"Are We English Teachers? Or Are We Engineering Teachers?" Perspectives on Multilingual Students' Writing Across the Disciplines in Community College

• In Event: Writing and Disciplinarity

Abstract

In this paper, we report how instructors and students viewed the writing demands of college-level, credit-bearing coursework in Allied Health and Engineering programs at two California community colleges. We found that while faculty tended to discuss students’ language and literacy challenges in general terms, students often framed those challenges as disciplinary. We argue that disciplinary instructors--many of whom grapple with their own responsibility for teaching writing--would benefit from shifting their framing of the language and literacy demands of their courses to be sensitive to the demands of the discipline itself.

Authors

• Nora W Lang, San Jose State University

• Kylie Alisa Kenner, University of California - Santa Cruz

• George C. Bunch, University of California - Santa Cruz