widely across the various

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branch campuses. The model is very much a vocational training approach to higher education where students enroll in a specific degree with a specific type of major: when applying they make a conscious choice toward either engineering or design, international studies or business administration. VCUQatar was the first and is the oldest of the Education City branch campuses. Begun in 1998 as a design program, it now boasts 66 faculty representing 15 nationalities and 259 students representing 44 nationalities. Students can major in Interior, Fashion, or Graphic design. There are also a growing number of minors available including Art History and Painting and Printmaking. The first to offer a Master’s degree, VCUQatar is an interesting context to examine issues of language proficiency because the majors are not directly related to EFL performance. Students are required to take six English classes as part of the core curriculum in addition to other liberal arts courses (including sociology, anthropology, and psychology), making the LAS faculty one of the largest departments at the university.

Liberal Arts for Design Majors “Design students have to take English classes?” is often the common reaction of those outside the university, including people of other professions, who hear about the literature and writing courses offered at VCUQatar. Inside, among colleagues and students, the reaction to the liberal arts requirements in the curriculum is mixed. Students are somewhat resistant to assignments centered on literature, which they perceive as being unrelated to their majors: “I don’t see why I have to read a novel as a design major,” a first year student commented. The congruence of these attitudes presents a complex learning environment, both for the faculty member and the student learner. Many faculty acknowledge that they take the second language context into consideration when grading assignments. Even so, they may not always be aware of the dependence upon Arabic for many of their students, as indicated in one response to a survey on English usage in classrooms: A student was actually having all English text translated into Arabic, studying it, then translating it back. I actually did not know until after the course was over; it did make me much more sensitive to the language challenges students face. Just because they can

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communicate effectively in English does not mean that they will be able to write and read with the same skill. The respondent points to the difference between students’ oral and written abilities, which may also be reflected, and perhaps even originate, in their use of Arabic. Quite often the differences between Modern Standard Arabic and colloquial usage are so great that students who speak their Arabic dialect proficiently are not comfortable reading or writing in a formal context. Thompson-Panos and Thomas-Ruzic (1983) explain this as a “phenomenon of diglossia,” or two languages where classical Arabic and spoken Arabic are distinct forms, with the latter being the first language for most native Arabic speakers (609). The challenge here is that dialects are “learned without formal instruction” and rarely appear in written form (1983, 609). Modern Standard Arabic, however, is connected to the formal educational experience and used in all public settings including newspapers, newscasts, speeches, and the media. Scholars have theorized that errors in English crossover from the interference between the conventions of the two types of Arabic. Concerns about language ability can further conflate standard concerns about academic integrity. In an increasingly anxious atmosphere surrounding plagiarism, particularly in the humanities, the EFL learner may be at further disadvantage. As another faculty member explains, the desire to perform can often take the student on divergent paths: I received some writing from a student with vocabulary that was beyond his skill level. I thought it was plagiarism, but then in discussions with the student, I discovered the student was using Google Translate to create his texts. It was very much not the student’s own words, but it also wasn't plagiarism. I asked the student to be sure to use his own words from then on. This type of one-on-one discussion between faculty and student is what Troudi, Coombe, and Al-Hamly (2009) found as ideal for the EFL instructional setting (551). Another faculty member describes how language ability affects a student’s processing of information: “Plagiarism is a big issue, not so much as students are ‘cheating’ but because they don't have the language skills and practice to summarize effectively.” Unable to generate their own words to paraphrase or summarize, the student prefers the words used by the original writer, or in other cases, ones suggested by their siblings or tutors.

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Focused Inquiry I and II Case Study The UNIV courses are taught in a sequence and required for all students, regardless of their major. UNIV 111 and UNIV 112 are called “Focused Inquiry” and intended to equip incoming first year students for university level academic work with critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. Faculty are required to adhere to a specific set of elements within these courses to ensure continuity across the sections offered. Here is how the standard syllabus describes the intent of UNIV 111: As the first part of a two-semester course sequence, UNIV 111 will help you build the skills essential for successful university work. Designed to mirror the thinking and writing challenges that students encounter as they move through their undergraduate programs, UNIV 111 will lay the foundation for each of the skill areas of the VCU Core Curriculum.

The individual course make up is left to the discretion of each faculty member, but the course goals and outcomes are shared. UNIV 111 is a clear building block for UNIV 112 as explicitly stated in the syllabus: As the second part of a two-semester course sequence, UNIV 112, Focused Inquiry II, will help you to improve your writing skills while continuing your work on critical thinking skills. UNIV 112 is designed to provide you with practice in writing literary analysis, expository essays, and argument. This practice will prepare you for the types of writing you will encounter and be expected to produce throughout your university career (and perhaps even beyond). Like UNIV 111, UNIV 112 applies the notion of the “spiral curriculum,” in that you build your skills by repeating key concepts and adding to the complexity of those concepts with each subsequent unit.

Scaffolding is a key pedagogical principle in the sequencing and description of these courses. Having taught this sequence over two years, I will use the work of my students as part of my analysis, and also suggest strategies for supporting the development of Arabic second language learners through the assignments in these two courses.

Process Writing Central to my teaching philosophy is the process writing-based approach to the curriculum, regardless of whether the students are in the Middle East or North America. This approach of teaching writing is the most widely used in North America, even at the high school level (Graham & Sandmel 2011, 396).

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Process writing, breaking each assignment into the smaller, informal stages while leading up to the major, formal assessment, is helpful to writing in any context. For second language learners like the ones in my VCUQatar courses, it is a critical approach to the development of student writing abilities because it gives them multiple opportunities to learn the forms and conventions of writing in English. The cycle of brainstorm, free writing, and feedback are repeated across a series of assignments so that students produce work of increasing length and complexity, culminating in a research essay. Key strategies in my course design include peer assessment via in-class writing workshops, rubrics for all assignments, and a final portfolio. Students build their abilities through low stakes writing opportunities, including in-class freewriting assignments, reading logs, and commenting or posting on the work of others online. While I gave extensive feedback on each log, what was more corrective was a no-credit, or zero, evaluation. As the logs are either pass or fail, indicated by a check or check minus, the grade-conscious nature of the students makes the check minus more effective in calling attention to unacceptable performance on assignments. Three essays and one oral presentation comprise the majority of the formal assignments. Each essay has three stages, using one day of class for each: brainstorming/outlining, thesis statements, and the draft. On the draft day, they must bring in two stapled copies of the assignment, one for their partner and one for the instructor to review according to the rubric. Between the assignment guidelines and the rubric, students are given the details for the tangible evaluation measurements used in each piece of writing. After the workshop session, students have two sets of comments from which they can revise their final papers. The final assignment is turned in with the draft materials as well as all the brainstorming as a way to remind students of the process behind their final product. The course was designed with the writing portfolio concept in mind. Part of this is to resonate with students who are design majors and creating

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portfolios in other areas of study. The writing portfolio has been well documented as a valuable assignment in contexts where qualitative learning is a focus. Assembling together the various pieces of their writing over the course of the semester, students are required to review and reflect on their development as writers. They are not allowed at this stage to revise any of their previous work (though other uses of portfolio incorporate this step). Students must deal with the errors and success of their pieces and address them in a cover letter, which evaluates their progress throughout the course. Those students who embrace the opportunity for quantitative selfassessment demonstrate the cover letter as a tool for reflection: My native language is Arabic. I know that I can speak and write in English but not as fluently as in Arabic. Since I entered VCUQ, I have been improving every year. And not only in my English classes, but also in my Design projects and in talking with people. Here we see the student addressing the areas she would like to improve in, spoken and written English, but balancing these aspirations with her progress in these areas. Other students addressed universal performance issues related to the wider context of the classroom in their cover letters. One thing that I found very hard at the beginning of this semester was communicating with my mates in UNIV 200 class; even though 2 students are in my department, I felt that I was a stranger who cannot interact with anyone. Most of the students were seniors from the fashion department, which made the situation more awkward as I do not even recognize their faces. Considering the amount of group work involved in the course, through the various peer workshops and in-class discussions, this student’s reflections on the effects of classmate interactions on her progress is related to her overall success in the course. Group work and peer review become themes in the cover letters for students who have benefited from the opportunities for feedback on particular assignments. The draft approach applies not only to written assignments, but to the oral presentation as well. Students present their ideas for their presentations, and have a run-through or “draft” of the material on which they receive instructor and peer feedback:

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The response log includes how everything from the lack of a hook to valid evidence in my presentation was all brought up during the peer conference. This response log in particular puts into perspective how peer conferences are potentially transformational to the work. She reflects on the errors pointed out to her by her peer reviewer and they are many: “lack of a hook” and “[lack of] valid evidence.” These were the suggestions offered by the instructor and, as the student notes, during the peer conference. Her conclusion that peer conferences have the potential to be “transformational to the work” acknowledges that sometimes peers are not helpful and yet, in this instance, someone was, and immensely so. The goal of the cover letter is for the student to personalize her writing experience and apply the skills learned in the course to this final piece. From a strong title, to a clear thesis statement, and evidence to support their argument, students know they are drawing from their own texts to inform the reader, in this case the instructor, about their progress: Make me love writing I chose this title in particular because I feel that it relates to all the pieces of writing I have written during this course and in this class. I have always found difficulties in writing and never really enjoyed doing it. The more advanced the student’s abilities in English, the more cohesive the cover letter is. She can assess not only her past performance but also forecast what she needs to do in the future to continue to grow and develop: My writing this semester has been very consistent. With my essays, I have been able to articulate good arguments and write stronger papers. However, in order for my writing to advance, my selfediting skills need to improve. This has been a resonating issue for me throughout the majority of my response logs and other writing assignments. The feedback I regularly receive pinpoints small mistakes that include being too wordy, vague diction and incorrect sentence structure. The feedback received over the semester has made it clear that the mistakes could be easily avoided by carefully editing. Therefore it is not a matter of poor writing, but poor reviewing.

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The use of passive voice here, “the feedback received” for example, indicates someone with exposure to academic writing, who is trying to mimic the style and rhetoric of a specific style of academic writing. She transitions from the first person and strongly grounded “I” to the impersonal passive tone where the poor reviewing does not have a direct subject. The student admits later that discarding this notion of academic writing is part of her challenge in the course: In addition to self-editing, certain rules I was taught about writing are in need of modification. One rule that was taught to me during high school was that it was best not to write in first person. Alternative forms of writing were always encouraged as more acceptable. Therefore, I have developed the habit of always addressing an individual through my writing as simply “one.” Now that this has been repeatedly noted in my writing throughout the semester, it has is clear how it detracts from the writing. Sentences written in this manner are always highlighted as confusing during my peer conferences. By working on my understanding of such principles next semester, this will further strengthen my writing. In her case, she is ready to shed outdated notions about academic writing and update her style with a more direct, active voice. This cover letter demonstrates the potential that a high achieving student with considerable language capability can achieve over the span of a semester. It is worth noting that this particular student was educated in an international secondary school setting and therefore shows fewer of the more common errors by native Arabic speakers in UNIV 111 or 112. Research (Hayes-Harb 2006; Ayari 1996) shows that the most common types of errors for native Arabic speakers writing in English include spelling, style, and organization. In the instances of these particular sections of UNIV 111 and 112, I found sentence structure to be equally problematic. Ahmed Al Duais’ (2012) research contrasted the four sentence structures possible in Arabic: “nominal, verbal, equational, and non-verbal” with the singular possibility offered in English, the nominal sentence (500). Students’ difficulty in placing a subject, verb, and object in sequence stemmed from their lack of familiarity with nominal sentence structure. The persistence of fragments is one of the most common occurrences in students’ writing in these sections of UNIV 111 and UNIV 112. This may be related to the differences in sentence structure in Arabic. Thompson-Panos and Thomas-Ruzic (1983) explain “that the relative clause construction in Arabic is coordinate, rather than subordinate as in

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English” (618). There are no dependent clauses in Arabic, therefore my explanations to students that a sentence is a fragment may not resonate in the first instance. It may be that they see sentences as working together, in equal measure, not dependent upon a main idea. One student comes to these same conclusions about the difficulties in her writing, in almost the same words in the cover letter to her portfolio at the end of UNIV 111: I as a writer believe that I cannot express my exact feelings and thoughts while writing because I get confused in my sentence structures and how to organize my words to fit together. I also have a major issue with run-on sentences and that is a really big problem because I end up throwing in too many words until the meaning of the sentence gets lost. The student identifies her chief complications as structural and organizational ones. Here is an example of structural and organizational limitations from the same student’s log on globalization: Globalization it is basically growth, on a worldwide scale. The Internet is a very big part of globalization. Although excessive use of the Internet can be very distracting and can also cause health problems. But at the same time it is a very useful and needed source. The Internet is a very big part of globalization. Because it is a fast growing up to date network with lots of information to access. And a problem that needs to be solved. In this example, the student’s paragraph is outlining her interpretation of globalization but without proper punctuation usage or subject-verbdirect object construction. “Because it as a fast growing up to date network with lots of information to access” comes late in the paragraph when it would be more useful earlier on in order to clarify the connection she is describing between the Internet and globalization. “And a problem that needs to be solved” presents an idea that in English is subordinate but based on the order of her paragraph, the student has not indicated which of the above ideas the fragment is intended to expand upon. The opposite problem of a fragment, the run-on sentence, is the second most common error in students’ writing. The logs demonstrate the highest occurrences of these errors because they are students’ immediate reactions to a particular theme or topic:

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This is because people interact with the internet more than real people and it eventually makes us think like the internet and this can be a bad thing because the internet is not human and does not have the feelings human have. The student is aware that conjunctions can join sentences so she relied on “and” to demonstrate that each of her ideas has equal importance in expanding on the negatives of the Internet. The lack of a subordinate or relative clause structure could explain the persistence of run-ons and fragments. Here is where the role of process writing can be enormously helpful in identifying and correcting errors. Sometimes, however, the corrective note can be overlooked on an individual’s paper. One method I’ve incorporated into my courses is to take sentences from students’ work and make a class worksheet so that the entire group can see the repeated mistakes and work together to create stronger sentences. Group work pairs students with more language ability with those who might be unsure of how to revise for meaning. The presence of the worksheet also alerts everyone in the class to the types of errors that the instructor expects to be self-corrected. Here is one such example from UNIV 111. The examples are taken from students’ logs, as well as drafts for the first essay assignment in the course, to write about the current exhibit at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. 1. The last painting made by Ahmad Alsadi who used a mixture of black and white background and grey scale to attract the view eye into the symbols within the painting. 2. There are two sides to this article one of them is found to be an advantage to finding new information while surfing the web in addition it helps you with research. 3. While the one article, seems like a much bigger one. 4. To me as a student who is addicted to waste her time, I did not found it useful to listen to these instructions from the beginning of the year because I would sure the internet for many reasons and one of them is learning. 5. I think it is more interesting that you had the opportunity to interact with students from Japan, where is different from the US hence Japanese people are more formal than American people. In the above examples, we see again the combination of fragments and run-ons that are the most common types of errors by native Arabic

