Abstract:

In 2022, San José State University was ranked ninth on Best College Review’s list of the 50 most ethnically diverse colleges in America. Many of its students are not only first-generation but also multilingual, and the university also hosts a myriad of international students. The former President of San José State University, Mohammad H. Qayoumi, maintained that the campus’ diversity “is a vital asset that enriches our students’ learning experience.” This sentiment has carried over into the university’s first-year writing (FYW) program, which has recently amended its curriculum, in part, to better serve its diverse population of multilingual learners. Now, students who are admitted to the university, regardless of their SAT/ACT or TOEFL scores, are concomitantly able to enroll in their choice of FYW courses. This means that the university no longer requires English remediation for students who might have tested below proficiency in the above-mentioned standardized tests. This demonstrates a shift from what Ann E. Berthoff once called a “pedagogy of exhortation” toward what we can now call a pedagogy of assent. The question we, as FYW instructors, must ask ourselves is: how do we engender progress toward English proficiency in courses with students at different stages of linguistic performance? This paper will make the case for contract grading as a way to realize Peter Elbow’s vision to “honor and help preserve multiple dialects of English and to legitimize their use in writing.” It will highlight how one contract was designed and administered for a FYW course at San José State University and the extent to which the scaffolded class curriculum drew from students’ own linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge to eradicate the “ideological monolingualism” once associated with FYW. It will also show how FYW instructors can replace traditional systems of grading with grading contracts to emphasize the importance of process over product in multilingual classrooms and to support the development (and achievements) of each of their students.

Keywords:

Multilingualism, First-Year Writing, pedagogy, grading contracts.