Teaching Teachers about Teaching Writing to Students from Varied Linguistic Social and Cultural Groups

Almost all teachers of English composition know, or at least have a strong belief that they know what the major learning responsibility of the linguistically and culturally different student should be, if that student expects to succeed in the basic writing course of a college. This general conviction among college English teachers about what should be the student’s responsibility for learning standard English is articulated in the heated arguments about “upholding college-level standards” for the writing of compositions—arguments especially prevalent among teachers having what I would call a more traditional or “conservative,” perspective on such a student’s problems with the standard written English.