Language Ideologies (And Why I Will Let My Students Write Essays However They Please)
Early in the semester, we read two articles that jumpstarted a huge ideological change in my teaching philosophy. “Not mere abstractions” by Malathi Michelle Iyengar and “Positioning teachers, positioning learners” by Michaela Colombo et al. (full citations at bottom of post) both touched on the ways that language ideologies have been used throughout U.S. history to uphold systemic racism against BIPOC.Â
Colombo et al. made a point that really stuck with me about how language = power, and multicultural/multilingual students, spanning across time, have recognized that speaking English is imbued with so much power that some view it as synonymous with “being American,” (Colombo et al. 2018).
Now, I completely agree with the original context that we read these articles in: advocating for equitable, bilingual education programs in schools. However, when I think about how I’ll implement the values of interrogating power in conjunction with language ideologies within my English Language Arts classroom, I feel a strong pull towards a somewhat controversial method of teaching and grading writing assignments.
I plan to focus much of my writing lessons (or at least the preliminary ones) with the idea that one’s audience is just as important as one’s message, for the purpose of allowing my students to write essays in their authentic voice. What I mean by this is that I will not “take off points” for students who translanguage, use slang, or use “improper” grammar in their essays — as long as I’m in the intended audience. I feel there is no reason to assert the ideology of “academic English” (as we learned about in Week 10, the April Baker-Bell article “Dismantling anti-black linguistic racism in English language arts classrooms”) on my students as I see it as antithetical to the creative process that should be supported in language arts!Â
I say this is controversial because oftentimes people take issue with not “correcting” or editing a student’s paper for “proper grammar.” That is where I believe that my teachings on audience would come into play. If a student is writing a college admissions essay, then I will teach them how to best prepare for that audience — which is likely going to require them to use “proper grammar” for their best shot at admission. But if I am asking a student to write an expository essay to be read by me, their teacher, I want them to know that my primary goal (apart from meeting state standards, of course) is hearing their voice! I don’t want to receive a paper that reads as if it were written by a robot, or a paper that is “messy” by academic English standards because a student is bilingual. I want to hear my students. I want to see what they have to say, and I don’t want them to feel restricted by arbitrary rules about how one should speak, write, talk, or all three.Â
This is just one of the ways that I hope to practice anti-bias/anti-black pedagogy, and interrogate power as an educator.Â
Baker-Bell, A., (2020). Dismantling anti-black linguistic racism in English language arts classrooms: Toward an anti-racist black language pedagogy. Theory Into Practice, 59(1), 8-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2019.1665415
Colombo, M., Leider, C. M., & Tigert, J. M., (2018). Positioning teachers, positioning learners: Why we should stop using the term English learners. TESOL, 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.432
Iyengar, M.M., (2014). Not mere abstractions: Language policies and language ideologies in U.S. settler colonialism. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(2), 33-59.