When My Professor Tells Me to Write Poetry in My Second Language

Scholars have described that teaching second language (L2) writing focuses on academic and business genres (Dai, 2010, 2011) and on grammar accuracy and sentence structure (Badger & White, 2000; Bilton & Sivasubramaniam, 2009; Iida, 2008). As Schultz (2001) described, “[L2] students are rarely afforded the opportunity simply to write from their imaginations, practicing their language skills in formats that they define for themselves” (p. 94). In other words, L2 multilingual students are deprived of their own rights to write for themselves in language classrooms. This concept of being limited to conventional practices dehumanizes L2 multilingual students in language classrooms. However, studies still have shown that L2 students aim to become “native-like” when learning English (Fernsten, 2008; Kramsch, 2003; McKay, 2009). Therefore, by being inclined to achieve native-like competence and learn “Standard” English, L2 multilingual students fail to gain ownership to English (Pennycook, 1996), are unable to express their voices (Iida, 2008, 2010; Matsuda, 2001), and are deprived of the opportunity to compose for themselves (Dai, 2010, 2011; Schultz, 2001).