What is “Culturally Responsive” Composition?
Andy Gurevich and Katherine Tanski
Writing Through Our Subjectivities
There are a number of perspectives that arise when students from diverse cultural, social, economic, religious, and educational backgrounds enter a college composition course and are expected to engage the materials in efficient, collaborative, and meaningful ways. We must realize at the very outset we do not all come to the college writing process with the same backgrounds, the same skills, and the same access and opportunities. Some of you will have (or have had) limited access to technology, such as a laptop, desktop computer, computer lab, or high speed internet. Prior to now, your only technological device might have been your phone, or Chromebook provided to you by your school district. For others, English may be your second (or third) language, and your fluency (or lack of) may cause frustration and self-consciousness. Still others may come to the classroom with physical or cognitive disabilities and/or illnesses, visible and invisible. You may or may not have encountered the concept of neurodivergence or neurodiversity, which places all cognitive and sensory ways of processing the world as part of a spectrum. All this is to say that you and your classmates come to this space with diverse cultural ways of understanding. With some awareness and empathy from the outset, we can frame this situation into an opportunity for expansion and variety of expression, instead of a path filled with unnecessary roadblocks and unfair obstacles to student success. It may seem odd, at first, to discuss race, gender, class, and national/linguistic identity markers in the same space as those of the hard of hearing or seeing communities, or the various learning ability communities, but I believe that by treating each of these communities as a proper “culture,” we will better be able to design, implement, and evaluate the college writing experiences for these communities with more intentional balance, situational equity, and sufficient support.
In the composition classroom space, instructors are experts in the content, but will likely have less understanding of the students’ personal lives and the pertinent socioeconomic information required to make the content as meaningful, relevant, and accessible as possible for those very students. For your part, as students, you know your own lives, but are not yet, usually, experts in the course content. It is my goal for us both to learn from this experience by teaching you how to engage with the “objective” elements of the writing process through the “subjective” elements of your actual lives and experiences.
Strong critical thinking and research writing skills help you maximize the voices and viewpoints of your own particular sociocultural, religious, and political background while also giving you the ability to identify how you yourself are situated within the fabric of local, cultural, and global societies. Writing is one way of externalizing what you think so that it exists outside of yourself. Think of writing as a way of recording your thoughts, and making them visible to yourself, and to others.
When you learn how to engage any topic that interests you and do so using both your critical and creative minds, whole worlds being to change. Essay writing is important not because of what it produces on the page so much as what it produces in the heart and mind of the writer. Through writing we learn how to think about our own thinking in ways that bring our own voices into the ongoing discussions of what it means to be human at this moment in time. Beyond understanding how to express yourself meaningfully in text, when you approach a topic with open curiosity and healthy skepticism, you will increase your ability to evaluate fact and fiction, and factual relationships between various established fictions.
How to Approach This Course: Advice For Students
For many people, academic situations and writing specifically can cause stress and anxiety. Your instructor and GRC will endeavor to support each student’s unique situation, but we cannot know how to help if you do not ask for it. Do not be ashamed to ask for the help you need. There is more available than you might think. You cannot receive the support you do not ask for or that nobody knows you need.
Inside the Course — Engaging with your Instructor and the Course Content
Students are often confused about why they are all made to take college composition courses no matter what their chose career path or major. These courses are intended to teach students how to think, not what to think. And, equally as importantly, how to learn. Anybody can go down a YouTube rabbit hole or randomly click on Google links that randomly support or dismiss the thoughts we already have about a given topic. But the ability to think about our own thinking, to carefully and deliberately evaluate our own thinking and the thinking of others in pursuit of clarity, depth of understanding, validity, and proper support and integration of alternative points of view are skills that will empower anyone who has them to be a better version of themselves and a more productive and adaptive member of their community. This is why we ask all college students to take these courses and this is why they ALL deserve equal access, opportunity, and support in pursuit of these vocational, cognitive, and educational goals. Here are three guiding principles and values that can help you have a positive educational experience in this course:
- Focus on process more than product.
- You will read this statement several times in this guide. But what does it mean, exactly? It means that the goal of college composition courses is to teach college composition. So, inevitably, the materials and coursework will require the student to develop their skills in critical thinking, research methodology, as well as in drafting, editing, revising, and formatting the standard college essay. But this does not mean that every single component of the course needs to be written down. Multimodal instruction allows the instructor to use short videos, TED Talks, podcasts, images, and technology such as Zoom, Panopto, Hypothesis).
