"plain english" and the ymca technical writing classroom: re-covering pre-professional...

"PLAIN ENGLISH” AND THE YMCA TECHNICAL WRITING CLASSROOM

RECOVERING PRE-PROFESSIONAL MOMENTS IN SLW

Lance Cummings

SLW Symposium 2014

BEFORE THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF ACADEMIA, COMPOSITION,

SLW, AND TECHNICAL WRITING EXISTED IN AN INTERDEPENDENT

RELATIONSHIP, WHERE THE IDEA OF “PLAIN ENGLISH” DEVELOPED

NEW OR STRONGER CONNOTATIONS THAT EXCLUDED LINGUISTIC

VARIETY.

1. PRE-PROFESSIONAL CONTEXTS

2. BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE YMCA

3. TIMELINE ANALYSIS WITH ARCHIVAL

MATERIAL

4. POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS FOR TW AND

SLW

PRE-PROFESSIONAL HISTORIES

DIVISION OF LABOR

The second-languagecomponent does not appear inthe work of influential historiansof compositionstudies…because ESL writinghas not been considered aspart of composition studiessince it began to move to- wardthe status of a profession duringthe 1960s.

Matsuda, “Composition Studieand ESL…”

TWO CULTURES

English teachers sawengineers as soullesstechnicians, while engineerssaw English teachers asdreaming aesthetes,promoting “refinement andculture” to the exclusion ofreality.

Connors, “The Rise …”

ESL

Composition Technical Writing

INTRODUCTION TO THE YMCA

12th Street YMCA Gym, Wikimedia Commons

–Original Boston Constitution, 1851

“[The YMCA] shall meet the young stranger as he enters our city, take him by the hand, direct him to a boarding house where he may find a quiet home

pervaded with Christian influences…”

TIMELINECOMPOSITION, TECHNICAL WRITING,YMCA

Timeline

1850s

1890s

1900s

• Start of English Department (Kitzhaber)

• First ESL Class at Cincinnati YMCA

• Plain English

• Harvard Reports

• First Required Writing Course

• Development of Industrial Work Dept. and Educational Work Dept.

• Grammar in “Plain English”

• “Take over” of Engineering by technical fields (Connors)

• ESL and Engineering Service Learning in YMCA

• English course of study splits literature and composition

• “Literacy Crisis” in Engineering (Connors)

Timeline

1850s

1890s

1900s

• Plain English

• Start of English Department (Kitzhaber)

• First ESL Class at Cincinnati YMCA

• Harvard Reports

• First Required Writing Course

• Development of Industrial Work Dept. and Educational Work Dept.

• Grammar in “Plain English”

• “Take over” of Engineering by technical fields (Connors)

• “Literacy Crisis” in Engineering (Connors)

• ESL and Engineering Service Learning in YMCA

• English course of study splits literature and composition

Timeline

1850s

1890s

1900s

• Harvard Reports

• First Required Writing Course

• Development of Industrial Work Dept. and Educational Work Dept.

• Grammar in “Plain English”

• “Take over” of Engineering by technical fields (Connors)

• “Literacy Crisis” in Engineering (Connors)

• ESL and Engineering Service Learning in YMCA

• English course of study splits literature and composition

• Plain English

• Start of English Department (Kitzhaber)

• First ESL Class at Cincinnati YMCA

Timeline

1850s

1890s

1900s

• Harvard Reports

• First Required Writing Course

• Development of Industrial Work Dept. and Educational Work Dept.

• Grammar in “Plain English”

• “Take over” of Engineering by technical fields (Connors)

• “Literacy Crisis” in Engineering (Connors)

• ESL and Engineering Service Learning in YMCA

• English course of study splits literature and composition

• Plain English

• Start of English Department (Kitzhaber)

• First ESL Class at Cincinnati YMCA

1910s

• Development of Roberts Method

• Course of Study for “Coming Americans”

• First ESL Class at U of M (Matsuda)

• First Technical Writing textbooks written (Connors)

1920s

• Fred Newton Scott’s “English as a Mode of Behavior”

• YMCA focus on Business English

• Genre approach develops in Technical Writing

–Peter Roberts, English for Coming Americans

“Thousands of foreign-speaking men work indangerous places in the mines and their primeneed is to learn simple words and phrasesdescriptive of their daily vocation.”

1910s

• First ESL Class at U of M (Matsuda)

• Development of Roberts Method

• Course of Study for “Coming Americans”

• First Technical Writing textbooks written (Connors)

1920s

• Fred Newton Scott’s “English as a Mode of Behavior”

• YMCA focus on Business English

• Genre approach develops in Technical Writing

–T.A. Rickard, A Guide to Technical Writing

“The nation debases its language with slang, withhybrid and foreign words, the impure alloys and thecheap imports of its verbal coinage, mere tokensthat should not be legal tender on the intellectualexchanges.”

1910s

• First ESL Class at U of M (Matsuda)

• Development of Roberts Method

• Course of Study for “Coming Americans”

• First Technical Writing textbooks written (Connors)

1920s

• Fred Newton Scott’s “English as a Mode of Behavior”

• YMCA focus on Business English

• Genre approach develops in Technical Writing

IMPLICATIONS

• Understand of TW resistance to World Englishes and

translingualism

• Interdependent understanding of SLW and TW

• SLW can inform TW (and vice versa)

• Understanding “Plain English” in Multiple Contexts

• Augmenting both SLW and TW instruction with

service learning