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speakers in my UNIV courses. Additionally, there are grammatical issues with the use of specific words. For example, a student might write “the view eye” instead of the “viewer’s eye.” We see also another error, which is the inclusion of related but tangential information in the same sentence. The second sentence presents several ideas, each of which could have been addressed in a complete sentence on its own. This is an instance of where the student cannot determine which is the main idea and how to make use of the supporting details as subordinate or supporting facts to strengthen her argument. The fifth sentence presents a similar error as the writer attempts to advance several ideas about Japanese people, the values of intercultural interactions, and Americans. Students who have had these mistakes noted in logs are reminded of them in the drafts of their longer papers. Thus when the marginalia point to fragments, incomplete thoughts, and run-on sentences, they are cued from the earlier assignment. This allows them the opportunity to fix or revise their sentence for the final high-stakes evaluation that will be the graded version of the paper. The multiple and repeated opportunities to draft, write, and revise sentences are the cornerstone of good writing practice regardless of a person’s ability in any language. For second language learners, process writing may be a necessary philosophy in order to for students to understand how skills in the classroom can be used in real life situations. The cover letters from UNIV 111 and UNIV 112 demonstrate this to be true: Starting the class with reading and writing blogs for the first weeks was good practice in being a writer and learning from our mistakes. Through the logs I learned how to use illustrations in my writing by using facts, examples, and quotations. Moreover, I learned to think of unity through my writing, and show a clear argument using a thesis and statement topic sentences. Another student titled her paper “Practice is key” and summed up her development at the end of UNIV 112: One semester has witnessed staged improvement on my English writing. At the beginning of this semester, my writing was informal, vague, and many times unclear. As an art student, I found writing as difficult as explaining my paintings. By time, I found that writing can be a better way of expression than talking, because

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unlike talking, writing cannot be interrupted. Taking Focused Inquiry 2 allowed me to understand most of my mistakes in order to improve. I realized that practicing is one of the most important keys to succeed in writing, just like drawing, painting, and even public speaking. Her self-assessment assigns practice as a key principle in any task in which she wishes to improve, including writing or public speaking but also those related to her major, drawing and painting. This connection between writing and artistic abilities is what instructors hope for all students by including liberal arts and sciences (LAS) core curriculum classes for design majors. The process approach to writing can be illuminating for second language learners, because it combines the principles of repetition in lowstakes opportunities, as well as identifying for students the particular areas in which they need to develop. The writing portfolio is an excellent means by which faculty can call attention to the most common types of errors students make and how to correct them. Through supported self-reflection, as in the cover letter, or peer-reviewed assignments, students are given the tools and agency they need in order to be an active part of their own writing and learning. A broadly based liberal arts education is the widely accepted tenant of American undergraduate programs; the idea of a well-rounded citizen is associated with a mind exposed to a diverse set of thinking practices, the center of which is writing. VCUQatar continues its mission to “foster a scholarly climate that inspires creativity, a free and open exchange of ideas, critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, freedom of expression, and intellectual integrity” (VCUQ mission statement). With a student population comprised of learners from across the Middle East, North Africa, and most of Asia, the Education City project will continue challenging conventional notions of education as merely preparation for a vocation and the purposes of pursuing a university level degree as the expansion of one’s income.

References Alduais, Ahmed Mohammed Saleh. (2012). Simple Sentence Structure of Arabic Language and Standard English Language: A Contrastive Case Study. International Journal of Linguisitics, 4 (4), 500-524. Asquith, Christina (2006): “ACCEPTED into Education City.” Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. 23.8. 22-26.

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Ayari, S. (1996). Diglossia and illiteracy in the Arab world. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 9, 243-253. Graham, Steve and Karin Sandmel. (2011). “The process writing approach: a meta analysis.” The Journal of Educational Research 104. 396-407. Hayes-Harb, Rachel. (2006). Native speakers of Arabic and ESL texts: evidence for the transfer of written word identification processes. TESOL Quarterly. 40.2, 321-339. Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. http://www.mathaf.org.qa. Panos-Thompson, K. & Thomas-Ruzic, M. (1983). The least you should know about Arabic: Implications for the ESL writing instructor.” TESOL Quaterly, 17 (4), 609-623. Troudi, S., Coobme, C., & AL-Hamly, M. (2009). EFL teachers’ views of English language assessment in higher education in United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. TESOL Quaterly, 43 (3), 546-555.

CHAPTER ELEVEN LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD: BRINGING HOME CULTURE TO PLAY IN THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM EVELYN BALDWIN

As humans, we strive – or at least hope – for a rational world filled with logical patterns that produce order. Bor points out that “The process of combining more primitive pieces of information to create something more meaningful is a crucial aspect both of learning and of consciousness and is one of the defining features of human experience” (qtd. in Popova, n.d.). Fragments of information, however minute, must be observed and quantified to create larger, logical patterns. However, sometimes it is the most incongruent things that create the ideas that move us forward out of order and into invention. Once in the realm of the mind, we have “the power to reunite and connect the most disparate ideas. There is nothing that cannot take new form [….] [I]f we learn to control it, imagination can become one of our chief sources of knowledge” (Condillac, 54). The ideas explored in this argument come from such seemingly dissimilar experiences separated by worlds and cultures. The first happened during the 2013 Liberal Arts International Conference in Doha. As part of a fully immersive cultural experience, I had henna paintings done on my hands and arms. While my initial assumption was that no one would take note of the art, either ignoring it completely or possibly enjoying slight amusement at my high degree of touristiness, the henna proved to be surprising in its ability to draw attention. For the entirety of my stay, this cultural tradition proved to be a conversation starter – in elevators, between panel sessions, and during dinners, it operated as an open invitation to dialogue. The significance of these varied conversations is that the art of henna was claimed by people across multiple cultures. Men and women from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, even Sudan, all claimed their culture as the one that created the art of henna tattooing.

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These declarations were asserted with a great sense of pride, as the artistic sensibilities of a place were praised. The second element comes from the current state of high school education in New York, where I teach at a SUNY (State University of New York) institution. It is very of the moment to throw blame on standardized testing or the Common Core for the state of education in the United States. Regardless of the cause, the outcome is the same. Only approximately 30% of high school students in New York meet designated “acceptable” standards on the state tests in English. In upstate New York, where my particular university is, that score drops to as low as 10%. (State Test Scores, 2013). If the scores on these tests are even remotely indicative of students’ abilities, they mean that up to 90% of students are coming into the first-year writing classroom struggling to some degree in English. How do these two very dissimilar concepts work together? By suggesting that a positive, though seemingly unrelated, source of pleasure can offset patterns of frustration and difficulty. It is possible that the pride and knowledge students have of their home cultures could be a way to address the difficulties they face as they transition into the university setting. If educators can take realities that students know and are proud of and use them as a foundation for writing and reading tasks, it may provide students with the ability to create understandable, university-appropriate written products and, furthermore, address the broader demands created by university life.

Culture and Crisis Part of the reason this theory has some kind of traction is that research – and general observation – shows that people respond to times of crisis by falling back on the unification provided by their home cultures. The sense of who “we” are and what makes “us” this way creates a sense of commonality that combats alienation and angst through camaraderie and familiarity. This reminder of homogeny “speaks to emotions, and policy makers basically refer to it in order to preserve power, mobilize consensus and the support of people, which are (emotionally) inclined to positively react to such suggestions” (Bianchini, 2011). There’s a sense of safety in belonging to a group. It’s a concept well-established in nature that the safest place to be is part of the herd, where larger numbers provide a better chance for survival. In reasserting where one belongs, one creates a sense of safety in the face of even the most intense adversity. One powerful example of this behavior happened after the attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York City on September 11, 2001.

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The attack, which killed over 2,000 people, was the deadliest attack by an outside force on American soil since America’s war for independence against Great Britain. In response to these attacks, there was a surge of patriotic expression across the nation. This took multiple forms. One was a physical, visual form, as 74% to 82% of Americans reported that they responded to the events by displaying flags on their cars, homes, or even themselves (Skitka, 2005). There was also an 8% boost in enlistment in the army (Daniel, 2011). Furthermore, Americans indicated that their personal level of patriotism had increased. Whereas in a January 2001 Gallup poll 55% of Americans indicated that they were “Extremely” proud to be Americans, by June of 2002 that number had climbed to 65% (Bowman, Rugg, & Simmonds, 2011, 3). In having to confront a national enemy, inner-personal squabblings were put aside and a unified front was created. This pattern of behavior has been replicated across time and culture as outside force leads to internal unification.

University Students and the Crisis of Transition With the groundwork of understanding the ways that humans tend to rely on their core identities, we can now consider how this framework can be applied to university students embarking upon their own time of crises. The university is an impersonal world composed of an infinite number of parts which, though they ought, do not speak to one another. Entering it is a moment of great cultural transition. The result, Ginsberg (2013) argues, is a “knowledge factory” where students are no more than products on a conveyor belt (3). Whereas in high school they were names, in many colleges, they are only an ID number. Students are leaving behind the world that they knew and entering into a new, unexplored world where the demands that will be made on them are unlike any that they have experienced before. Here, they experience a time of personal crisis that must be resolved if they are to be successful in the academic endeavor. There are a number of specific elements that comprise this crisis. The first is that the academic challenges outweigh nearly all of those that students have seen before. While a small handful may have received exceptional college preparation, most students come ill-prepared to face the challenges of a university education. One of the most significant difficulties may seem quite basic: the receiving of a syllabus with the entire semester’s work. Most secondary students are used to having assignments given shortly before they are due, usually the class period before, and many have difficulty keeping up with a semester’s worth of assignments. This minor problem compounds the more difficult academic

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challenges. These of course include the increased levels of independent critical thinking and problem solving that students are called on to do. For example, when I ask students to write a three-page paper at the beginning of the semester to test their writing skills, many students become agitated, as the longest paper they had to write during their entire secondary school career was perhaps only three or four pages, and the prospect of an initial assignment at that length is intimidating, to say the least. Furthermore, the kinds of writing that they are called on to do are much more complicated than many have previously been assigned. In first-year writing courses, most students are called on to complete a variety of tasks including summaries, analyses, arguments, syntheses, and other operations that call for more than “recall” writing. More basic assignments, like book reports, are often eschewed in favor of papers that will prepare students for the kinds of skills they will be required to exhibit during their university careers. Unfortunately, many students have not had the foundations they need to prepare them for this kind of writing. Standardized testing and limited time to focus on building sustained argumentative works often leave secondary teachers forced to teach only basic writing tasks, resulting in students woefully unprepared for university-level writing. There are, furthermore, many non-academic challenges that face students coming to the university, and, while these may seem peripheral to a discussion on writing, they are actually crucial. Students’ writing is intensely altered by their state of being – and not simply their ability to complete it, although that plays a role. Their available time, sleep levels, and general focus are significant, but there are stronger pressures that build from outside to warp and change the way that they see their academic tasks, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. There are a variety of these challenges, the most fundamental being the often radical shift from the home world to the university world. Many students, particularly those who attend residential campuses, leave their homes and move on campus. Even those who don’t move far from their local area find that there is a dramatic change. The inability to find moments of solitude, the sudden need to balance freedom and with policing oneself, the separation from support systems that one previously had, the physical distance from friends and family – all of these things extract a psychological toll on a student, even if he or she is consciously unaware of this. Students must also find a way to integrate themselves into an entirely new social system. This attempt at movement puts students where Palmer, O’Kane, and Owens (2009) call the liminal or “in-between” space, attempting to make the transition from home to university culture and finding themselves caught between the two (38). This loss of home culture becomes

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increasingly important when one sees that it permeates nearly every part of a student’s being – how the student behaves in regards to authority, friends, work requirements, academic tasks, and then even more prosaic concepts like food, sleep, and time management. This transition is paralleled by a psychological growth phase that is occurring in these young adults as well. Psychologist Erik Erikson posited that a human being goes through eight stages of development throughout his or her lifetime, each representing a struggle between two opposing forces – one force that desires to achieve, one that represents a failure to mature. The traditional university student, entering college shortly after secondary school and ranging in age from seventeen to nineteen, is on the threshold of adulthood, straddling the last of Erikson’s crises of childhood and the first of adulthood. From twelve to eighteen, young people are questing to solve identity versus role confusion, where their focus is to determine who they are, what peer groups that identity belongs in, and what role models they will adopt. At some point shortly before or after the age of eighteen, young people begin a shift into intimacy versus isolation. Here, they determine how and with whom they will build relationships or eschew them. They focus on creating friendships, finding romantic and sexual partners, and developing work and competition relationships (Slavin, 2003). Many university students are finding their way across these two markers through their first-year. They may come in still determining their own identity while simultaneously working on building new romantic and business relationships. The movement from childhood to adulthood is a rewarding one, but it is also an involved and challenging one, as students begin drawing their lines in the sand saying, “Here’s where I stand,” and then perhaps erasing and redrawing them many times. Given all of these complications, it’s not surprising that graduation rates in the United States hover at just above 50% (Institute of Education Sciences, 2013). However, students are dealing with these issues. One way that students are able to rebuild the connection with their home cultures is by joining organizations that appeal to their sense of who they are. Most colleges and universities offer dozens of campus groups that allow students to cohere with others who exhibit the same characteristics that students find are the most significant in their own lives – just as Bianchini suggests is crucial to surviving times of crisis. Students may join LGBT organizations, African Student unions, or Baptist Women’s Choirs. What matters is that the student feels at home in the group. According to McCannon and Bennett (1996), “The report of the Study Group on Excellence in American Higher Education (1984) cited student involvement as the most important condition for improving undergraduate

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education with involvement in student organizations being the first step” (n.p.). The possibility of finding and aligning oneself with others who share those characteristics is a clear asset to the evolution into an academically and socially competent university student. This behavioral pattern is a crucial point of interest to writing teachers, as it may be turned into a method for helping students transition from secondary- to university-level writing requirements.

Problems in First-year Writing Educators lament a broad variety of problems in the first-year writing classroom: lack of understanding about the writing process, grammar issues, reliance on tropes like the five-paragraph essay. Often, when students engage in research, they use a “fishing” method, where they drop in a source to pull a single sentence to support their thesis, or misquote or misuse sources entirely. Or, some writers’ works may re-reprove existing arguments, or bypass an argument entirely in favor of an extended summary. What all of these errors have in common is a disconnect between the university classroom culture and the student’s current engrained academic culture. As freshmen embark on the writing process, Given et al. (1996) suggest, “the discovery and exploration of individual and social identities by freshman writing students can be a painful […] process” (n.p.). The assignments freshman students are asked to complete are not only at an increased level of difficulty, the complexity often pushes students to their academic and intellectual limits. These pressures force students to reevaluate who they understood themselves to be as scholars. Furthermore, some tasks ask students to perform self-critique and evaluation of the kind that they have not yet accomplished. Attempting to not only identify oneself as a writer but to also have the confidence to perform a selfcritique is a complicated task that requires both intellectual maturity and a strong sense of self-awareness. Additionally, students are often unfamiliar with the style and form the university requires. This goes beyond a simple paper structure to an entire written culture. Dean (1989) notes that “[w]hen we teach composition, we teach culture. Depending on students’ backgrounds, we are teaching at least academic culture, what is acceptable evidence, what persuasive strategies work best, what is taken to be a demonstration of ‘truth’ in different disciplines” (24). Dean focuses here on the shift in academic cultures that students need to make, from the requirements made of them in secondary institutions to those made in the university. However, those

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problems are not alone. The classroom must value home culture as well. Dean goes on to discuss the work of Shirley Brice Heath, pointing out that if classrooms are not giving credence to the home cultures that students bring with them, their academic performance is going to suffer. This success comes only from a “cultural match,” where the educational tasks can be connected to the home culture and where the student feels like the home culture is valued; if there cannot be a match, there must at least be a respect for differences (Dean, 25). Unless students feel as if teachers respect who they are, they will be disinclined or simply unable to produce quality written work.

