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.
Recommended Citation
Smith, Amrutha, "An Invitation to Language: Fostering Critical Language Awareness Through Assignment Design" (2025). All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present. 84.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/gradreports2023/84
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