To end the semester, I wanted to wrap up what I’ve discovered about the connections and overlaps (or lack thereof) between ESL and composition and also think about what further questions remain for future work. Overall, I think the most important discoveries I’ve made are the following:

1. The split between ESL and composition is large, though only a few decades old. This divide can be seen somewhat in the things that the fields value. For example, ESL puts more of an emphasis on grammar and usage while composition does not.

Several examples of this can be seen in writers emphasizing the importance of grammar for ESL students. Damien McDevitt, for example, talked about working on “error correction” with ESL students and forming simpler sentences that are made more complex through correct grammatical forms. Likewise, Judith Oster suggests that grammatical usage is process that takes time to develop beyond ESL courses, but one that ESL students must continue to work on throughout their writing experiences in college. Likewise, Caroline Vickers and Estela Ene, who teach a containment course for freshmen composition students stress that they must teach grammatical skills for their ESL students that are not emphasized in “regular” composition courses.

Despite this emphasis in the ESL teaching world, the world “grammar” nearly never comes up in a search of the journal College English. This shows that at least beginning in the 1980s, this is not a skill that is as valued for composition students.

The split in this skill can likely be traced back to the divisions of the fields, as early as the 1970s, when TESOL became standardized and training preparation started to develop that was separate from English, where the attitude had previously been “if you speak it, you can teach it” (Gray). This continued into the 1990s when it was thought that although some teaching techniques could come from composition studies, the unique needs of ESL learners required different methods as well (Matsuda and Silva).

Clearly, these two fields separated because of a perceived need in the types of challenges they felt their students were facing. Despite pulling somewhat from each other, distinct journals and methods continued to be advocated and created. However, this leaves further difficulties in finding overlaps between these courses and fields that would help students better scaffold between them.

2. These differences are also seen in part because of the inconsistent training backgrounds of teachers, particularly ESL teachers who come from backgrounds as varied as linguistics, TESOL, composition, and writing studies. Scaffolding between courses can and should be expected to be difficult when teachers with such varied backgrounds are teaching varied courses.

Matsuda and Silva point out, for example, that ESL teachers are being trained in various fields of study. Though many have some kind of linguistics backgrounds, others are simply graduate students studying things as varied as creative writing, literature, or composition themselves. Though this is true in composition as well, more and more teachers are coming into composition with rhetoric and composition degrees and less in literature or creative writing than before.

Such training discrepancies can be seen in the ultimate learning outcomes of these courses. Terry Santos notes, for example, ESL teachers still concern themselves more with product than composition’s process and this is the result of the pedagogical values emphasized in applied linguistics, in which many of their teachers are trained. Clearly, the educational values of each discipline are going to be further reflected in their course and student outcomes.

Though training is somewhat inconsistent, some teachers do advocate for further cross-training between the two fields. For example, Desmond Allison calls for further cross-departmental communication, including setting aside time to talk about the work teachers in other fields, including composition, are doing to help better help students succeed at tasks in those classrooms. Other authors have advocated for such teaching for transfer approaches as well (James). Such work might make ESL students in particular better able to handle the many rigors of college study.

3. Despite these differences, the social turn strongly influenced both fields and strong overlaps in the ways that we think about respect for language and respect for our students has clearly been shown consistently between the two fields.

Though ESL may have taken slightly longer to get there, it was only by a little bit. Canagarajah notes that by the 1990s the ESL field was concerned with communities of practice, identity theory, collaboration, and asking teachers to acknowledge and contextualize their values and beliefs (23-24). Likewise, Crandall and Christison see more value placed in ESL on sociocultural perspectives by the early 2000s. McKay also talks about ideology as something “imbued in everything that teachers do that cannot be extracted from the job (66) and finds teaching with the use of such social practice and understanding as crucial to the job. Though Santos pushes back upon these social values, he is the only author to do so in all of the pieces from this semester. He wants further value placed on clear writing rather than ideological concerns. He appears to be in the minority.

Likewise, composition strongly values social and ideological considerations for student success. Matsuda in “The Myth” argues that we simply can’t assume linguistic homogeneity in our students and must empower teachers to work with diverse language and learning needs and empower students to find their voices within the academy. Akbari and Horner both stress the importance of students deserving not only rights to their own language but also respect for being multilingual speakers afforded value for that talent and skill. While power dynamics often discourage such language play and value in the classroom, both argue that we must help dismantle such systems of oppression for students and more generally within the academy.

Clearly, the overlaps here are most powerful. Though both fields talk about the social turn in their own ways, they are ultimately advocating for the same types of empowerment for students.

4. Finally, problems with our research might result in some of the difficulties we currently have with encompassing both of these groups more seamlessly. We lack truly niche/overlapping journals, we lack more qualitative studies and replication studies, and we’ve perhaps relied too heavily on just a few, strong voices.