Bridging the Gap If, as Berzonsky and Kuk (2000) point out, leaving home and facing academic challenges together become two of the greatest elements of difficulty for transitioning freshmen students, is it possible for a writing teacher to address both those challenges? Given what has already been established about culture and trials – that during times of crisis people fall back on what they know and what they find to be the most crucial part of their identity – it may be possible for teachers to help overcome the difficulties inherent in the first-year writing classroom by incorporating writing tasks that allow students to use their knowledge of their home cultures. In order to legitimize such a move, it would be helpful to see if any similar workings have been made in other fields. And while first-year writing is Composition and Rhetoric and not Literature Studies, the overturn of New Criticism provides a fairly effective precedent. New Criticism sought to break readers of mnemonic irrelevances, or what I.A. Richard’s called “the misleading effects of the reader’s being reminded of some personal scene or adventure, erratic associations, the interference of emotional reverberations from a past which may have nothing to do with a poem” (qtd. in Rabinowitz, 1998, 5). For readers who are seasoned academics, this action is difficult enough to perform, but for students – who have not yet trained their critical minds – it’s nearly impossible. Furthermore, it debases them as readers. Probst explains them thusly: And although, by definition, some of us are deficient, some are more deficient than others. The notion of the genuine poem establishes a hierarchy of readers, with the most renowned critic at the top, other published scholars a rung or two below […] other professors and teachers several steps further down the ladder, and finally, at the bottom, most deficient of all, the student. (Smith, 1998, 30)

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Fortunately, New Criticism’s desire to strip the reader of internal interferences when attempting to analyze a work of literature has – while perhaps not fallen entirely out of favor – certainly lost its grip over the entire field. Now there are options which allow the reader to bring his or her own experiences to play in the interpretation of the text. ReaderResponse criticism, in its most basic form, though it takes many different manifestations for many different scholars, seeks to have readers create interpretations of the text by making connections with their own preexisting understandings. Rosenblatt (2005) argued for a series of linguistic transactions that take place between the reader and the text. To these transactions the reader brings his or her own knowledge and understanding (or misunderstanding) of the topic at hand, as well as the vast background of knowledge and experiences that make up the human mind. Rosenblatt explains that “the term reader implies a transaction with the text; the term text implies a transaction with a reader. ‘Meaning’ is what happens during the transaction; hence, the fallacy of thinking of them as separate and distinct entities instead of factors in a total situation” (7). What is particularly important in Rosenblatt’s argument is her idea that students come to texts with a linguistic-experiential reservoir, which is a compilation of all of one’s experiences and knowledge. With every transaction, this reservoir grows, as a back-and-forth with the text occurs. The student understands the written piece from the knowledge that is brought to the reading, and the reading then adds to that knowledge. In this new Reader-Response criticism, the most important element is the role of personality. Here reader takes primary control over the text. A New Criticism represents a model of Composition teaching that does not allow students to utilize anything that they previously know and understand beyond their basic writing skills. And, even then, their skills are utterly debased when they must face them in the light of grading, textbooks, teacher requirements, even their peers’ work. However, the implementation of a writing model that more closely adopts the ideas of Reader-Response Theory – the concept that what the reader brings to the task is worthwhile – could be the answer to addressing students’ difficulty with some writing tasks.

Reading to Writing A writing model that implements the experiences of the writers draws in some manner from Elbow’s Expressivism model, which argues that the best writing is motivated by personal language interaction with the task. Elbow (1968) says that educators “must refrain from considering these

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pieces of discursive prose in terms of whether the assertions make sense or are consistent and judge them instead in terms of whether they reveal a person who holds the assertions” (122). Drawing meaning out of students rather than imposing a strict pattern for argumentative correctness is a plausible way, according to Elbow, for measuring effective writing. Elbow continues to argue that a class as a body will be more effective if it can engage with each other’s writing rather than a rigidly suggested “correct” model, if a culture of unity can be created and emphasis put on writers as individuals, not as mechanized argument producing units. Here, it is time to recall the earlier arguments that reliance on culture and social groupings provided one with a sense of security and ability to deal with crisis. In the writing classroom cultural literacy can be turned to academic capital. In a society in which students feel like they have nothing to share, this creates a type of economic system where individual cultural and personal experiences become currency with which each student can participate in the market. If professors can tap into students’ individual familiarity with their home cultures, they will be able to circumvent a number of the problems that are inherent in the first-year writing classroom. First, this solves Probst’s concept of a hierarchy, as all students have equal cultural capital and experiences to bring to their writing tasks. While students may not always see themselves as being equal, an effective educator can clearly show students that all have effective life experiences to bring to the table. Second, it operates as an excellent transition assignment for students who have not had argumentative or analytical writing training in their secondary educational experience. While it may be initially assumed that writing which draws on a students’ experiences would be only descriptive in nature, perhaps as a non-fiction essay or a short memoir, this kind of information can take a variety of forms, including expository and academic. Educators can help students employ their background knowledge as ground-level information for a research paper, experience for an exposé, or a critical analysis of an element of their own society. Judy (1987) points out, “as students explore the full range of discourse and compose for a variety of audiences, form and correctness can be applied” (41). As students become comfortable with their writing performance, educators may more easily address issues that are crucial to success in university writing. The growth of student confidences allows educators to then move back into issues such as structure and smaller, local issues that students would not previously have been able to engage.

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Finally, accessing home culture in the writing classroom saves students from trying to hide who they are. Adolescent years are, for many, a time of great trial of identity. It is no secret that the secondary school is the breeding ground of the “clique,” the social monstrosity whereby the alpha group (who has obtained its alpha status through sports prowess, money, attractiveness, or general ability to manipulate power structures) seems to make it part of the curriculum to harass and humiliate the beta (and below) groups. The things that make one a non-alpha, whether it be looks, sexual preference, home culture, or desire to engage in activities that are not considered popular, become defining characteristics governing one’s entire identity. And while the university has been called a place to reinvent oneself, we see that it is much more likely for students to fall further back on these elements of their identity. This reversion may happen positively in the social arena, where a larger body of people can allow students the chance to find identity matches; however, identity dissonance can create learning barriers in the writing classroom. Marzluf (2006) points out that “[d]ifference […] affects how students perceive themselves as writers, their assumptions about literacy, and their attitudes about different audiences. When they write and read, students cannot escape the consequences of identity and culture, even as they resist, belittle, or attempt to ignore these forces” (504). Writing classes, therefore, should offer students the opportunity to celebrate these differences and encourage students to find their unique writing strengths born out of the individual experiences that they bring to the classroom. Creating this kind of identity capital suggests to students that they are not “writing-poor” but rather that they bring worth and value to the writing process and that they can face all aspects, from brainstorming to receiving a grade with a degree of confidence.

Putting Identity Capital into Practice At my institution, 2013 marked the inaugural year for a new writing program that requires all traditional first-year students to take a class called Writing and Critical Inquiry (WCI). The program was many years in its creation, a product of educators, administrators, and politicians alike. The goals for the program included not only training students to understand and write at a university level but also to become fluent in a variety of discourses and to truly learn how to think critically, moving beyond the parroting that has unfortunately become the modus operandi for many after years of standardized testing.

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While the program allows individual teachers tremendous autonomy for the development of their own curriculums, it does require three papers: one that has a broadly defined “personal element,” one where students perform an analysis (on a topic of the professor’s choosing), and one where students write an argument (again, on a topic of the teacher’s choosing). The papers must occur in that order, a sequence that was not chosen at random but rather a very carefully crafted concept designed to help students break into the academic realm. As a paper that necessitates a personal element, the first paper requires students to draw on some part of who they are. With the knowledge that, in times of trouble, people find strength in their identities, that college is very often intimidating and difficult, and that writing in particular is a struggle, creating an assignment that allows students to draw from their identities as a major portion of the paper alleviates some of the stress that comes along with writing, particularly the stress of the first piece of required university writing. Therefore, for these particular sections, I design my first assignment to ease students into writing by allowing them to construct an argumentative work in which they use their personal experience to help make their case. As there are only three papers in the assignment sequence, it is crucial that each paper contributes to students’ transition to university writing. Accordingly, the first assignment discussed here was framed as a newspaper editorial, a genre where personal anecdotes are frequently used, but arguments are still made, and audience and genre concerns are significant. Students were allowed to pick where they wished their editorial to be theoretically located – from the New York Times to their own university newspaper, and had to write to that particular audience. Their language, tone, argumentative structure, and vocabulary all had to fit their chosen source, but the main argumentative tenants needed to come from their own experiences. Their editorial goal was to make an argument addressing the legal drinking age and whether it ought to be lowered. Our particular institution carries the dubious distinction of being one of the top “party schools” of the nation, thus this is an issue about which many students wish their voices could be heard. And, after being assured that nothing that they confessed to in their writing (short of admitting to violent law breaking) could result in negative consequences, they wrote openly and with great detail.

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Resulting Writing The resulting editorials followed the assignment prompt quite well. Overall, students understood their audiences and matched their genres (even the student who wrote for the satirical site the Onion and suggested Darwin’s theory should apply to drinking and driving). Their use of personal examples were well-selected and, on the whole, did not dominate their arguments but rather supported them. The identity markers manifested seemed to fall into four categories: racial and national traditions, religious background, family heritage, and personal markers.

Racial and National Traditions The SUNY school system is one of the most diverse in the nation, and this particular institution is no exception. These classes (like many at the university) have students from five continents. Because of this, WCI professors have the not uncomplicated task of searching for heteroglossia while pushing for student individuality. For many students, that individuality manifests itself in expressing their racial or national heritage. While the majority of my students come from New York State, it is an incredibly diverse state in terms of race and culture with residents from across the globe. There are pockets that remain highly segregated by national, socioeconomic, or racial heritage, and growing up in these areas made some students aware early on of racial background or the nation from which one’s family (or even the student themselves) might have immediately originated. Other portions of the state are incredibly diverse mixes of people from all around the world. It is not uncommon for students to be exposed to multilinguistic societies where they may have neighbors speaking eight different languages on their building floor. This kind of identity creation has been hard-wired into these students as part of their environment for many years, and plays a very significant role in their understanding of self. It is quite logical, therefore, that it would appear in their writing. The following example came from a student who was generally reticent in class yet who was reliable about turning in quality work. During the few times he spoke in class on the topic of drinking age laws, his comments tied back to his family heritage and why it was their national roots that caused him to follow the behavior patterns that he did. When he submitted his editorial, he had categorized those ideas into a cohesive argument:

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Growing up in a Greek family, I have always been exposed to a lot of political and cultural views that differed from my friends [….] In Greece the official age you are allowed to purchase alcohol is 18, but you are allowed to drink at any age with a parent’s consent. Most of the children in Greece who grew up with the allowance of alcohol by their parents did not sneak around behind their parents’ backs and binge drink alcohol. They had a [sic] more respect for it and a much better understanding on how and when to use it. This student goes on to say that, even though they are no longer in Greece, his parents instilled those Greek values in him, and he chooses to behave as the young adults in Greece do. He argues that his friends who have not had Greek upbringings do not treat alcohol in the responsible Greek manner and, accordingly, drink behind their parents’ backs. While the student admits that he does not entirely eschew alcohol now that he is in college, his national heritage has shaped his overall behavioral patterns. Out of the ten paragraphs of the student’s paper, only two and a half focus directly on discussion of Greek heritage. However, these paragraphs guide the entire work. There are frequent references to it throughout, and it operates as a working thesis to which even additional anecdotes that might initially seem unrelated refer back. This element of nationality, a concept which is such an integral part of the student, makes it possible for the student to have a touchstone to write an entire paper confidently and with focus.

Religious Background Religion is becoming a dangerous game for students. As some religions become more popular, others become shunned with criticisms of intolerance and hatred. Encouraging students to share their religious faith means helping them find the language to share personal conviction without condemning their fellow classmates to eternal damnation. This is by no means an easy task. However, this difficulty does not mean educators can eliminate discussion of religion, as it is an integral part of many students’ lives. From her own teaching struggles, Williams (2005) notes, “eliding religion and relying on an atmosphere of tolerance can create a situation in which the teacher and student are all the less prepared to deal with questions of faith when they do arise” (108). Religion cannot be ignored, but there are multiple ways to address it. Writing ought to be the place where students have the freedom to explore their beliefs in a critical manner, taking time to truly look at and

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understand how what they have to say fits into different ideas without facing undue criticism from their peers. One particular student, however, was confronted with the potential of a great deal of criticism as he wished to write about his Islamic faith in post 9-11 New York. One would hope that over a decade after the event – one that happened when this student, like his peers, was only six years old – an event that ought to be associated with radicals, not a religion, his faith would not be a problematic issue. However, according to the New York State Police Department, it is. Recently, the Muslim Student Union at our University, designed to help Muslim students feel at home by hosting ice cream socials and similar college-traditional events, was recently discovered to be the target for years of espionage by the NYSPD for any sign of illegal or subversive activity (Hawley, 2012). When that information was released, students from our institution, in addition to students at Yale and other universities receiving the same treatment, expressed feelings of fear, anger, and even inability to carry out their academic work without worry that they would end up being targeted by the FBI. In order to help students who were considering discussing religion to feel comfortable, I had to promise them that first, they did not have to share anything they did not want to, and, second, that only I and their two peer writing partners would ever see their writing without their permission. The student who explored his Muslim background was initially very concerned about writing this paper, as he felt that – having come from an Islamic nation with very strict laws regarding alcohol – he had nothing to say on the topic. In one-on-one discussion sessions, we explored his ideas until he was able to articulate that not having drunk alcohol shapes an identity in equal measure as having drunk alcohol. It formed his opinion on the topic, and simply because those in his world did not excessively drink did not mean he didn’t know about alcohol. In order to help readers understand his beliefs, the student decided to take his readers on a journey through his understanding of his religion’s interaction with alcohol: [The UAE] is a Muslim country, and according to Muslim religion, one is strictly forbidden from alcohol consumption [.…] Being a Muslim myself, I’ve never had a drink. No one in my family, or even in my community at large drinks, not a drop. The Quran, the Holy Book of the Muslims says that there is some benefit (Holy Quran, 2.219). Alcohol was a norm in society before the Muslim religion came along. The religion did not outright ban alcohol but did it in stages; initially, one would not be allowed to pray if he was

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drunk. It was observed how alcohol could cloud a person’s judgment and how it did more harm than good, which is why, eventually, it was completely banned [.…] It may seem to people that I am almost forced to feel a certain way about alcohol because of where I’ve lived my entire life and the religion I follow, but alcohol was never a good thing in the first place. This student does an excellent job of creating for the reader an understanding of why alcohol is not traditionally found in Muslim countries, moving it from what many might seem to see as a totalitarian limitation of pleasures to a religion’s goal of caring for its adherents. It is interesting to note that the student makes a concerted effort to distinguish his reasoning from the religion, noting that he is not following the rules because he is forced to, but rather because he sees these as the best possible choice for what is going on in the world. Montesano and Roen (2005) argue that “[f]aith, beliefs, and assumptions underlie all discourse, religious or not” (86), and this student seems to have – perhaps without knowledge of it – an understanding of that. He has assessed what he believes about the drinking age and believes what his religion says to be the best possible solution.

