User:Prideandpicklejuice/Identity and language learning

Identity and Writing
When it comes to writing, students often become more focused in following a rubric and that is when they lose their sense of self and identity in their writing. In college essays students are asked to write about themselves while still following a specific rubric. Colleges still expect their students to provide proper grammar, tone, punctuation, syntax, etc, but there is no way of sensing a students individuality through that making it counterproductive (Davilia 163). This tends to be perpetuated in writing classes and where their rubrics mostly consist of what is known as “white talk”(Davila 158). While some students have grown speaking and even writing this, there are many students who don’t. Many students that don’t associate with this and are then being held to a standard they don’t understand. According to Bethany Davila “[English] then, is a standard language variety that is associated with and defined by white people and that affords unearned racial privilege all while seeming like commonsense or a social norm”(Davila 155). Students that come from differing backgrounds are put at a disadvantage and struggle to write or even connect with the material being presented to them.

This type of change begins in the classroom. Students learn best from each other, which is why classroom discourse allows students to question their own identities and beliefs. In the text, Exploring Values in a Changing Society: A Writing Assignment for Freshman English by Martha K. Smith mentions how, when students utilize “their own life experiences, they seem able to find the voices to engage in critical self-analysis”(Smith 3). This is why teachers have been able to create new assignments that allow students to self-reflect on their values, religious beliefs, cultural beliefs and more (Smith2). When students find their voices they are able to better critically analyze their own experiences (Smith 3). By doing this, students are able to exercise different parts of their writing identities and are learning different skills that will help them outside of the classroom as well.

In the text, Re-examining Constructions of Basic Writers’ Identities: Graduate Teaching, New Developments in the Contextual Model, and the Future of the Discipline by Laura Gray-Rosendale Barbara Bird states how there are three different types of identities that students must develop, “1) autobiographical writer identity: generating personally meaningful, unique ideas, 2) discoursal identity: making clear claims and connecting evidence to claims, and 3) authorial writer identity: performing intellectual work, specifically through elaboration and critical thinking” (71)(Gray-Rosendale 93). By learning to engage these identities, students are able to still practice academic writing, while still preserving their sense of self and search for how their identities impact their writing.