Question: How do WAC/WID initiatives and other aspects of American writing programs (FYC, writing centers, honor codes) translate to the hybrid space of transnational writing programs?

Study:

Hodges, A. and Kent, B. (2015). Hybrid Writing Positions within WAC/WID Initiatives: Connecting Faculty Writing Expectations and MENA Cultures. In L. Arnold, A. Nebel, and L. Ronesi (Eds.), Emerging Writing Research from the Middle East-North Africa Region. WAC Clearinghouse International Exchanges on the Study of Writing series, WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press.

Description:

Writing-intensive courses for engineers at Texas A&M University at Qatar provide a unique view into the efficacy of writing-in-the-disciplines (WID) policies and practices in the Middle East. In this chapter, the authors draw upon qualitative data from faculty interviews to examine their perceptions surrounding the teaching and learning of writing. The authors argue that hybrid writing consultants—staff positions with the combined roles of tutor, teacher, and writing fellow—are a locally relevant way to help mediate between engineering faculty members’ expectations and multilingual students’ development as writers.

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Study:

Hodges, A. and Rudd, M. (2014). Isn’t Everyone a Plagiarist?: Teaching Plagiarism IS Teaching Culture. In L. Seawright (Ed.), Going Global: Transnational Perspectives on Globalization, Language, and Education, (192-217). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Excerpt:

“But isn’t everyone a plagiarist?” asks a student, suddenly alert in the back row of my first year composition course (FYC). He has done the reading, I can tell, but the text has left him more confused about the concept of plagiarism than the institutionally sanctioned paragraph in the syllabus might indicate. Via class discussion and written reflections, the goal of today’s lesson for my FYC students is to begin the complex task of untangling the meaning of the term intertextuality as they connect it to their previous understandings of plagiarism in the academy. And the Bakhtinian quote they found on the board as they walked into class that day probably confused them even more:“Our mouths are full of other people’s tongues.” This essay considers the negotiations of culture and authority between an American female teacher (Mysti) and a Southeast Asian male student (Sangga) against the backdrop of scholarly conversations on plagiarism. It describes what we, as American composition teachers and researchers, thought we knew about applying disciplinary best practices to teach writing to English language learners (ELL) in an FYC course. More significantly, this essay explores the new understandings that we, as coresearchers of a case study of a repeat plagiarist, came to have about the primacy of culture in both the teaching and learning of the practice of plagiarism in the academy.