Family Heritage For some students, the family unit is the strongest bond that they have. In the United States, the structure of this unit has changed for many of these students since their parents’ time. More men live alone, and there are fewer married couples with children (Vespa, Lewis & Kreider, 2012, 5). In 2012, the United States Census Bureau reported that there were 76 million family households, or 76 million houses in which the people who lived there had some kind of familial bond, and 39 million households in which a person lived alone or with people with whom they were not related, such as tenants or roommates. Given that most traditional first-year college students are 18 and under, the legal age of emancipation in most states, the majority of students come from a family home. Of these homes, 15 million have a female-only head of house, and 5 million have a male-only head of house (Vespa, Lewis & Kreider, 2012, 2). Houses of Hispanic or Black families had nearly double the rate of being a single-parent home as compared to white or Asian families (2), a significant fact, as Black and Hispanic students make up nearly half of my WCI classes. Furthermore, many families are multigenerational, meaning that in addition to parents and children, grandparents or even great-grandparents may be a part of the

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household; in the 2010 census, 5.1 million households were designated multi-generational (Jaysen, 2011). The rules, actions, and activities of a household, then, are influenced by an incredible variety of forces. Not only do parents bring with them their own understanding of issues, so, too, do the parent’s parents. And, of course, the children have opinions (though not always a say). Furthermore, with the rise of single-parent households, there is new level of pressure being put on one person to be a caregiver and provider, to say nothing of creating and upholding a personal culture unique to the home. Yet, through grace or sheer will, many parents create cultures of knowledge in their homes that help their children understand major life issues and address them accordingly. One such student made no pretenses about the fact that he drank alcohol. He was open about it during class discussions. However, unlike some of the other students, who admitted it while looking down at their desks, or giggling, or pumping it out with swagger, he addressed it directly, explaining that he did drink, but – insofar as one can at a university – safely. Reading his paper clearly indicated why he could speak so directly in class: I’ve been around alcohol my whole life. My parents would drink at a restaurant or bar occasionally, and every once in a while there would be a family party where everyone would drink and catch up on what was happening in their lives. The rules were never spelled out about drinking to my cousins and I, who are all within about 4 years of my age, but it was clear we were not allowed to drink until we graduated high school [then] family members would offer us drinks [….] This makes a lot of sense to me, as they wouldn’t want us to get into bad habits or get distracted while in school. Their views on drinking when I wasn’t with the family were pretty similar. Before I graduated if they found out I was drinking I would get in trouble, but after I graduated as long as I was responsible and didn’t get in a car with someone who was drinking, they were okay with it. All of my friend’s families were the same way. So it seems our parents are apart [sic] of a growing cultural group in America where parents are becoming less strict about teen drinking. There are two crucial points here. First, the student indicates that his family’s decision on why he can or cannot drink is based on no other criteria than safety and academic success. This is how they as a unit have agreed to (tacitly or not) behave, external from racial, national, or religious

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influences. This seems to have carried over into the classroom, as the student was unafraid to discuss drinking openly, unashamed of behavior he felt was intelligent (though still illegal). The second, and most interesting, point is that that student believes a cultural shift is taking place. What he sees as occurring with his and his friends’ parents is, he believes, symptomatic of a larger pattern of increased tolerance towards younger people using alcohol. It was this particular piece of home culture that seemed to be particularly helpful in writing this work. As the student reflected on the idea that he knew of adults – the people who would traditionally attempt to stop him and others under the legal age of 21 – who would rather assist instead of chastise him for arguing for a lower drinking age, he was able to open up about his beliefs in his editorial and write a very convincing and mature piece based on concepts celebrated in his familial heritage.

Personal Markers There are some students, however, whose sense of self does not come as strongly from their religion, their family, or their nation. It may be that these things have given them nothing, or it may be that something else holds a stronger pull on their lives. Many students come from homes that are marred by violence, drug or alcohol use, sexual abuse, or pure neglect. There is, for these students, no desire to address their home culture or wish to explore an issue in the context of how it existed in the world in which they grew up. Often, these students are in what Marcia would call identity moratorium (in Ickes, Park & Johnson, 2012). Identity moratorium suggests that a student is actively looking for an identity to call his or her own, but has not yet settled on it. As a result, he or she is engaged in a trial of new elements and ideas to help form an identity. Personal markers, therefore, may not be tied to what would otherwise be considered a “foundational” part of one’s identity, such as religion or race, but rather something that the student has chosen to adopt. If students – possibly through writing or through their college tenure – come to fully understand and adopt multiple aspects of their personhood, they have reached identity achievement, where the choices they have made (both positive and negative) have helped them understand who they are and where they want to go. The personal markers that students may adopt in identity moratorium may seem to be superficial. But, for the student, these can be the heart of a college career. Some students are, first and foremost, athletes. Others act, sing, or dance, or they build sets to showcase these arts. Still others focus

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entirely on their studies, defining themselves by their skills in biology or journalism. The significant factor is that what shapes the student’s identity is not something passed from someone else on but rather something that is chosen. This final paper came from a student athlete who, like many athletes, faced the difficulty of missing a great deal of class due to a rigorous game schedule. Because of this, he initially completed his paper incorrectly, writing about sports and doping rather than about the drinking age. It was a topic that interested him and one that he felt comfortable with. When we discussed how to revise his paper, we decided that we could keep the sports element, but turn it into the key argument of his drinking age paper, creating a governing question that asked “What does the current drinking age do to college athletes?” In writing about a subject that focused on one of his personal markers, he came up with a clear, if slightly unique, argument: Within the underage college students, there is [sic] the N.A.R.Ps (Non-Athletic Regular People) and there are the college athletes. College Athletes are not regular college students because other than their education that they work toward, they worked hard in the sport they participate in. Not saying we are perfect or saints (because we are not, not even close), but most of us will not jeopardize our college career doing anything illegal. Our leniency is very slim compared to a regular college student. Some college athletes have scholarships to protect with performance [sic] in the field and in the classroom. The freedom of drinking can jeopardize it all. To an athlete drinking can physically slow down the body and mind, affecting performance needed to perform well. Drinking can become addictive to anyone, NARPs and college athletes. The taste of freedom and free time can get to the head of a college athlete also. Underage college athletes have more to manage in college and it can become stressful. This student makes a very clear argument for why his particular personal marker directs his behavior and belief. If he does not fulfill the requirements of the organization into which he has placed himself, there will be consequences. Interestingly, he also makes a very clear distinction between his own group and those who are outside of the circle of athletes. He suggests that, while temptations are equal for everyone, punishments are different. By creating this identity, unique to himself and his specific group of fellow athletes, this student is giving himself victory over what

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other elements may have been too difficult to address. Rose (1989) suggests that from the beginning of their educational career, students from difficult situations have a “continuing and uncomfortable waver between a celebration of individual potential and a despair over the crushing power of the environment” (p.114). In this post-secondary setting, this student is indicating his own (if personally unrecognized) celebration of his individual potential and their rejection of what holds them back in the intellectual realm.

Notes of Caution Assigning work that calls for students to share their personal lives, especially at the beginning of the semester, produces great rewards. However, it is also a dangerous proposition. There are a variety of elements that need to be taken into consideration – before, during, and after the writing of the assignment – to ensure that the process is beneficial for students and not painful or even traumatizing. First, teachers must use great care in addressing the concept of assessment. Assigning grades, apart from the regular terror that it creates in students, can appear to some to be a comment not on the paper itself but on the stories or personal experiences that are in the paper. To grant a student a “B-” on a paper because of significant issues in overall structure, confusing paragraph order, and painful grammatical issues may come across to the student not as writing issues but rather as a judgment on the content, that the professor believes the death of the grandmother at the hands of the drunk driver is only a slightly above average situation. Elbow (1968) again suggests something of an answer. Elbow argues that assessment of personally vulnerable writing should follow the standard questions of truth and style, but he supplements those with the question of whether or not the writing produces the desired effect in the reader. This is our goal, our intention, he argues, “the one people that people exercise, whether consciously or not, from the day they begin to use language” (p. 115). While educators should not ignore the elements of writing that students must learn to become fluent in university discourse, those elements can be matched with a very human concept – emotional response. Being able to move a reader is as powerful a skill as being able to correctly join two independent clauses and should be rewarded. Second, many students may come to an assignment that calls for personal discussion feeling as if their experiences are not as powerful as their classmates or simply not powerful enough for a written work at all. Many might have only heard of someone who has experienced an issue or

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have had the issue touch them tangentially. It is quite possible that this makes them feel inferior in their writing skills, just as a student who is unable to conquer the skills of researching feels as if he or she cannot write. Students who do not have these experiences may believe as if they are unable to establish a class identity; thus they end up with, what Ickes, Park, and Johnson (2012) describe as “a weak and nebulous sense of self” (p.531). Furthermore, students may believe that there are experiences that “count more” than others. While writing a paper on family relationships, a student who has had a fairly trauma-free life may feel like her paper is not as quality as a student who wrote about his mother overcoming brain cancer or another whose brother was killed while serving in the military. As a subset of this, many students do not want to share their experiences. Students who attend Western universities yet come from nonWestern cultures may find that such assignments violate the cultural norms through which they have been brought up. To ask these students to expose themselves so openly vastly complicates the written task, changing the focus from composition to something akin to unwelcome, invasive therapy. There are a number of ways to combat these issues. The most crucial comes in the construction of the assignment. The instructions should indicate that personal beliefs and the reasons for holding those beliefs are as important as the most cinema-worthy narrative. If students believe that their own understanding of an issue, and the intellectual and moral moves that brought them there, merit an essay, there will be an alleviation of stress both for those who feel they have no dramatic story and those who do not wish to expose their personal lives. Another effective tool is for the educator to write alongside the students. Hairston points out that “teachers who do not engage in the writing process themselves cannot adequately understand the complex dynamics of the process, cannot empathize with their students’ problems, and are in no position either to challenge or to endorse the recommendations and admonitions of the textbooks they are using” (qtd. in Bishop, 1997, p. 105). If educators are willing to write just as their students are, they indicate their own sense of vulnerability and remove the false notion that they have perfected the writing process. This opening of themselves may grant students the courage to expose their own vulnerabilities and, while not becoming naked on the page, perhaps share more than they otherwise would.

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Final Thoughts In offering students a chance to create an argument using anecdotal information from their own lives, professors can help them create a bridge between their pre-university writing selves and the writing identities that they will need to adopt for the remainder of their academic careers. Students have been able to address the threatening task of the first major university composition assignment while engaging in the cultural phenomenon of relying on the most familiar aspects of oneself to address times of stress or danger. The end result, as seen in this particular case, was strong papers in which students’ drawing from their own experiences produced clear, compelling arguments. By creating this kind of transitional assignment, educators may “value autonomy as signaled in the concern to empower people through voice, and [encourage the use of] personal awareness to act against oppressive material and psychological conditions” (Burnham, 2001, p. 29). As many students feel like university material is dangerously oppressive, particularly after the educational requirements they have previously been subject to, granting students a chance to tell their story, to not only make an argument but to make an argument using their own cultures and evidence, may be one of the most successful methods a composition teacher can employ in creating triumphant writers.

References 2013 State Test Scores. (2013). Democrat and Chronicle. Retrieved from http://rocdocs.democratandchronicle.com/database/2013-state-testscores Berzonsky, M. & Kuk, L. (2000). Identity Status, Identity Processing Style, and the Transition to University. Journal of Adolescent Research, 15(1), 81-99. Bianchini, S. (2011). The resurgence of patriotism in times of crisis. Seminar: Bologna Institute. Bishop, W. (1997). Teaching lives: Essays and stories. Logan, UT: Utah State Univ Press. Bowman, K., Rugg, A., & Simmonds, E. (2011). Polls on Patriotism and Military Service. AEI Public Opinion Studies. Retrieved from http://www.aei.org/files/2011/06/28/PATRIOTISM-2011.pdf Burnham, C. (2001). Expressive pedagogy: Practice/theory, theory/practice. In G. Tate, A. Rupier, & K. Schick (Eds.), A guide to composition pedagogies, (pp.9-35). New York: Oxford University Press.

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Condillac, E. (2001). Condillac: Essay on the origin of human knowledge. H. Aarsleff (Ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from GoogleBooks Daniel, L. (2011, Sept 8). Recruiters recall patriotism of post-9-11 America. U.S. Department of Defense. Retrieved from http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=65272 Dean, T. (1989). Multicultural Classrooms, Monocultural Teachers. College Composition and Communication, 40, 23-37. Elbow, P. (1968). A Method for Teaching Writing. College English, 30(2), 115-125. Ginsberg, B. (2013). Fall of the faculty: The rise of the all-administration university and why it matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Given, M., Wagner, J.A., Belleau, L., & Smith, M. (2007). “Who Me?” Four Pedagogical Approaches To Exploring Student Identity Through Composition, Literature, And Rhetoric. The Writing Instructor, Sept. 2007. Retrieved from http://www.writinginstructor.com/studentidentity. Institute of Education Sciences. (2013). Graduation Rates. National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 Hawley, C. (2012, Feb 20). NYPD Spied On Muslim Students At Yale, All Over The Northeast. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/21/nypd-spied-on-muslim stud_n_1290544.html Ickes, W., Park, A., & Johnson, A. (2012). Linking identity status to sense of self: Theory and validation. Self and Identity, 11, 531-544. Jaysen, S. (2011, Nov 23). All together now: Extended Families. USA Today. EBSCOhost. Judy, S. (1987). The Experiential Approach: Inner Worlds to Outer Worlds. In G. Tate (Ed.), Teaching composition: 12 Bibliographical essays. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press. Marzluf, P. (2006). Diversity writing: Natural languages, Authentic voices. CCC, 57(3), 503-522. McCannon, M., & Bennett, P. (1996). Choosing to participate or not: A study of college students' involvement in student organizations. College Student Journal, 30(3), 312-316. Retrieved from eds.b.ebschost.edu Montesano, M. & Roen, D. (2005). Religious faith, learning, and writing: Challenges in the classroom. In E. Vander Lei & b. lenore kyburz (Eds). Negotiating Religious Faith in the Composition Classroom (pp. 84-98). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

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Palmer, M., O’Kane, P. & Owens, M. (2009). Betwixt spaces: student accounts of turning point experiences in first year transitions. Studies in Higher Education, 34(1), 37-54. Popova, Maria. (n.d.). The Science of “Chunking,” Working Memory, and How Pattern Recognition Fuels Creativity. Brain Pickings. Retrieved from http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/09/04/the-ravenousbrain-daniel-bor/ Rabinowitz, P. (1998). Where we are when we read. In P. Rabinowitz and M.W. Smith (Eds.), Authorizing readers: Resistance and respect in the teaching of literature (pp1-28). New York: Teachers College Press. Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the boundary. New York: Penguin Books. Rosenblatt, L. (2005). Making meaning with texts: Selected essays. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Skitka, L. (2005). Patriotism or Nationalism? Understanding PostSeptember 11, 2001 Flag-Display Behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 35, 1995-2011. Smith, M. (1998). Authorial reading and the ethics of teaching. In P. Rabinowitz and M.W. Smith (Eds.), Authorizing readers: Resistance and respect in the teaching of literature (pp.3-28). New York: Teachers College Press. Slaven, R. (2003). Educational psychology: Theory and practice. 7th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Vespa, J., Lewis, J., & Kreider, R. (2013). America’s families and living arrangements: 2012. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-570.pdf Williams, B.T. (2005). The Book and the Truth: Faith, rhetoric, and crosscultural communication. In E Vander Lei & b. lenore kyburz (Eds.), Negotiating religious faith in the composition classroom (pp. 105-120). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

