Composition: History & Theory: 1990 - 1999
Paul Kei Matsuda’s “Composition Studies and ESL Writing: A Disciplinary Division of Labor”
Description
Paul Kei Matsuda’s “Composition Studies and ESL Writing: A Disciplinary Division of Labor,” was first published in the June 1999 Issue of CCC. His purpose in writing this critique of how ESL student writers needs are underrepresented in composition studies, is to call for not a merging of the two fields, but rather stronger interdisciplinary cooperation between TESL and English Department writing programs, which pay special attention to the needs of ESL students. Matsuda offers a historical narrative of how the interdisciplinary divide between composition studies and TESL occurred during the 1940’s to 1960’s. Highlighted events included the professionalization of ESL studies with the foundation of the English Learning Institute (ELI) at the University of Michigan in 1941, and the establishment of the first scholarly publications centered on ESL studies such as Language Learning: A Quarterly Journal of Applied Linguistics in 1948 and TESOL Quarterly in 1966. Matsuda notes that as ESL grew as a profession some believed that a division of labor was necessary because ESL student’s required teachers with special training in order to serve their particular needs (784). Despite this argument attempts were made during the 1960’s to present ESL disciplinary concerns at CCCC’s, though they were met with little interest and in 1966 ESL chairperson Robert Kaplan, “made a decision that would in effect, remove ESL elements from composition studies entirely,” (787). Matsuda argues that because ESL students are often required to take mainstream freshman composition courses as well as professional writing in addition to their ESL writing courses, that interdisciplinary cooperation between composition and TESL is necessary for ESL student’s success, which includes writing programs who employ, or train writing instructor who are prepared to address the needs of ESL student writers.
Date of Upload
11/3/09