Eighteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Currently, there is a greater disparity in the way students speak and write, and the differences seem to affect a larger proportion of college students than in the past because of changing demographics and the media’s domination of all facets of modern life. This disparity is most reflected in ethnically and culturally diverse students who are most affected by these changing demographics in elementary and high schools where dialect and vernacular language are incorporated into their classrooms. Many students today find themselves in a position where they might be speakers of a non-standard variety of English that reflects conventions placed on them by the functional demands of oral communication. Writing may not have played an important role in their lives, so they are unfamiliar with the rhetorical structure and explicit matters of formal writing. The diversity of student vernacular often leads to the students’ inability to meet the demands of college writing instructors. Rather, they frequently withdraw from classroom literary encounters because of their inability to understand the relationship of literature with their own lives, and their perceived inability to express these connections in accordance with teacher expectations. The purpose of this study is to examine the developmental patterns of the language of ethnically and culturally diverse college students who are grappling with the demands of expository texts in literature. Information was gathered regarding the interaction between orality and written texts, and some of the contexts in which students communicate orally and in writing in the college classroom.