CHAPTER TWELVE ISN’T EVERYONE A PLAGIARIST?: TEACHING PLAGIARISM IS TEACHING CULTURE MYSTI RUDD AND AMY HODGES

“But isn’t everyone a plagiarist?” asks a student, suddenly alert in the back row of my first year composition course (FYC). He has done the reading, I can tell, but the text has left him more confused about the concept of plagiarism than the institutionally sanctioned paragraph in the syllabus might indicate. Via class discussion and written reflections, the goal of today’s lesson for my FYC students is to begin the complex task of untangling the meaning of the term intertextuality as they connect it to their previous understandings of plagiarism in the academy. And the Bakhtinian quote they found on the board as they walked into class that day probably confused them even more: “Our mouths are full of other people’s tongues.” This essay considers the negotiations of culture and authority between an American female teacher (Mysti) and a Southeast Asian male student (Sangga) against the backdrop of scholarly conversations on plagiarism. It describes what we, as American composition teachers and researchers, thought we knew about applying disciplinary best practices to teach writing to English language learners (ELL) in an FYC course. More significantly, this essay explores the new understandings that we, as coresearchers of a case study of a repeat plagiarist, came to have about the primacy of culture in both the teaching and learning of the practice of plagiarism in the academy. Cultural negotiations surrounding the topic of plagiarism are particularly relevant (and complicated) by the fact that we teach and research first year college writing in the hybrid space of an international branch campus (IBC) of an American University located in the Middle East. The vast majority (85-90%) of the population in the authoritarian country where we teach lacks citizenship, as do many (50%)

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of our students. Therefore these students may feel pulled between the competing cultures of their nationalities, the institution they have enrolled in, and “home”—wherever that may be. Although our teaching and research is informed by transnational approaches to plagiarism and the “ownership” of writing (Lyon, 2009; Pederson, 2013; Canagarajah, 2002), we still find ourselves surprised by the variety of the cultural views of writing that our students bring with them into the FYC classroom—and the persistence of these cultural views long after they leave the courses we teach. This is the story, then, of the ways in which our previous experiences, assumptions, and disciplinary knowledge as composition/literacy experts were stretched to their limits as we struggled to understand the practices and motivations of a repeat plagiarist at an IBC in the Middle East. The purpose of focusing on this single case study of a former student at one particular IBC is not to claim any degree of generalizability, but to begin to consider a much broader question when teaching plagiarism in the academy: To what extent do writing teachers pay attention to the practices and ethics of many cultures as they plan for the teaching and enforcing of the concept of plagiarism in the academy? And what is the cost of ignoring the variety of cultural perspectives and experiences that our students bring with them into the composition classroom? To answer these questions, we will include disciplinary discussions that attempt to theorize the practice of plagiarism in the academy. But as we have discovered, theory is made stronger when grounded in practice, and so we will also bring in Mysti’s experience of teaching plagiarism in the FYC classroom, italicizing her observations and reflections. Finally, we will introduce the views of Sangga, a former FYC student of Mysti’s who graciously volunteered to be our case study subject. His words go a long way in helping us understand the motivations and practices of a student who has been repeatedly accused of plagiarism at our IBC.

What the Discipline of Composition Tells Us about Academic Plagiarism Many composition/ rhetoric scholars have noted the complicated relationship between plagiarism as it is commonly defined in academic settings and plagiarism as it is defined in other professional and workplace contexts. Even English language faculty in the same department or same university can disagree over how a particular student’s integration of text does or does not constitute plagiarism (Sunderland-Smith, 2005; Marzluf,

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2013). Thus, a number of writing instructors have used the Council of Writing Program Administrators’ (CWPA) Statement on Plagiarism, which defines the concept as follows: In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common knowledge) material without acknowledging its source. (2003, para. 3)

The CWPA statement goes on to distinguish between the deliberate decisions of an individual plagiarist who uses sources without acknowledgement and the deliberate decisions of an ethical writer, who may not correctly follow the standards of his or her profession, but “make[s] every effort to acknowledge sources fully and appropriately in accordance with the contexts and genres of [his or her] writing” (para. 5). Thus, a student might misuse sources and have errors in citation and documentation, yet might still be considered someone who has attempted to make ethical choices as a writer. By refusing to view plagiarism and ethical uses of sources in writing as binaries, many composition and English language instructors have made space for the diversity of knowledge, ethics, and educational experiences that exist within many multilingual classrooms (Executive Committee of the Conference on English Education, 2009). For example, previous studies of non-Western cultures, China in particular, have indicated that students may honor the words of others through memorizing or partially representing strings of text in their writing (Decker, 1993; Gu and Brooks, 2008); and in the Middle East, religious and cultural factors may result in an emphasis on orality and memorization of texts (Akkari, 2004). But recognizing linguistic differences such as these and explaining them as culturally constrained can lead to “blaming the writer for a deficiency” or “ghettoizing them under the guise of tolerating their differences” (Canagarajah, 2002, 107). In A Geopolitics of Academic Writing, linguist A. Suresh Canagarajah (2002) describes the thinking of well-intentioned educators that actually results in ghettoizing English Language Learners: The attitude can be described as follows: periphery writers compose the way they do because they are still trying to develop proficiency in our language or because they have to make a shift from their culture to ours; we’ll permit them to participate in our conversation when they develop the types of proficiency required. In this kind of reasoning, the onus is on the periphery writers; the center cannot be blamed for their exclusion. (107)

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Buying into generalizations about the literacy practices of various cultures can lead teachers to become more tolerant of plagiarism in the academy, but this tolerance can also send messages to ELLs that they cannot meet the same standards as their fellow students. Every semester in FYC classrooms, faculty struggle to balance our roles as model citizens upholding the exclusionary practices surrounding plagiarism, and as invested teachers trying to understand our students’ cultural practices of literacy.

Considering the Experiences of English Language Learners in American Universities When I (Mysti) taught writing at both the university and community college levels in the U.S., my practice of drawing a green letter “P” followed by a question mark next to every paragraph in which I suspected plagiarism was received differently than it has been in the Middle East. Because my American students were aware that they would have opportunities to “purge” the plagiarism from their drafts, they either appreciated the sharing of my suspicions or they reacted with ambivalence, sometimes with a sheepish “My bad” expression. However, many of my FYC students at the Western engineering university in the Middle East where I currently teach have felt offended that I would write a “P?” even once, much less three or more times on a single paper. Initially I filed this reaction under “cultural differences” in which my behavior could be construed as a form of offending the honor—and thus cultural capital (Howard, 2011)—of a student, and to save face a student must deny any commission of intentional plagiarism. And while it is true that many of my Arabic students have had limited experience in high school with writing summaries that include direct quotation and paraphrasing, to insist that they don’t understand that they are plagiarizing is to limit both them and me by maintaining “the frame of the student as naïve innocent” (Adler-Kassner, Anson, and Howard, 2008, 241). As a Western college writing teacher, if I insist that my English language learners do not understand Western conventions of academic writing, and therefore I lower my expectations for citations in their papers, I am contributing to an essentialist view (Bloch, 2008, 219) of my Middle Eastern students. But if I do not take into consideration the previous educational experiences of my FYC students nor value the home cultures they bring to the FYC classroom, then aren’t I simply acting as a mouthpiece of the institutional culture that suspects and condemns these students for their repeated offenses of academic plagiarism?

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Multilingual writers often have different experiences in education and writing that influence their decisions as writers in Western institutions. Gilmore, Strickland, Timmerman, Maher, and Feldon (2010) suggested that ESL graduate students may be unfamiliar with the importance of citing primary literature and need to be acquainted with the culture of their research discipline as well as American institutions. Abasi, Akbari, and Graves (2006) concluded that ESL graduate students’ success at incorporating sources is linked to their awareness of authorial identity construction, or the process of asserting an authoritative self in text. Handa and Power (2009) found that Indian students may not be required to use sources other than their textbook in their writing assignments during their undergraduate education, leading to potential problems with sources in their postgraduate education. Although similar perceptions exist within the population of White, traditionally-aged undergraduate Americans (Power, 2009), students who have completed significant amounts of higher education in non-Western countries may have a different views of authorial voice and their own relationship to texts (Hayes & Introna, 2005).

Problematizing Authorship, Critical Pedagogy, and Patchwriting in the FYC Classroom: Welcoming Students into the Fray In his 1986 article “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community,” James Porter claims that “examining texts ’intertextually’ means looking for ‘traces,’ the bits and pieces of Text which writers or speakers borrow and sew together to create new discourse” (34). I rely on this article to teach my FYC students the concept of intertextuality. But I wonder if I have been wise in assigning this particular article that focuses on three examples of texts that do not credit their sources. With a doctoral degree in Composition/T.E.S.O.L., I am dedicated to finding and following the best practices in the field, including the CWPA statement “Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism” which encourages teachers to “ask students to analyze and reflect on the [genre] conventions in different disciplines” (2003). However, since I teach FYC primarily to ELL students at a Middle Eastern branch campus of an American university, is it irresponsible of me to invite my students into the fray of composition pedagogy’s uneasy burden of being responsible for the the teaching and preventing of plagiarism in the academy? Is it fair of me to require my students to participate in complicating the notion of plagiarism so early in the semester by introducing Porter’s definition of intertextuality and Bakhtin’s

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notion of heteroglossia? And if both of these concepts invite student writers to trace the influences on their thoughts and decisions—including topics, word choice, and sentence structure—then is it surprising when my students wonder if there can ever be such a thing as a truly original piece of writing? Teaching my FYC students to problematize plagiarism could ultimately lead them to a state of “existential despair” as described by Rebecca Moore Howard (1999) in Standing in the Shadows of Giants: Plagiarists, Authors, Collaborators. She warns: “If plagiarism is immoral, transgressive—a threat to culture, the academy, and writing” (which is how it is depicted in the boilerplate language cut and pasted into my FYC course syllabus) “and if its binary opposite, originality, does not exist” (as the concepts of intertextuality and heteroglossia suggest), “then all writers are plagiarists” (26). So my student in the back row has asked the same question as an expert theorist of authorship. Indeed, in Porter’s first example studied by my FYC students, he postulates that “if Jefferson [had] submitted the Declaration [of Independence] for a college writing class as his own writing, he might well [have been] charged with plagiarism” (1986, 37). No wonder my student in the back row has interpreted Porter’s example of the Declaration of Independence to mean that writers can’t possibly credit all our sources, and so students should be excused from having to do this at all, like Thomas Jefferson has been. Even if my student in the back row traces his influences—tracking down the “tongues” that had an impact on a particular piece of writing—he cannot trace the influences on these influences ad infinitum. So why should he even try? Here’s why: because he cannot gain full status in the academy unless he learns to follow the culturally situated genre expectations of citation conventions. Or, more importantly, because he risks being expelled if he does not appear to embrace these conventions as his own. Further complicating the teaching of plagiarism, students who are training in technical fields, such as engineering, may “believe they are guilty of plagiarism at the academic level while at the same time performing the tasks of an effective technical communicator” (Reyman, 2008, 64). The abundance of boilerplate text in the professional world suggests to students that the contexts and values of writing do not always include the heavy emphasis on plagiarism as is present in the academic world (Anson, 2011; Adler-Kassner et al, 2008). Indeed, technical definitions, terminology, and descriptions frequently used in engineering education often contain phrases repeated from one text to another in a number of different genres. Further conversations between writing

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scholars and faculty in the disciplines continue to interrogate and redefine how plagiarism is taught across the curriculum (Haviland and Mullin, 2009). Even if Mysti’s FYC student managed to negotiate his own place in the discourse community of Western academic writing, his other technical classes may complicate the conventions he has learned. As a critical pedagogue in the composition classroom, I often teach the conflicts that occur in what Mary Louise Pratt (1991) has termed the contact zone of the classroom. The clash of cultural expectations in the academy regarding citation conventions and how to detect and punish plagiarism is one such conflict. To involve my FYC students as research participants in this conflict, I invite them to track down their admission essays, open these in comment mode, and note the influences on each paragraph. We combine our understandings of the genre of the admission essay for a Western engineering university in order to interrogate—and maybe even disrupt—the power structure that has the authority to use this single piece of writing to separate insiders from outsiders. With stakes this high, it should not be surprising that when my FYC students were writing essays whose purpose was to help them get accepted as an insider in this institution, the number one source that they used—but did not cite—was the university’s own website! Some have even done this under the advice of a parent or high school guidance counselor who has said something to this effect: “Just use the words the engineering program has already used on its website—because the university obviously values these.” Although I considered the task of adding comments tracing the influences on the paragraphs of their year-old admission essays as a low stakes assignment, many of my FYC students seemed reluctant to be honest or thorough in their comments as they assumed I would align with the institution’s authority to retroactively accuse them of plagiarism. After all, the paragraph in my syllabus that I cut and pasted from the Dean (to prove that I am promoting the institutional culture) talks about plagiarism as both a crime and a sin, I could not fault my students for their fear of retroactive punishments as I was the one who had told them a horror story about admission essays and plagiarism, citing James Purdy’s article “Calling Off the Hounds: Technology and the Visibility of Plagiarism” (2008) that opens and closes with the case of Blair Hornstine. In 2003, Hornstine was accepted and then rejected from Harvard because admission counselors discovered that she had borrowed passages from a speech by President Clinton without crediting him in her application essay. In fact, Hornstine’s case received national attention not

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because of the plagiarism but because this accusation was being used by her former high school administrators to diminish her previous status as sole valedictorian, and therefore she was suing them (Purdy, 2008, 321). Accusations of plagiarism have severe consequences if the accusers have more power or status and thus are higher on the ladder of hierarchy than the accused. For example, Purdy points out that Clinton himself probably did not write the speech, yet he is not required to credit his speechwriter, who is lower on the ladder of hierarchy. Purdy (2008) notes that “Hornstine’s commission of competitive plagiarism is seen as more egregious than Clinton’s commission of institutionalized plagiarism” (“which includes ghostwriting, honorary authorship, and attribution of authorship to higher officials in bureaucracies rather than the more novice workers who actually do the writing”) (315-16). Even though student plagiarism is treated as a greater ethical violation, Purdy sees institutional plagiarism as “more objectionable since it reinforces existing problematic power structures” (316). Critical pedagogy requires its adherents to pay attention to the power imbalances innate in hierarchies such as the following: “plagiarism is acceptable when it harms subordinates or benefits superiors but unacceptable when it benefits subordinates or hurts superiors” (Purdy, 2008, 316). This leads Purdy to declare, “Plagiarism is seemingly above all a hierarchal issue” (316). Even in the academy, those who hold the most power are generally exempt from crediting their sources if their omissions can fit under a socially acceptable practice of institutional plagiarism. Professors repeatedly benefit from this “double standard surrounding plagiarism, one imbricated in a hierarchical society that situates students as a subordinate lower class” (Purdy, 2008, 316). They do this by participating in institutional plagiarism in the crafting of their syllabi, which often include unattributed textual borrowings. Before I ask my FYC students to put their admission essays in comment mode and note their influences, I project our current course syllabus in comment mode onto the screen in the classroom. Every passage that I have cut and pasted from another text when I “wrote” the syllabus is highlighted in the body of the text with comments about the source listed on the right. I also try to trace the influences on my ideas and patterns of organizations, even down to my decisions regarding the weight of specific assignments. Students seem surprised at the amount of the syllabus that is highlighted--that nearly 90% of the text has been borrowed or revised from previous texts. And then I ask them, “Is this plagiarized?” “Yes!” they answer, with a bit of glee, as if they now have something to hold over me. And then I zoom in on a particular passage on page three, and ask,

