Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
"PLAIN ENGLISH” AND THE YMCA TECHNICAL WRITING CLASSROOM
RECOVERING PRE-PROFESSIONAL MOMENTS IN SLW
Lance Cummings
SLW Symposium 2014
BEFORE THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF ACADEMIA, COMPOSITION,
SLW, AND TECHNICAL WRITING EXISTED IN AN INTERDEPENDENT
RELATIONSHIP, WHERE THE IDEA OF “PLAIN ENGLISH” DEVELOPED
NEW OR STRONGER CONNOTATIONS THAT EXCLUDED LINGUISTIC
VARIETY.
1. PRE-PROFESSIONAL CONTEXTS
2. BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE YMCA
3. TIMELINE ANALYSIS WITH ARCHIVAL
MATERIAL
4. POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS FOR TW AND
SLW
PRE-PROFESSIONAL HISTORIES
DIVISION OF LABOR
The second-languagecomponent does not appear inthe work of influential historiansof compositionstudies…because ESL writinghas not been considered aspart of composition studiessince it began to move to- wardthe status of a profession duringthe 1960s.
Matsuda, “Composition Studieand ESL…”
TWO CULTURES
English teachers sawengineers as soullesstechnicians, while engineerssaw English teachers asdreaming aesthetes,promoting “refinement andculture” to the exclusion ofreality.
Connors, “The Rise …”
ESL
Composition Technical Writing
INTRODUCTION TO THE YMCA
12th Street YMCA Gym, Wikimedia Commons
–Original Boston Constitution, 1851
“[The YMCA] shall meet the young stranger as he enters our city, take him by the hand, direct him to a boarding house where he may find a quiet home
pervaded with Christian influences…”
TIMELINECOMPOSITION, TECHNICAL WRITING,YMCA
Timeline
1850s
1890s
1900s
• Start of English Department (Kitzhaber)
• First ESL Class at Cincinnati YMCA
• Plain English
• Harvard Reports
• First Required Writing Course
• Development of Industrial Work Dept. and Educational Work Dept.
• Grammar in “Plain English”
• “Take over” of Engineering by technical fields (Connors)
• ESL and Engineering Service Learning in YMCA
• English course of study splits literature and composition
• “Literacy Crisis” in Engineering (Connors)
Timeline
1850s
1890s
1900s
• Plain English
• Start of English Department (Kitzhaber)
• First ESL Class at Cincinnati YMCA
• Harvard Reports
• First Required Writing Course
• Development of Industrial Work Dept. and Educational Work Dept.
• Grammar in “Plain English”
• “Take over” of Engineering by technical fields (Connors)
• “Literacy Crisis” in Engineering (Connors)
• ESL and Engineering Service Learning in YMCA
• English course of study splits literature and composition
Timeline
1850s
1890s
1900s
• Harvard Reports
• First Required Writing Course
• Development of Industrial Work Dept. and Educational Work Dept.
• Grammar in “Plain English”
• “Take over” of Engineering by technical fields (Connors)
• “Literacy Crisis” in Engineering (Connors)
• ESL and Engineering Service Learning in YMCA
• English course of study splits literature and composition
• Plain English
• Start of English Department (Kitzhaber)
• First ESL Class at Cincinnati YMCA
Timeline
1850s
1890s
1900s
• Harvard Reports
• First Required Writing Course
• Development of Industrial Work Dept. and Educational Work Dept.
• Grammar in “Plain English”
• “Take over” of Engineering by technical fields (Connors)
• “Literacy Crisis” in Engineering (Connors)
• ESL and Engineering Service Learning in YMCA
• English course of study splits literature and composition
• Plain English
• Start of English Department (Kitzhaber)
• First ESL Class at Cincinnati YMCA
1910s
• Development of Roberts Method
• Course of Study for “Coming Americans”
• First ESL Class at U of M (Matsuda)
• First Technical Writing textbooks written (Connors)
1920s
• Fred Newton Scott’s “English as a Mode of Behavior”
• YMCA focus on Business English
• Genre approach develops in Technical Writing
–Peter Roberts, English for Coming Americans
“Thousands of foreign-speaking men work indangerous places in the mines and their primeneed is to learn simple words and phrasesdescriptive of their daily vocation.”
1910s
• First ESL Class at U of M (Matsuda)
• Development of Roberts Method
• Course of Study for “Coming Americans”
• First Technical Writing textbooks written (Connors)
1920s
• Fred Newton Scott’s “English as a Mode of Behavior”
• YMCA focus on Business English
• Genre approach develops in Technical Writing
–T.A. Rickard, A Guide to Technical Writing
“The nation debases its language with slang, withhybrid and foreign words, the impure alloys and thecheap imports of its verbal coinage, mere tokensthat should not be legal tender on the intellectualexchanges.”
1910s
• First ESL Class at U of M (Matsuda)
• Development of Roberts Method
• Course of Study for “Coming Americans”
• First Technical Writing textbooks written (Connors)
1920s
• Fred Newton Scott’s “English as a Mode of Behavior”
• YMCA focus on Business English
• Genre approach develops in Technical Writing
IMPLICATIONS
• Understand of TW resistance to World Englishes and
translingualism
• Interdependent understanding of SLW and TW
• SLW can inform TW (and vice versa)
• Understanding “Plain English” in Multiple Contexts
• Augmenting both SLW and TW instruction with
service learning