While there are some journals that suggest they are niche such as Journal of Second Language Writing clear pedagogical interest towards ESL courses can be seen in a fairly extensive search of the articles found there. While some journals like Teaching English at the Two Year College attempt some overlaps as well because they are dealing with these divergent communities, none focus on the nexus in a clear way. It could be that further research and scholarship is needed at these intersections to keep moving these students forward.

Likewise, of the research we do have, very few quantitative studies have been done, with over 90 percent of all journal studies being qualitative in nature (Loewen et al). Though most college teachers have training in a variety of research methods, we’re often clearly boxing ourselves into particular types of studies. Additionally, as Porte and Richards point out, we are terrible at replication studies that would better help us see how past work affects new populations. This leaves a significant area ripe for study – how can past composition studies be implemented on ESL students, or on the intersection of these two populations? Without replication studies, we do not have answers.

Finally, the bit of intersecting material I have found comes almost entirely from a few strong, loud voices, particularly that of Paul Kei Matsuda. Though he is surely a “legend” in the field, if too much of his work is being read or being drawn upon by the small number of other scholars in the field, this could be a potential disservice to new ways of thinking and examining these populations. More voices are needed.

From here, I think the main question I’ve developed is “where do we go from here?” While so much has been done, there are still great discrepancies between the fields that must be filled. Finding places for these niche studies and unique populations must come next. I also still continue to question in what ways the methods and methodologies used to help and study these groups are different. Why is a method used for one population different from that used for another? If we see grammar training as the big differentiation between these populations, how do we help classrooms full of mixed student populations? This is the big place that I see for the types of niche studies I am referring to. Unless we figure out how to better scaffold between ESL and composition or how to help very diverse classrooms, struggles and frustrations will continue. This is one reason I have set out to study with my dissertation what I have set out to study. I think there is so much yet to look at and discover, and I am excited to see where these questions and this process takes me over the next several years.

Works Cited

Akbari, Ramin. “Transforming Lives: Introducing Critical Pedagogy into ELT Classrooms.” ELT Journal, vol. 62, no. 3, 2008, pp. 276-283.

Allison, Desmond. “Training Learners to Prepare Short Written Answers.” ELT Journal, vol. 41, no. 1, 1986, pp. 27-32.

Canagarajah, Suresh. “TESOL as a Professional Community: A Half Century of Pedagogy, Research, and Theory.” TESOL Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 1, 2016, pp. 7-41.

Crandall, JoAnn, and MaryAnn Christison. “An Overview of Research in English Language Teacher Education and Professional Development.” Teacher Education and Professional Development in TESOL: Global Perspectives, edited by JoAnn Crandall and MaryAnn Christison, The International Research Foundation for English Language Education and Routledge, 2016, pp. 3-34.

Gray, Phebe Xu. “The Formation and Development of TESOL: A Brief History.” International Education, vol. 27, 1997, http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.odu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=d561380b-c307-4433-a9e2-e6fa1296b70a%40sessionmgr4010&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=507597464&db=eue. Accessed 1 Mar. 2018.

Horner, Bruce. “’Students’ Right,’ English Only, and Re-Imagining the Politics of Language.” College English, vol. 63, no. 6, 2001, pp. 741-758.

James, Mark A. “Teaching for Transfer in ELT.” ELT Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, 2006, pp. 151-159.

Loewen, Shawn et al. “Statistical Literacy Among Applied Linguists and Second Language Acquisition Researchers.” TESOL Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 2., 2014, pp. 360-388.

Matsuda, Paul Kei. “The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition.” College English, vol. 68, no. 6, 2006, pp. 637-651.

Matsuda, Paul Kei, and Tony Silva, ed. “Introduction.” Landmark Essays on ESL Writing, vol. 17, Routeledge, 2001, pp. xiii-xxv.

McDevitt, Damien. “How to Cope With Spaghetti Writing.” ELT Journal, vol. 41, no. 1, 1989, pp. 19-23.

McKay, Sandra Lee. “Examining L2 Composition Ideology: A Look at Literacy Education.” Journal of Second Language Writing, vol. 2, no. 1, 1993, pp. 65-81.

Oster, Judith. “The ESL Composition Course and the Idea of a University.” College English, vol. 47, no. 1, 1985, pp. 66-76.

Porte, Graeme, and Keith Richards. “Focus Article: Replication in Second Language Writing Research.” Journal of Second Language Writing, vol. 21, 2012, pp. 284-293.

Santos, Terry. “Ideology in Composition: L1 and ESL.” Journal of Second Language Writing, vol. 1, no. 1, 1992, pp. 1-15.

Vickers, Caroline H., and Estela Ene. “Grammatical Accuracy and Learner Autonomy in Advanced Writing.” ELT Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, 2006, pp. 109-116.