- Stay in communication.
- It seems obvious, but instructors cannot help with problems they do not know the student is having. Often, instructors can be flexible with deadlines and course assignments if the student lets them know what is happening, what they need, and keeps them informed. There is only so much instructors can do, but most are willing to help if they know the problems. And they can often direct you to further resources, if necessary.
- Treat essay writing as a form of self-empowerment and autodidacticism.
- Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) is a way of describing self-education (also self-learning and self-teaching) that is achieved without the guidance of masters (such as teachers and professors) or institutions (such as schools). The purpose of education that focuses on critical thinking and literacy is to empower the individual, and by extension the individual’s community. In other words, learning these skills creates an informed citizenry able to make informed decisions about what is best for the community, rather than rely on politicians, religious leaders, or other people in positions of power to inform the community what they believe is best. Nothing could be more important for any student wishing to better themselves, and their own communities, than that. We teach writing this way in order to make the process of learning to write, and learning to think through writing, more relevant, more engaging, and more student-centered.
Outside the Course — Engaging with Student Services
Let your instructors know, to the extent that it is appropriate and to which you are comfortable, what your circumstances are and what your needs might be in order to be successful in the course. Chances are the instructor can help you access those resources, or at least connect you with those who can. Here are three ways that Green River College offers academic and non-academic support for students:
- The Writing & Reading Center provides consultations and other support in-person and online.
- Disability Support Services primarily works with students who need academic accommodations from their instructors. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), students are entitled to equitable accommodations for diagnosed and documented disabilities, such as hearing impairments (such as deafness or hard of hearing), visual impairments (such as blindness or low vision), learning disabilities (such as dyslexia or dysgraphia), or neurodiversity (such as autism or ADHD).
- The Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODEI) can assist in a variety of social, academic, and financial ways
This resource list is intended to help make the writing classroom the most enjoyable, equitable, and diverse space possible for students to engage the college writing process in the full and unobstructed pursuit of their own personal, vocational, and educational goals:
Cross-Cultural Communication and Global English(es)
A person’s culture affects their perceptions and judgments of the world around them. It can also determine patterns of behavior. What is typical behavior in one culture may be unusual or even unacceptable in another. For example, the thumbs-up gesture, which has a positive meaning in North America, has extremely rude connotations in some other cultures. Looking elders directly in the eye when speaking to them is seen as proper respect in one culture and inappropriate in another. Thus, what we see as ordinary, someone else might have a strong reaction to.
This matters a great deal in how we approach the essay writing process as well. Concepts like authority, voice, tone, style, and even formatting can be greatly altered when viewed through the various cultural lenses students bring to the writing classroom. Cultural differences can make easy writing assignments interesting; however, they can also lead to difficulties in communication.
Language itself can cause difficulties in cross-cultural communication, even when the common language is English. There are 88 countries in the English-speaking world; that is, where English is an official language, although there may be other official languages as well. Former colonies of England, including the United States, Canada, India, and Australia, have their own dialects of English—and due to their size, smaller regional dialects as well. English is also commonly learned by people in European nations, especially places like Sweden, Greece, or Austria; people in East Asian nations like Japan, Korea, and China; and in African nations such as Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya.
One of the most prominent cultural dialects within an English-speaking country is African-American Vernacular English (AAV). Traditionally, educators focused a disproportionate amount of time trying to teach speakers of AAVE to speak “correctly.” Today, AAVE is recognized as a cultural dialect in addition to Standard American English (SAE). Educators emphasize the clarity of ideas over the “correctness” of grammar, and students are taught to understand the appropriateness of one dialect over another based on the situation. When students are able to use both AAVE and SAE in different contexts appropriately, they have become skilled at code-switching.
But for native speakers of English outside of the United States, the idea of code-switching does not apply. Grammar rules, such as sentence construction, can vary. There are also two major spelling styles: British and American. British spelling tends to use “s” where American spelling uses “z.” For example, British English would ask students to “analyse colour” used in a painting, whereas American English would ask students to “analyze color.” Both are correct.