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“So, are you saying that this paragraph on plagiarism is plagiarized?” Many get a twinkle in their eye at the irony, wondering in what other ways the surface of the activity belies the purpose underneath. When I ask the students how I should have composed the syllabus, some say that I should have put quotation marks around the borrowed material and then inserted in-text citations at the end of each paragraph. This advice often comes from students who have already had extensive experience with Western citation practices. I mention that I have tried crediting every single source of material in my syllabus for a previous version of the syllabus, even going so far as to use a particular color of font to make it easier for the reader to identify each source (whether it be the student handbook, the academic dean’s office, the departmental website, the writing center, the office of disabilities, a former mentor or current colleague, etc.). When I project this crazy quilt of a hyper-cited syllabus onto the screen in the classroom, students generally laugh in response—because it doesn’t look like any syllabus they have ever seen. The in-text citations, block quotations, and various colored fonts DO NOT improve the readability of the document, and, in fact, usually lead to greater confusion. When I tell them that the genre expectations for a syllabus would deem a works cited page as a slightly strange addition, they look at me dubiously. So I use a more exaggerated example, “Would you add a works cited section to a wedding invitation, even though the text is nearly copied from your cousin’s ceremony?” They agree that this would be bizarre. “So should I be in trouble for cutting and pasting the Academic Dean’s paragraph on plagiarism into my syllabus without crediting him?” I ask. From reading the reflections in their journals, I have noticed that a few of my FYC students believe that I should be in trouble for not referencing the Dean, but most comment that I have simply obeyed orders from above by cutting and pasting the Dean’s text into my syllabus, and therefore I have not done anything wrong—in fact, I have honored him by using his words, even though they are unattributed. Composition scholars might agree with the conclusion of the majority of Mysti’s students, but for a different reason. It is the genre of the syllabus itself that dictates citation expectations, and because a syllabus is generally not prestigious enough to accrue status or gain promotion for the author in the academy, “ownership and attribution are not important” (Adler-Kassner et al, 2008, 240). But it takes experience with a genre to understand the complex interplay between audience, purpose, and context making up each and every rhetorical situation. Best teaching practices include encouraging students “to make ethically and rhetorically sound

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choices specific to the various textual situations in which they find themselves” (Adler-Kassner et al, 2008, 240). But understanding these “various textual situations” requires extensive practice, especially for ELL students unfamiliar to many of the genres assigned in the FYC classroom. I don’t label our first formal writing assignment in FYC as “practice in plagiarism”; instead I refer to it as a “summary and response” to a journal article. Rather than lecturing on plagiarism, I tell my FYC students that we will take this piece through multiple drafts so everyone has a chance to get an “A” by revising and resubmitting after learning from mistakes in the previous drafts. And the number one mistake that 80% of my FYC students make when summarizing is the form of plagiarism known as patchwriting. Howard (2000) addresses writing teachers as she describes this phenomenon of patchwriting: The patchwriting of which I speak is familiar to us all. We see it from our students regularly, and we do it ourselves, whenever we’re writing about sources that we’re having difficulty understanding. We appropriate phrases and whole sentences from the source. Those of us who are experienced writers punch these words and sentences around a bit, so that they don’t sound quite the same once we’re done with them; but we nevertheless engage in appropriation. And it is a necessary appropriation, because of our unfamiliarity with the words and/or ideas of the original. (82)

Howard (2000) does not consider patchwriting to be an intentional form of plagiarism but a step towards authority in understanding difficult texts; therefore, she suggests writing teachers see it as a “strategy to which writers may turn for positive reasons” rather than a behavior to punish (85). Because I frequently assign journal articles anthologized in the textbook Writing about Writing that are extremely challenging for L1 learners much less L2 learners to comprehend, patchwriting is a common practice among my students at an international branch campus when they struggle to understand the ideas, the vocabulary and the contexts of these difficult texts. As an experienced compositionist, I recognize the purposeful use of patchwriting, yet I deliberately point to this practice as a lapse in ethics by drawing a large green “P” on my students’ summaries with the directive, “Come see me!” scribbled in the margins. I exaggerate my reaction to patchwriting in order to represent the punitive arm of the

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university—the academic tribunals and councils who look for and find student lapses in academic integrity in order to dish out punishments that often add to the gatekeeping function that FYC already serves for many Western universities (Howard, 2000, 83). Retention scholars warn that “poor performance in gatekeeper courses may discourage students psychologically by deflating their self-confidence in their ability to succeed academically” (Eagan and Jaeger, 2008, 41). By marking passages of patchwriting with a “P,” am I actually undermining a first year student’s confidence more than I am succeeding in getting the student to take Western notions of academic plagiarism seriously? As disorienting as my many approaches to teaching plagiarism might be to my ELL students in the multi-cultural space of an international branch campus of an American university in the Middle East, I still expect to achieve a single-minded goal for every student who completes one of my English courses: that all the plagiarism that he or she participates in from now on will be intentional; no former student of mine can claim to be innocent of the expectations of Western conventions of documenting sources in academic writing. I will have fulfilled my duties as promoter and upholder of the values of my institution as well as prepared my students to succeed as ethical writers in the academy. At the end of every semester, I feel quite confident that I am achieving this . . . until Sangga, one of my favorite former students, was repeatedly accused of plagiarism a year after he completed FYC with me.

The Case of Sangga, Persistent Plagiarist At 27, Sangga was older than most of his classmates in FYC. He had previously earned an engineering degree from an institution in his home country, but he had always wanted to become a petroleum engineer, an option unavailable to him at the institution he had graduated from in Southeast Asia. Due to his drive to achieve his dream of working on oil rigs at sea, he was an extremely motivated student. The scholarship that allowed him to attend this IBC in the Middle East required him to maintain a G.P.A. above 3.5, so Sangga frequently visited his Liberal Arts professors during their office hours to increase his chances for an “A” on every written assignment. He often asked for clarification of verbal instructions, as if he was unsure of his ability to understand the professor’s dialect of English in the classroom. Once he was sure he understood the parameters of the assignment, Sangga would then draft the entire paper and bring it to his professor to seek suggestions for revision. He found little use for the peer response sessions scheduled in class, relying on

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repeated visits during the professor’s office hours instead. Although Sangga conveyed his need to get “A’s” in order to remain eligible for the scholarship allowing him to attend the university, he was also willing to put in the time-consuming work of considering teacher comments when revising draft after draft. In Sangga’s reader’s log for his FYC course, he took copious notes—as much as two handwritten pages per page of assigned reading, with most of these pages filled with excerpts meticulously copied from the assigned readings in his elegant handwriting. Unless explicitly prompted, Sangga did not initially include commentary or analysis in response to course readings. However, it was important to Sangga that his writing teacher (Mysti) saw these notes so she could understand how conscientious and hardworking he was as a student. He frequently visited her office to ask for one-to-one help in understanding assignments, and then to have her look over drafts before they were due in class. Even after a grueling onehour tutoring session where she may have suggested extensive revisions, Sangga would ask, “But what do you think of the writing? . . . Is it good? Do you like it?” It was clear to Mysti that Sangga’s past recognition as “Best Student in Southeast Asia” made it inconceivable to him that anyone in the academy would not be able to appreciate the beauty of his very long sentences filled with multiple verb phrases and four to five-syllable adjectives and adverbs. Although Mysti often said to Sangga, “I think you are writing for a teacher you used to have rather than the one sitting before you,” she did not know the details of Sangga’s previous education. This did not become apparent to her until a year after he finished her FYC course when he volunteered to be interviewed as the subject of a case study of a repeat plagiarist.

Sangga’s Previous Experience with English Language Education Sangga had learned English within a system where his literacy learning was primarily oriented towards taking fluency tests – TOEFL, IELTS, and a unique national test used for his home country’s universities. In his high school (which emulated the UK system), Sangga declared that there was “no emphasis on writing skills” other than grammar. “The questions that are asked in the exams are more into transitions, verbs, and [reading] comprehension,” Sangga added, “in the science courses, we didn’t have multiple choice [exams] like in English, national language, and history.” Since the teachers earned more money by tutoring outside of class, they did not give tips for the exams unless tutoring tuition was paid to them.

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Therefore many students skipped the English classes and attended group tutoring sessions instead. Sangga himself did some tutoring in high school since “the easiest, fastest way to make money is to do home tutoring.” Sangga’s own English writing was not graded by his tutor but by an unknown grader, so at that time he couldn’t imagine an audience who cared that much about his content. Instead, what mattered was “bombastic” language – lots and lots of different vocabulary words – so that when Sangga’s paper was held up next to another student’s paper, the grader could quickly see that his paper was “better.” The second type of English course offered in Sangga’s high school was called Business Writing. This included “formal letters, cover letters, and papers like projects.” Sangga, like his fellow students in this course, “just copy-paste from everything” because in his home country, “they don’t care about plagiarism; they totally don’t care at all.” In Sangga’s point of view, “Even in the UK [system] they don’t emphasize [plagiarism] as much. We do paraphrase, but we don’t put in citations. When I came to [this American IBC], I struggled.” Sangga paused as he tried to convey this struggle to his interviewers, and then he started again, “When I came to [this university], which is totally different from the UK system, I felt stuck . . .weird . . . like sudden drastic changes [were happening] because I have to start from the beginning. I have to really care for my words; I have to really care for my writing skills, AND my grammar . . .and then everything has to be cited. I came from a different culture. This is my first experience.”

Sangga’s Experiences of Being Accused of Plagiarism During Sangga’s first semester of university work at our American IBC, he was accused of plagiarism by a history professor and sanctioned according to institutional policy. Sangga describes this experience in our first interview which occurred over a year after the incident: I was for 28 years doing all of these courses: I went to mechanical engineering, I studied A-levels, I studied IELTS, papers, researched writing, and all this stuff. So when I went to [the American IBC], I went to [the history professor] and he asked me to write book reports. So I read [the books] and I wanted to find some points from Sparknotes [a study guide website]. So I just copied from there and tried to rephrase it but I never put any citations. I thought that everything was similar, because in the UK system [in my country] I didn’t have these problems.

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[The history professor] sent it to [the Honor council] and to the main campus. I explained to him that I am not aware of this kind of stuff, I am still beginning. He gave me an alternative: I have to read books, about 800 pages, and have to comment every week. I feel it is better because I have to read and explain [the books] to him for the marks that I lost. I proved to him that I could do much better than that and I got an A. I feel that, because I came from a different culture and this is my first experience, people are not really lenient; they never guide me. He never asked me why I did that. He knew that I just plagiarized; I had already violated . . . The very next semester Sangga enrolled in a section of FYC taught by Mysti, and she wrote the green letter “P” (for “plagiarism”) on his summary and response assignment several times until she was confident that he understood the difference between patch writing and ethical paraphrasing and could follow the in-text citation conventions of MLA. By the time the final portfolios were due, she felt very familiar with every paper he had included since she had seen all of his previous drafts. At the same time that Mysti believed Sangga had been acculturated to the academic conventions of paraphrasing, citing, and documenting, Sangga struggled to reconcile these concepts with his previous educational experience. I learned from you (Mysti)], but still I didn’t know the guidelines. Sometimes I feel that I rephrase it, rephrase it, rephrase it, but the idea is still there. Is that still called plagiarism or not? What I learned in [FYC] was that I wanted to keep my readers’ flow. The readers have to flow: I cannot talk about something then jump to something else, jump to something else, then come back. So when I put in citations, the citation’s meanings are totally different from what I’m trying to say. It stops the flow. I try to put something that makes the reader flow into the citations. So I don’t put in quotations. The quotations are like stopping points for the reader. [When I received the “P” markings on my paper], I was shocked. “Why?” [I thought]. You asked me to come and find you after the class. And you showed me the paper I copied from – copied from here, copied from there. It’s hard. Why are you so serious?

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I was worried. Thank you for giving me a chance. Because already I had been afraid [of further honor code violations]. I feel that it is very good to give a person a chance to correct their mistakes. A year later, Sangga had worked so hard on some of these papers that Mysti encouraged him to submit them to an anthology of the best student writing done by the engineering students at the American IBC in the Middle East. Sangga was also proud of his hard work, and so he submitted four pieces for consideration by the editorial committee of the student publication. Following customary protocol, all of these submissions were run through Turnitin.com, and, much to Mysti’s surprise and dismay, all four pieces were highlighted with plagiarized passages by Amy, the cochair of the committee. In a couple of the pieces, the highlighted passages amounted to only 5% of the entire piece. Because the amount of text that Sangga plagiarized was such a small percentage, Mysti wondered why Sangga would take the risk of being caught for plagiarizing when he had worked so hard on the other 95%. Most of the thing is my story, so I don’t have any citations or any references. Why I copied that one part is because I didn’t have any citations or references, so when I put a citation, I feel like my paper is not complete. You see a swimming pool. It is so crystal clear. In the middle of the swimming pool you have one dot. Some people would look at that black dot compared to the whole thing. So that’s what I felt. Who is this going to be for? [When I got the email from Amy about the plagiarism] I just thought, oh my God, Dr. Mysti is going to think bad about me. Because I have a good reputation with Dr. Mysti and she wrote a recommendation letter for my scholarships. I have a very good reputation at the university among the professors, and I feel that it is really jeopardizing my [reputation]. Dr. Mysti would look at me as a totally opposite person. Mysti’s initial reaction was one of disbelief and denial: she didn’t want to believe that a student with whom she had worked so closely would have so blatantly disregarded all the lessons she had imparted to him regarding plagiarism. And worse than that, she felt he had betrayed her trust— getting her to write a glowing letter of recommendation for him while he went on to embarrass her—making her look like a fool amongst her colleagues for trusting her students rather than relying on Turnitin. She couldn’t understand what had motivated him. But more than that, she

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couldn’t understand how a student of hers—particularly one as hardworking and conscientious as Sangga---whom she had led through extensive study of the concept of academic plagiarism in her FYC course, had seemingly flagrantly ignored her lessons. This made her feel like a failure as a teacher, which quickly turned to exasperation with her student. Instead of critiquing her own teaching, she projected these feelings of inadequacy unto Sangga. She expressed her exasperation to him much like a parent disappointed with an errant teenager’s choices, stating, “I can’t believe you did this. What could you possible have been thinking?” Her emotions—a mixture of anger and sadness and disbelief—were so charged that she asked Amy to intercede—to mediate between the teacher and her former student so that they could come to an understanding of one another. It was clear that what was at stake was more than just the reverence for the concept of plagiarism: in the conflict of cultures, a relationship valued by both teacher and student was at stake.

