English 495: Tuesday, March 22

"An enormous disparity might exist between their disciplinary knowledge and sophistication and their ability to write in English," the authors write of international graduate students (Leki 38). Braine's article connects to this point, as well. Of a friends who was an international graduate student with him, he writes: "One who had taught English for years in his country was traumatized with embarrassment when he was told that his English proficiency was low..." (60). This friend, this person holding status in his own country, was then forced to enroll in ESL classes.

I cannot even imagine how hard it must be for graduate students from other coutntries here. I have been surrounded by English all of my life, have used the language as part of a full-time job even, but I often struggle through writing still, hitting those blocks at times and coming to a complete stop. Doing the same work that I am doing, but doing it in one's second language, is just amazing to me. Still, this process of succeeding in graduate school is not just about the writing, and Braine emphasizes this point in his article. As the study by Schneider and Fujishima suggests, one needs a grasp of social graces, social realties, and integrative motivation to succeed, as well--another reason why social interactions seem so important for any aspect of language learning/succeeding. Without that social support system here, that vacuum of simply writing and doing all of that other graduate student work would be become horribly overwhelming I suppose.

This concept of "vacuum" also brings me to Canagarajah's article. In this, the author emphasizes that writing itself essentially cannot be written in a vaccuum; within the decontextualized approach, the influenc of social condition and cultural diversity are lost. I believe that writing is an incredibly social event. Take, for example, today's typical high school students in the United States. Asking them to write a summary of a story or something of that sort with no context or no purpose for them will illicit numerous groans; they simply do not want to write. However, they will spend hours each night writing to their friends on facebook or text messaging them because this writing is entirely social and meaningful to them; they are willing to write, but it has to be on their own terms. The task of teachers is to make those writing assignments in regards to content-area learning meaningful to students, as well, to give that writing context and a purpose