Muchiri,
Mary, et al. “Importing Composition: Teaching and Researching Academic Writing
Beyond North America.” On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998.
Ed. Lisa Ede. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1999. 352-371.
Big Idea
Four university composition instructors
collaborated on this article, "Importing Composition," to address the
global reach of research and prevalent assumptions disseminating from the capital centers of knowledge in the field. Composition research often suffers a narrowed utility when it makes its way into the variously removed, distant contexts. Muchiri’s group sets composition in the US against trends in English Language Teaching (ELT) abroad, where writing pedagogies are (almost always) combined with communication studies, where content reigns superior to personal narrative, where examinations hold greater assessment value than coursework, and where limited institutional resources make one-on-one mentoring and extensive essay-marking impractical. The project seeks to stir further conversations on these matters. Other key issues are the political and institutional pressures proliferating a "dullness of correction and compliance"–the idea that students might not be willing to take risks because they fear failure or rebuke; Kenyan and Nigerian students often align into note-sharing groups whose solidarity is often seen as a form of resistance to the teacher’s authority; the field’s research map as a geography marked by "distant and powerful research centers"; and composition research’s assumption that students have multiple chances and plenty of time to move toward proficiencies.
Terms of Export
L1 – primary language; L1 studies are language studies in one’s primary,
native language
English for Academic Purposes (EAP),
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) – academic categories commonly
used to name departments responsible for teaching practical communications in
English aimed at mobilizing students’ progression toward advanced study
dependent on basic English literacy and "immediate needs."
English Language Teaching (ELT) – Unlike L1, ELT sets out to work with
students who come at English as a second, third or fourth language
mwakenya (Kiswahili, pro-democracy movement),
Nondo (Kiswahili, crowbar),
Kombora (Kiswahili, missile),
Ecowas (Economic Community of West African States)–vernacular terms shared
among students to name their systems of group resistance to institutional
forces. Such resistance takes the form of note-sharing and
collaboration–collaboration that might be characterized as cheating in a
rigidly individualistic assessment system