What We Learned from Sangga In rethinking our role as composition teachers, we realize that we must rethink the materials and methods we use when we discuss plagiarism with our students. The overwhelming number of academic honesty studies that conclude with some degree of “Teach them until they understand” speaks to the popularity of pedagogy as a solution to the plagiarism problem (see Sunderland-Smith, 2005; Hayes & Introna, 2005; Handa & Power, 2005; Yeo, 2007; and Power, 2009, among others). However more and better teaching of plagiarism does not negate the cultural and educational differences that students must cope with upon their arrival at American institutions, particularly IBCs. Sangga’s story highlights the views of Howard (2011), who has argued that “all the pedagogy in the world is unlikely to change the fact that most of our students do not subscribe to the goals that have brought us as instructors into the classroom” (230). In Sangga’s particular case, the methods that Mysti used in her FYC course were overshadowed by the previous teaching of English that Sangga had experienced in the various southeast Asian schools he had attended plus the cultural practices of the workplaces with which he was familiar. The convergence of several different cultures in this case study – southeast Asian cultures, American cultures, academic cultures, specific institutional cultures – presents a unique opportunity to reexamine what we are doing when we attempt to prepare FYC students with paraphrasing, quotation, citation, and documentation skills for their other academic and job-related tasks. After conducting the case study of Sangga and, more

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specifically, listening to him describe his experiences before his time at our American IBC, we came to realize that we did not truly understand an essential matter: we had not realized the complicated mix of identities and cultures that Sangga brought with him to the university, and though we knew him as a student, we had never deeply heard him as a rhetor and a writer. Sangga’s eloquence and certitude throughout the interviews taught us to question our roles as “sensitive” teachers and unabashed promoters of literacy, albeit American style. Ultimately, Sangga’s story has caused us to reconsider our writerly and teacherly identities. Sangga had tried to change his paraphrasing practices after discussing plagiarism with two of his professors during his freshman year, but his prior educational experiences and cultural background did not make this transition easy. He had previously been taught that a little bit of plagiarism would be acceptable, commenting that in his home country, “[his] professor allowed a match from Turnitin.com” and considered anything above 25% to be plagiarized. His professor had also given the students three chances, so, as Sangga shared, “so the first chance we submit we know that 50% is [plagiarized]; okay, then we submit again and then it’s 25%. Anything below 25% we are safe.” Sangga’s experience is not uncommon as previous studies of writing in IBCs in the Middle East have indicated that students associate mastery over plagiarism with Turnitin results (Koshy, 2009). Sangga had also learned from a previous professor that audiences appreciated attention-grabbing, “bombastic” language over his own “normal student” writing. However, when Mysti was his teacher in FYC, she discouraged the use of words that contained more than three syllables and asked Sangga to shorten sentences composed of more than two verb phrases. Because he was no longer praised for writing long, flowing sentences or indulging in his impressive vocabulary, Sangga looked elsewhere to infuse his work with something to catch the reader’s attention—even if this “something” had not been written by him. Sangga acknowledged his need to look beyond his own writing for material to improve his papers, stating, “I know that if I write [without borrowing from other writers], it’s not going to be the best paper; it’s just going to be a normal student’s writing.” In addition to the common struggles faced by many beginning L2 writers and beginning engineers, Sangga had to orient himself within a new academic institution, a situation that was colored by his previous experiences with educational authorities. Noting the culture shock that nearly all matriculating students go through, composition scholar Ellen Cushman (2006) claims that “first-year students, returning students, and

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graduate students to some degree may share an understanding of displacement when they enter the classroom. Very few places in society act, feel, and sound like universities” (358). Sangga’s previous educational experience is worth considering as it led him to form beliefs about the fairness of systems of higher education. For Sangga, the tertiary education system in his home country had been set up to favor Muslim students who would go on to take guaranteed positions in the government. Non-Muslims like Sangga, “are underprivileged. We have to study really hard, we have to get straight A’s, and we still can’t get into the [national] universities.” Indeed, Sangga had not been allowed to major in his preferred field of engineering in his home country, as that field was reserved for students with greater status. That is why he had enrolled in our IBC even though he already had an engineering degree in a different field. After experiencing system after system stacking itself against him throughout much of his young adulthood, Sangga may have seen the conventions of academic citation and documentation – in his view, always connected to the legal culture of the US – in the same light. His identity as a “good student” relied upon him knowing how to adapt to the demands of these cultures of authority, and initially he combined literacy skills from his previous life with the audience awareness and metacognition stressed by Mysti in her FYC course. Yet he described the turning point in his life as a plagiarist as the moment he knew that his relationship with Mysti was changing. He created a poignant scene in the first interview when he turned towards Mysti and said, [After the accusation of plagiarism as a result of the student publication], I felt trauma. Because of how you thought about me, how you changed the way you talked to me in your room. I felt that I could not accept it, because I felt so good at the end [of the previous semester]. You have high hopes for me, and suddenly, I made you devastated, so I will prevent that kind of incident for someone who has high hopes. Once I got caught for [the student publication], I stopped doing that [plagiarizing]. Everything I just write by myself. If I know some ideas or something, I just try to understand the ideas and just come up with my own words. I don’t want to go through the same thing. Robillard (2007) has written about “theorizing plagiarism as an affective issue, one that must be understood as social rather than individual” (19-20), and we came to understand this concept more clearly after hearing Sangga’s side of the story. According to Sangga’s narrative,

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what mattered to him was that he felt he had disappointed Mysti and had dishonored himself in her eyes, a theme he described in interviews both when Mysti was present and when she was not. Mysti knew that she had conveyed her disappointment both with words and with her body language, as she could not even look Sangga straight in the eyes once she found out he had plagiarized. Even as she strove to empower her students in the classroom, Mysti realized that, for Sangga, her reaction to his plagiarism evoked experiences with his previous authoritarian teachers in his home country. Both Mysti and Sangga regretted the damage that accusations of plagiarism had caused the deeply valued relationship they had forged as teacher and student. In fact, we believe that the relationship between professor and student is even more crucial at IBC’s as it can help students navigate the difficult waters of writing with sources in the university, particularly as that writing crosses different sets of literacy perceptions and codes of ethics.

Teaching Plagiarism IS Teaching Culture Like other FYC teachers committed to critical pedagogy, Mysti resisted participating in the punitive discourse surrounding plagiarism in which students are considered to be plagiarists until proven innocent, as when they submit their papers to “anti-plagiarism” services like Turnitin (Zwagerman, 2008). On the other hand, decentering her own authority in the FYC classroom also had a limited effect on Sangga’s patchwriting practices. In fact, the critical pedagogy lessons she had taught on the concepts of intertextuality and institutional plagiarism framed by her commitment to empower students to question the powers that benefit from such practices could be construed as motivation for Sangga to resist Western academic citation conventions. Maybe Sangga’s repeated practice of plagiarism was an act of resistance to “the dominant forms of rhetoric, especially when the forms contradict the student’s own epistemological traditions” (Bloch, 2008, 220). After listening to Sangga’s perspective of the limited importance of Western citations methods, we began the slow and painful work of awakening to the cultural imperialism that we suspected we were participating in but now had concrete evidence of. By holding up Western citation conventions as the best—if not the only way—of gaining credibility in the academy, we were maintaining the center rather than allowing our ways of teaching and researching to be changed by our students in the periphery. Sangga was not afraid to take the citation conventions that we as composition teachers take so seriously and bring them out into the light, showing us how they were bounded by time

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and place and materiality, unable to achieve primacy over—or even hold value in—the myriad cultures of countries, institutions, and fields of work and study he had come into contact with. In his first interview he emphatically declared, This [focus on plagiarism] is only an emphasis in the U.S. Even though I have proper citations [now], once I go back to my country, I’m not going to use it. I want to stay here, but most probably I will end up in my hometown, sooner or later. Even if I put in a citation, nobody is gonna care about it. I know that if I come to [this American IBC], I am bound to the U.S. laws, but after I complete my degree and when I go back to my home country . . . I have to adapt to the culture, I have to adapt to the system. I cannot bring my U.S. system to them. On my summer holidays, when I talk to people, I have to talk to [them on] the other kind of level; I cannot bring all of my system to them. I come to a group, this community, who are accustomed to [one] system, and I come from a different system. They cannot follow my system; I have to adapt to their system. The same for my culture; I came here [to the IBC], and I had to adapt to their system. Sangga’s comments bring to mind the process that first year students go through as described by David Bartholomae (1986) in his seminal essay “Inventing the University.” In order to succeed, Bartholomae claims, students must “appropriate a specialized discourse as though they were a member of the academy” (61). Sangga’s testimonial suggests that his adopting of the cultural practices of borrowing texts without crediting sources could also be considered as an adaptation to the workplace environment he will enter after graduation from our IBC: I tried to ask all of my friends who have graduated from the U.S. and UK [institutions], and they went to work, and [found] there isn’t really an emphasis on this thing [avoiding plagiarism]. They’re just, “Ok, I will copy all of this stuff.” And their boss doesn’t really care. The clients don’t really care about this citation, and some of my friends who are still doing masters [degrees] are just plagiarizing. In [my home country], just once I saw the pursuit [of a legal case] for plagiarism in the news. The liberties, the constitution, the rights, the copyrights, the credit . . . the people [in my home country] don’t really care. It’s expensive because of the lawyer’s fees and all this

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stuff. And we don’t have the time it takes for the files. One personal experience: my brother bought a car from a company in Japan; it came by ship. They had some seawater in the ship, so he filed a suit for getting a car not in the proper condition. It has been three years and there is still no hearing! [The legal system] is very slow, and people give up. Sangga’s testimony reminds composition scholars to consider the material conditions of the cultures our students bring with them into the classroom. Linguist Canagarajah (2002) has also relied on a “materialistic perspective” to explain differences in writing conventions, urging scholars to understand that many of the differences in the written product also result from the material conditions of the respective communities [so] we can perceive how some of the problems are implicated in geopolitical inequalities. We [can then] see how poverty, political instability, living conditions, and lack of scholarly support systems—along with such other matters of unequal distribution or access to resources—shape the different practices and outcomes of academic literacy. (108)

Canagarajah concludes that “writers develop many creative strategies to negotiate the contextual conditions for their purposes” (108). Sangga’s movement between cultures has required him to be flexible and creative to the point of acting the part of a cultural chameleon, which he chronicled in his narrative when he stated, “I have to adapt to their system” [emphasis added]. Could it be that what we labeled as plagiarism in Sangga’s writing was really an attempt at using cultural flexibility and creativity to “negotiate the contextual conditions for [his] purposes”? (Canagarajah, 2002, p.108). Sangga’s purposes, as made evident by his numerous submissions to the student writing project, was to increase his chances for publication. Seeking out internet sources for passages of elevated language to add to his pieces could be seen as a creative strategy employed to “catch the reader’s attention,” a goal he mentioned in the first interview. The borrowed passages certainly did catch the attention of the editorial committee, but not in the way Sangga had intended. Sangga’s repeated acts of plagiarism could also be perceived as a pattern of resistance. Rather than submit to all of the requirements for citing his sources in his various coursework at our IBC, Sangga was only willing to go as far as—in one case—95%, plagiarizing the remaining 5%. In her article, “Location and Displacement in Composition Pedagogy,” Ellen Cushman (2006) offers the idea that “our bodies are rewritten both in

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theory and practice with every essay, every assignment, every learning activity” (p.361). If this is true, then doesn’t it make sense that a student such as Sangga who can speak six languages and has moved through many cultures and systems of justice would refuse to give over all of his traditions to the Western practices of our IBC? Although the very attempt to define culture is troublesome in a globalized world, Canagarajah (1999) calls upon post-structuralist theories to understand “that each community’s culture is made up of a conglomeration of diverse strands which embody hybrid traditions of domination and resistance” (p.31). He goes on to define culture as “the multiple symbols, discourses, artifacts, texts, and practices” of a particular community and notes that these constituents of culture “are always at tension” (31). Canagarajah’s definition and description of culture helps us to avoid falling into the common trap of applying criminal justice rhetoric to the issue of plagiarism in the academy (Sutherland-Smith, 2011), which would lead us to deliver a “verdict” upon Sangga as either “ethical writer” or “plagiarist” or even “inconsistent student.” Instead, we wish to respond to Wendy Sutherland-Smith’s (2011) call to “re[think] plagiarism management in terms of ethically responsible relationships” whose ultimate goal is social justice (127). This is really not difficult to do in the case of Sangga, for this study has brought about a change in the way we view him: rather than labeling him as a plagiarist, we have come to see him as a very accomplished and complicated human being who is rhetorically savvy and able to move in and around many conflicting cultures as he negotiates the tensions between his home communities and the academy. In short, he is a successful transnational and translingual agent. His ability to adapt and to remain rhetorically flexible has enabled him to survive—and even thrive—in many environments, both inside and outside of the academy. It is only when we gave up what we thought we knew about teaching, what we assumed to know about our students, and put aside our institutional role as punishers of plagiarism that we were able to engage in rhetorical listening (Ratcliffe, 2005). After spending hours outside of the classroom listening to Sangga share his variety of cultural experiences, we began to see how culturally myopic, overly simplistic, and yes, even imperialistic, our unabashed support of Western citation conventions had been. As critical pedagogues, we believe in “opening the university to communities, making knowledge with people in [these] communities, [and] honoring students’ home literacies in our classrooms” (Cushman, 2006, 359). In a word, we are dedicated to inviting students’ cultures into the classroom. But this invitation can become mere lip service if we don’t extend our concern beyond the confines of our courses.

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We could easily have sent an email response to Sangga saying, “Your submissions to the student publication have been flagged for plagiarism and forwarded to the director of student services.” But both Mysti and Sangga were unwilling to let go of the candor and concern they had created in their student-teacher relationship. By refusing to ostracize Sangga for his plagiarized submissions to the student anthology and instead trying to understand his choices, we succeeded in repairing the trust and friendship created between Sangga and his former FYC teacher, Mysti. Although this was a desired goal of the study for both Sangga and Mysti, the greater lesson is what we have yet to learn. How many students accused of plagiarism are kicked out of courses or universities without their stories being heard? Who is taking the time to go beyond the criminal justice jargon of guilty or innocent to listen to the stories of the accused? And what degrees of cultural exclusivity and insensitivity lead teachers and administrators to pass down these judgments? By putting plagiarists on trial in academic integrity courts and tribunals, what we are really asking of students and ourselves is to buy into the supremacy of the culture of Western notions of academic writing. Despite our notions to the contrary, teaching plagiarism IS teaching culture, and we in transnational universities must deeply interrogate our roles.

References Abasi, A.R., Akbari, N., and Graves, B. (2006). Discourse appropriation, construction of identities, and the complex issue of plagiarism: ESL students writing in graduate school. Journal of second language writing, 15, 102-117. Adler-Kassner, L., Anson, C., and Howard, R.M. (2008). Framing plagiarism. In C. Eisner and M. Vicinus (Eds.), Originality, imitation, and plagiarism (pp. 231-246). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Akkari, A. (2004). Education in the Middle East and North Africa: The current situation and future challenges. International education journal, 5(2), 144-153. Anson, C. (2011). Fraudulent practices: Academic misrepresentations of plagiarism in the name of good pedagogy. Composition studies, 39(2), 29-43. Bartholomae, D. (1986). Inventing the university. Journal of Basic Writing 5(1), 4-23.

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Bloch, J. (2008). Plagiarism across cultures: Is there a difference? In C. Eisner and M. Vicinus (Eds.), Originality, imitation, and plagiarism (pp. 219-30). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Canagarajah, A. S. (2002). A geopolitics of academic writing. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Canagarajah, A.S. (1999). Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. New York: Oxford University Press. Council of Writing Program Administrators. (2003). Defining and avoiding plagiarism: The WPA statement on best practices. Retrieved from http://wpacouncil.org/files/wpa-plagiarism-statement.pdf Cushman, E. (2006). Location and (dis)placement in composition pedagogy. In P. Vandenberg, S. Hum, and J. Clary-Lemon (Eds.), Relations, locations, positions: composition theory for writing teachers (pp. 358-62). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Decker, G.D. (1993). Perspectives on plagiarism from ESL students in Hong Kong. Journal of second language writing, 2(2), 131-148. Eagan, K. M. and Jaeger, A. J. (2008). Closing the gate: Part-time faculty instruction in gatekeeper courses and first-year persistence. In J. M. Braxton (Ed.), The role of the classroom in college student persistence (pp. 39-53). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Executive Committee of the Conference on English Education. (2009). Supporting linguistically and culturally diverse learners in English education. Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/cee/positions/diverselearnersinee Gilmore, J., Strickland, D., Timmerman, B., Maher, M., and Feldon, D. (2010). Weeds in the flower garden: An explanation of plagiarism in graduate students’ research proposals and its connection to enculturation, ESL, and contextual factors. International journal for educational integrity, 6(1), 13-28. Gu, Q., and Brooks, J. (2008). Beyond the accusation of plagiarism. System: An international journal of educational technology and applied linguistics, 36, 337-352. Handa, N. and Power, C. (2005). Land and discover! A case study investigating the cultural context of plagiarism. Journal of university teaching and learning practice, 2(3), 64-84. Haviland, C. and Mullin, J.A. (2009). Who owns this text?: Plagiarism, authorship, and disciplinary cultures. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press. Hayes, N., and Introna, L.D. (2005). Cultural values, plagiarism, and fairness: When plagiarism gets in the way of learning. Ethics and behavior, 15(3), 213-231.

