SRTOL

I have a lot of reservations about implementing Students' Right to Their Own Language. I understand the basis of making a student feel included academically but many of us lack an integral part of rejecting norms and going all outside of the realm of "tradition." If we are to create a safe, welcoming environment for our students in FYC, then I think that, of course, we should allow them their own language but one's own language, can be used in a scholarly way. How do we get them to the scholarly way? I believe this to be the main problem we all face when implementing Students' Right to Their Own Language. From the beginning of the class, the student may be lacking confidence, direction, and/or motivation, and allowing them their linguistic freedom may promote their involvement, but at some point, we as educators must be able to teach them when they should shift their language to that of SWE and EAE.  It would be a harsh disservice to those "customers" if we left them lacking in skills that will follow them to every single class, and their eventual professions.

I propose that we embrace SRTOL but do so in such a way, the knowledge of SWE is still transferred and used further down the line while maintaining the writer's own self. Redd, in her article, writes, "I encourage students to write about issues of concern to the African-American community so that they can confront and critique the dominant culture and rewrite the story of their own" (149). Writing is an ever-changing discipline because of the changing society of today and students should be able to express themselves in a manner that will make both student and professor happy.

"We should begin our work in composition with them by making the fell confident that their writing, in whatever dialect, makes sense and is important to us, that we read it and are interested in the ideas and person that the writing reveals. Then students will be in a much stronger position to consider the rhetorical choices that lead to statements written in EAE" (CCCC).

If we give them the confidence, the knowledge, and the tools to implement the knowledge students can easily adapt and realize when a certain situation calls for their own language, or EAE.

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Groups/CCCC/NewSRTOL.pdf

Redd, Teresa. "'Talkin bout Fire Don't Boil the Pot': Putting Theory into Practice in a First-Year Writing Course at an HBCU." First-Year Composition From Theory to Practice. Eds., Deborah Coxwell-Teague, Ronald F. Lunsford. Anderson: Parlor Press, 2014. 146-183. Print.