"An Invitation to Language: Fostering Critical Language Awareness Throu" by Amrutha Smith

Date of Award

5-2025

Degree Type

Report

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

English

Committee Chair(s)

Jessica Rivera-Mueller (Committee Chair)

Committee

Jessica Rivera-Mueller

Committee

Xiao Tan

Committee

Sonia Manuel-Dupont

Abstract

First-year composition (FYC) instructors are often required to teach institution-issued course outcomes alongside their personal values. The author proposes a pedagogy to identify how teachers can invite rhetorical and linguistic agency in student writers and teach toward institutional objectives. To do so, the author shares her approach for revising existing and creating new FYC assignments that invite students to use their multiple codes and languagings (ways of communicating) in their writing. The assignments are driven by translanguaging approaches in writing instruction, specifically code-meshing and Critical Language Awareness (CLA), a theoretical framework coined by Shapiro, and integrate three settings in which languaging occurs naturally: family, music, and social media. The author revised or created an assignment that involves those settings to invite students to use their multiple languages and explains her pedagogical reasons for making those changes. The author argues for the importance of finding actionable ways to teach languaging through a rhetorical lens and extends an invitation to teachers of writers to use their agency to create a safe space for diverse student writers.

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