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Howard, R.M. (2011). Postpedagogical reflections on plagiarism and capital. In S. Dobrin, J.A. Rice, and M. Vastola (Eds.), Beyond postprocess (pp. 219-31). Logan, UT: Utah State University Press. Howard, R.M. (2000). The ethics of plagiarism. In M.A. Pemberton (Ed.), The ethics of writing instruction: Issues in theory and practice (pp. 7989). Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Howard, R.M. (1999). Standing in the shadows of giants: Plagiarists, authors, collaborators. Stanford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Koshy, S. (2009). A case of miscommunication? Obstacles to the effective implementation of a plagiarism detection system in a multicultural university. Retrieved from http://ro.uow.edu.au/dubaiwp/3/ Lyon, A. (2009). “You fail”: Plagiarism, the ownership of writing, and transnational conflicts. CCC, 61(2), 222-239. Marzluf, P. (2013). Examining teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards plagiarism. In M. Donnelly, R. Ingalls, T.A. Morse, J.C. Post, and A.M. Stockdell-Giesler (Eds.), Critical conversations about plagiarism (pp. 7-21). Anderson, SC: Parlor Press. Pederson, A.M. (2013). Thinking globally about plagiarism: International academic writers’ perspectives. In M. Donnelly, R. Ingalls, T.A. Morse, J.C. Post, and A.M. Stockdell-Giesler (Eds.), Critical conversations about plagiarism (pp.183-193). Anderson, SC: Parlor Press. Porter, J.E. (1986). Intertextuality and the discourse community. Rhetoric review, 5(1), 34-47. Power, L.G. (2009). University students’ perception of plagiarism. The journal of higher education, 80(6), 643-662. Pratt, M.L. (1991). Arts of the contact zone. Profession, 33-40. Purdy, J.P. (2008). Calling off the hounds: Technology and the visibility of plagiarism. In T.R. Johnson (Ed.), Teaching composition: Background readings (pp. 305-24). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Ratcliffe, K. (2005). Rhetorical listening: Identification, gender, whiteness. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Reyman, J. (2008). Rethinking plagiarism for technical communication. Technical communication, 55(1), 61-67. Robillard, A.E. (2007). We won’t get fooled again: On the absence of angry responses to plagiarism in composition studies. CCC, 70(1), 1031. Royster, J.J. and Kirsch, G.E. (2012). Feminist rhetorical practices: New horizons for rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Millicent Adjei is a Ford IFP Fellow, the Associate Director of Diversity and International Programs at Ashesi University in Ghana and a Freelance Intercultural Trainer. She holds an MA in Comparative and International Development Education from the University of Minnesota and has over 12 years professional experience in the field of international education and intercultural training. Gamil Alamrani is an Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies and the Director of Academics in the Department of English at Jazan University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He was a Fulbright Scholar and completed his Ph.D. and MA at the University of Arkansas. Salah Ayari is an Instructional Assistant Professor of Arabic at the Department of International Studies at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Minnesota in 1997. For more than twenty years, he has taught Arabic to different age groups in multiple settings and has led study abroad programs in Arabic-speaking countries. Eve Baldwin is a Lecturer in Writing and Critical Inquiry at University at Albany, State University of New York. She received her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Her research interests include composition and religion, young adult literature studies, and pedagogy. She has extensive experience teaching writing in a global perspective, literature, linguistics, and business writing. Fella Benabed is a Faculty Member in English and the Website Manager in the faculty of Letters, Human, and Social Sciences at Badji MokhtarAnnaba University in Algeria. She has several notable publications including “An Indigenous Holistic Approach to Colonial Trauma and its Healing” in Literary Patriantra.

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Vivek Kumar Dwivedi is an Assistant Professor at the Northern Border University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He is the author of The Other Truth: The Indian Discourse on Literary Theory (2010) and several articles in international journals on literary theory and criticism. Zohreh Eslami has more than 20 years of experience in ESL/EFL teacher education both in the USA and overseas and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M University. She has publications in the area of ESL teacher education, content area literacy for ELLs, reading in a 2nd language, crosscultural pragmatics, pragmatics and language teaching and intercultural communication. Amy Hodges is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Texas A&M University at Qatar, and her research interests are in social identity, first-year writing, and community literacy. Currently, she is working on an article about the ways in which L2 students transfer literacy perceptions from their secondary school experiences to American international branch campuses. Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar has a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Florida and currently teaches writing and literature courses in Doha, Qatar. Her first book, Haram in the Harem (2009), is a study of subversive use of Indian and Algerian women’s domestic fiction by female writers. Her novel, Love Comes Later (2012) won the 2013 Best Indie Book Award in the Romance category. Mysti Rudd received her Ph.D. in Composition/T.E.S.O.L. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of interest and study include FYC pedagogy, narrative inquiry, teaching in transnational contexts, and student engagement & retention. She has taught at both two year colleges and four-year universities, currently serving as Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University in Qatar. Sunni Sonnenburg is a Graduate Assistant and an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M University. She has experience teaching in both Italy and China and has presented papers at numerous academic conferences. Andy Trevathan is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville where she studied under the poet, Dr. Michael Heffernan. She now teaches in San Antonio, Texas.

220

Contributors

Noémie Waldhubel, Ph.D. (Socio-Cultural Anthropologist) studied Anthropology, Sociology, Ethnology, Korean Studies and Education in Hamburg (Germany), Seoul (South Korea), Paris (France), Montreal (Canada) and Bloomington (USA). Since 2012 she has been a researcher, lecturer and coordinator at the NGO Ethnologie in Schule und Erwachsenenbildung (Anthropology in School and Adult Education) (ESE) e.V. in Münster (Germany). Jeannie Waller is the Director of the Sam M. Walton College of Business Writing Center and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arkansas. Her primary research is on professional/business writing and technical writing. Katherine Wright is a Graduate Research Assistant in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M University. Her recent publications include a book chapter in Social Media in Higher Education: Teaching in the Web 2.0 and an entry in Global Social Issues: An Encyclopedia.

INDEX

A Africa, 29, 31, 39, 50-2, 59, 61, 635, 167 African, 25, 39, 40-1, 43-6, 52-4, 60-5, 100, 109, 173; African American, 41, 81, 98, 100-1, 103, 110; African English, 19-20, 24; Africanized, 21, 41; Africans, 30, 44, 109; North Africa, 144, 155; South Africa, 10, 64 America, 11, 32, 50, 69, 109, 136-7, 140, 155, 159, 171, 184 American, 2-5, 8, 11, 21, 32-3, 39, 44, 50-1, 81-2, 86, 93, 110-1, 128-9, 136, 139-41, 144, 154-6, 160, 165-7, 171, 173, 192, 195-6, 202, 204, 206-8, 211; American English, 12, 20-1, 24; Americanized, 21 (See also United States) Arab, 31, 67, 70-87, 89, 92-3, 1289, 136-40, 144, 155-6, 165 Arabia, 33, 84, 79, 169 Arabian, 71-2, 84-5, 88, 92, 155 Arabism, 73-4, 92 Arabic, 21, 31-2, 71-3, 75-6, 79, 836, 88-9, 93, 128-30, 134-8, 1434, 157-9, 161, 163-4, 166, 195 Asia, 9, 38-9, 56, 182 Asian, 25, 81, 184, 192, 207; East Asia, 8; South Asia, 32-3, 155 B Bakhtin, M., 41, 70, 192, 196 Bartholomae, D., 211 Bhabha, H. K., 42, 70 Bishop, W., 149-50, 188

C Canagarajah, S., 8, 193-4, 212-3 Capitalism, 13, 23, 33 Christian, 9, 11-2, 68, 73, 84, 88, 91, 139-40, 156 Christianity, 3, 11-2, 82 Citizen, 3, 5, 57, 72, 82, 93, 111, 149-50, 167, 192, 195 Classroom, 13-4, 116, 118, 121-2, 125, 133, 143 College, 59, 61, 68, 72, 85, 149, 155-7, 161, 166, 170, 174-5, 177-8, 185-6, 193-5, 198-202, 207, 209-10, 212-4; School, 99-104, 106-110; Communication, 3-4, 7-8, 13, 16, 19-20, 22-3, 30, 32-3, 37, 39, 57, 111, 115, 117, 31, 141, 145 Community, 13, 17, 23, 28, 52, 61, 68, 71-2, 77, 79, 83-5, 88, 93, 99, 148-50, 154, 182, 195-6, 198, 211, 213 Crystal, D., 4, 18-9, 37, 39 Culture, 3, 6-9, 12-4, 18-9, 24-7, 29, 31, 33, 36, 39, 41, 45-7, 50, 56-7, 68-70, 73-4, 76, 80-2, 84, 87, 8990, 92, 114-7, 119-20, 122, 126, 129, 131-2, 134, 136-7, 140, 143, 145, 148, 150, 154, 169-75, 1778, 180, 184-5, 188-9, 192-8, 2045, 207-14 American Culture, 5, 33; Cross-cultural, 36-7, 46, 49-50, 53, 56, 58, 123, 125; European Culture, 27-9; Intercultural, 49, 59, 63, 112-9, 123-4, 126, 128-32, 135, 138-42, 144-5, 166;

222 Western Culture, 31, 33, 87-8, 188, 194 (See also Multicultural) Curriculum, 13-4, 49, 51, 57, 59, 61, 85, 124, 155-7, 159, 167, 178-9, 198 Cushman, E., 209, 213-4 D Diversity, 7, 37, 56-7, 60, 67, 87, 91, 114, 125, 131, 139, 194 E Eastern, 82, 155 Education, 2, 4, 7, 11, 13-4, 18, 23, 26-9, 33, 36-7, 39-40, 49-52, 57, 59-60, 62-5, 67, 98-9, 101-2, 106, 111, 113, 117, 129, 132, 149-50, 152, 154-5, 157-8, 167, 170-1, 174-5, 177, 186-7, 189, 194-7, 203, 205, 207-9 Higher Education, 49-52, 60, 625, 129, 154, 157, 172, 196, 209 (See also Universities) Elbow, P., 175, 177, 187 English, 2-14, 18-26, 28, 30, 32-3, 36-41, 46-7, 70-1, 78-80, 82-4, 87-8, 100, 102-3, 106-11, 140, 143, 155, 157-8, 160-4, 166, 170, 192-5, 202-4, 207 African American English, 98, 110; as Lingua Franca, 8; New Englishes, 36-7, 39, 41, 47; Standard American English, 98, 110; Standard English, 25, 98, 102, 107, 111 Europe, 50, 58, 63-4, 155 European, 27-9, 31, 41, 46, 61; Non-European, 28-9 F Fairclough, N., 71 Family, 23, 33, 68, 72, 77-8, 80, 84, 87-8, 91, 99, 122-5, 133, 136-9, 140-4, 172, 180-5, 188

Index G Gee, J., 68, 70-1 Gender, 25, 33, 70, 78-9, 83, 87-8, 113-5, 118-21, 125-6, 134 Globalization, 19, 22, 31-3, 51, 110, 114, 154, 164 Globalized, 33, 148, 152, 213 Government, 2, 6-7, 14, 27-8, 30, 33, 49, 50, 62-4, 74, 113, 156, 209 H Health, 156, 164 Heath, S. B., 68, 175 Hegel, G., 80 Hirsch Jr., E. D., 111 Howard, R., 195, 197, 201-2, 207 I Identity, 8-9, 11, 13-4, 29-31, 39, 42, 45-6, 67-70, 75, 80-2, 98, 107, 110, 113-4, 118, 156, 173, 175, 178, 180, 182, 185-7, 189, 196, 209 Ideology, 4, 27, 29, 98-9 Illiteracy, 69, 82 Immigrants, 23, 116, 118 Imperialism, 5, 7, 14, 18, 23-6, 30, 32-3, 36, 210 Information, 33, 52, 54-5, 72, 115-6, 119, 121-2, 158, 164-6, 169, 177, 182, 189 Internationalization, 31, 49-65 Islam, 46, 73-6, 78, 82-3, 86-91, 93, 182 K Kachru, B. B., 18-22, 26, 37-8, 40 Kaufman, T., 17 L Labor, 28-9 Languages, 3-4, 6-8, 11-4, 18-22, 24, 27, 30, 32, 36-7, 39-41, 45, 47, 51, 54, 75-6, 98-9, 111, 143, 155, 158, 180 Arabic, (see Arabic); English (see English);

Going Global Literacy, 41, 67-9, 71-2, 81, 83-5, 87, 92, 100, 102-3, 107, 109-11, 177-8, 193-5, 203, 208-10, 212 M Middle East, 50-1, 73, 137, 139, 154-6, 159, 167, 193-6, 202, 206, 208 Minorities, 7, 9, 22, 41, 67-8, 80-1, 87, 92 Minority Groups, 7, 67-8, 81, 867, 92, 101 Multicultural, 14, 49, 60, 113-4, 118, 125-6 Muslim, 33, 75-6, 81-4, 88, 91, 93, 139-40, 182-3, 209 P Parents, 85, 99, 101, 137, 145, 154, 156, 181, 183-5 Pennycook, A., 4, 8, 26-9 Phillipson, R., 3- 7, 11-4, 23, 26, 29, 36 Poverty, 101, 212 Power, 3-7, 9, 11-4, 18-9, 27, 29, 31-2, 36-7, 39-40, 42, 67-70, 78, 81-2, 152, 169, 170, 178, 187, 198, 199, 210 R Religion, 69-70, 74, 76, 84, 87, 901, 114, 124, 134, 181-3, 185 Rosenblatt, L., 101, 107, 176 S Said, E., 81-2 Skutnabb-Kangas, T., 5-7, 13-4 Social, 5-6, 8, 13, 17, 20, 24, 26-9, 31, 36, 42 45, 54, 61, 67-73, 75, 77-90, 92-3, 100-1, 113, 123, 134, 149-50, 155-6, 172, 174, 178, 182, 199, 209, 213 Spivak, G. C., 24-5, 67 Street, B. V., 68, 81

223

Study Abroad, 43, 50-1, 62, 128-39, 141-2, 145 Sutherland-Smith, W., 231 T Teachers, 3-4, 6-7, 10-3, 38, 71, 77, 81, 103, 109-10, 114, 116, 121, 137, 164, 170, 174, 187, 189-91, 194, 203-4, 208-9, 211, 213, 221, 224-5, 227-8, 232 Technology, 2-3, 22, 32-3, 74, 86-7, 101, 151, 198 Thomason, S., 17 Tollefson, J., 4, 6-7 Transnational, 192, 213-4 U United States, 2-3, 7, 9, 36, 50, 58, 61-2, 72, 81-2, 85, 93, 98-9, 111, 137, 170, 173, 183 U.S., 5, 7, 50, 60-1, 63-4, 101, 122, 129, 195, 211; USA, 11, 22, 26, 37, 70, 73, 92 (See also America) Universities, 9, 13, 30, 33, 50, 58-9, 62, 64, 70, 128, 155-6, 173, 182, 188, 202-3, 209, 213 V Values, 8, 11-2, 33-4, 73, 77, 87, 89, 91-2, 117, 131-2, 150, 166, 181, 197, 198, 202 W Western, 11, 31, 33, 41, 47, 67, 70, 73, 77, 79, 81-2, 84, 87-92, 98, 188, 195, 198, 200, 202, 210, 213-4 Westernize, 31, 33; Non-Western, 62, 188, 194, 196 Y Young, V. A., 98-9, 110-1