Another feature of Global Englishes that can cause cross-cultural communication difficulties is idiomatic language. Idiomatic language, or idiomatic expressions, use figurative language (as opposed to literal language) to communicate ideas. For native speakers of English, it is often used unconsciously, and the speaker assumes that the words they are using are universally understood. However, idiomatic expressions are culturally-specific, even across speakers of English. Below are some examples of idiomatic expressions and their meanings that can be found on the Oxford International English website:
- “Break the ice” or “Icebreaker”
To start a conversation in order to make people feel more comfortable. The figurative language evokes an ice-covered river with water flowing underneath. In order to access the water needed to survive, a person must break the ice. An “icebreaker” activity is usually the first activity in situations where many people who do not know each other are gathered together in one location. Example: “To break the ice at the workshop, I said hello to the person next to me.” - “Jump on the bandwagon”
To join an activity that has become popular. The figurative language evokes a parade featuring horse-drawn wagons, with one wagon carrying a brass band. In the past, these “bandwagons” were often used by politicians to grab attention. People who “jump on the bandwagon” are not necessarily persuaded by ideas, but instead are drawn in by the excitement of the music and do not want to be left out of something that is popular. Today it is often used in the context of sports fandom. Example: “When the Mariners won the AL West title, many people jumped on the bandwagon to support them in the playoffs.” - “Take with a grain of salt”
To not completely believe something to be true, especially if it is something that is positive that seems difficult to believe. The figurative language evokes the art of cooking and the sense of taste. In cooking, salt is often used to provide contrast to other flavors, especially if those flavors are sweet. Sometimes the expression is used as a disclaimer to prepare the listener to be critical in advance. Example: “Take this with a grain of salt, but the CEO has promised raises for everyone in the company.”
Names, Genders, Pronouns, and the Essay Writing Experience
Names are important cultural and personal identifiers, and there may be many reasons why someone would want to go by a name other than their legal name. For example:
- Preferring to use a nickname or middle instead of their legal first name
- Desiring to use a “Western” or “Americanized” name rather than their legal name from another country
- Wanting a preemptive name change while in the process of legal name change proceedings due to marriage, divorce, or other situations.
- Choosing a name that aligns with their gender identity
At GRC students can use a chosen or preferred name for any reason. You can find out more on the Preferred Names FAQ.
Students come to the writing classroom with a variety of gender identities and experiences. Sometimes, a student may wish to use a different name on their essays than the one they are officially registered under. The student may officially be in transition, or they may be exploring the contours of their gendered experience. Instructors can do a lot to help students navigate this space with as much support, dignity, and safety as possible. One thing we can do is normalize the use of preferred pronouns in spaces like online chat forums and Zoom rooms.
Pronouns are language-specific linguistic markers and have different meanings in different cultures. In English, the singular “they/them” pronoun is gender neutral. It may surprised you to learn that this is not a modern invention—people have been using “they/them” in this way since the middle ages in England! In other languages, such as French and Spanish, new gender-neutral pronouns have been invented by people where there were none before, but they are more widely used among younger people, and there is generational conflict.
What is often not discussed when talking about pronouns is that to assign a gendered pronoun to someone based on how “female” or “male” they look creates pressure to “conform” to specific markers of femininity or masculinity and additional pressure to “perform” gender “correctly” in order to be “correctly” identified by others. In this space, we will be practicing writing using “they/them” when the gender is unknown or unimportant. For example, in situations where in the past you might have said “he/she” or “his or hers” to be more inclusive, I encourage you to practice using “they” and “their.”
Religion, Politics, and the Essay Writing Experience
Students with needs regarding their religious, cultural, and/or political beliefs should contact their instructor directly so they can make reasonable accommodations and provide support where necessary.
- If an assignment is due on, or near, a religious holiday that you and your family celebrate, contact the instructor and let them know. Ask for an extension.
- If a writing prompt or topic is constructed in a way that would force you to engage in a discussion that would put you in conflict with your cultural, religious, and/or familial values, customs, and beliefs, let your instructor know and see if it is possible to develop an alternative assignment that is more in line with your values and beliefs. To be sure, college is about expanding our horizons and learning about the world beyond our own views, experiences, and beliefs. But no student should be forced to publicly violate their own values, beliefs, practices and principles in order to do well in a class.
