To me, the implications for issues of translingual writing become most apparent when we consider the four levels (national, state, institutional/programmatic, and teacher) Tardy discusses in her article. As I am particularly interested in writing program and writing center administration, I take as foundational premise the understanding that writing is a negotiated, dynamic, complex, situated, culturally and historically conditioned activity. However, that notion, anchored in strong evidence from contemporary writing studies and activity theory research, often gets effaced at each of Tardy's aforementioned levels for a variety of reasons, including budget, student need, and perception of writing pedagogy. This effacement results in a fundamental disconnect between writing center and writing studies pedagogy—and such a disconnect ultimately does a disservice to students, as it reinforces a range of current-traditional writing ideologies.Yet as this week's readings demonstrate, this disconnect also enforces a range of hegemonic and exclusive language ideologies.
A potential response to these detrimental ideologies comes from a translingual approach to writing instructions, which I would argue is akin to a genre studies/CHAT based pedagogy as it "recognize[s] that
we are all language learners . . . that learning language is necessarily continuous precisely because language is subject to variation and change . . . that language learners are also language users and creators . . . [and that] mastery must be redefined to include the ability of users to revise the language that they must also continuously be learning—to work with and on, not just within, what seem its conventions and confines" (Horner et. al. 308). These core recognitions mirror a CHAT pedagogy's interest in helping writers understand that we are all writing researchers negotiating the same concerns listed above.
One important resource for disseminating an reinforcing these complex and contingent notions of language and writing across the university community lies in the space of the writing center. The CCCC second language writing statement makes particular mention of writing centers, noting:
"Writing centers offer crucial resources to second language students. These students often visit the writing center seeking support in understanding writing assignments, developing a piece of writing, and to gauge reader response to their writing. They may also seek input on interpreting teacher feedback or assessment and learning more about nuances of the English language. Therefore, it is imperative that writing centers model and discuss effective approaches for working with second language writers in tutor training, make available reference materials specific to language learners such as dictionaries on idiomatic English, and hire tutors with specialized knowledge in second language writing. Writing centers that hire multilingual tutors will have someone who can provide second language writing students with first-hand writing strategies as well as empathy." (CCCC Statement)
The above offers good starting point, but I believe that in order to counter long-held monolingual ideologies, it is important for the writing center to do more than just hire multilingual tutors and make available second language writing resources. Rather, the writing center must shift its own pedagogy toward helping students develop an understanding of how their linguistic and writing knowledges have built up over time and what tools (artifacts, relationships, knowledge bases) of learning they may already have or need to develop in order to work within the fluent, dynamic contexts of communication. In short, then, the writing center must serve as an anchor space, from which students can become comfortable developing language and writing habits/ways of thinking critically that facilitate their "investigat[ion of] . . . differences in all features of written language, including syntax, punctuation, formatting, media, organization, and genre, [and the ability to address] these in terms of their interrelations" ( Horner et. al. 312).
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