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Literature Review: Voice, Identity, and Assignment Design
How I Proceed with the Assignment
My Observation & The Success Story
Reading the identity narrative papers of my students is a real reward I experience when I check their scripts. I do not look for spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. All I search for is their stories because the stories are unique to each student. The constellation of the story is what helps me know my students better and help them better in their writing process.
When my students meet me briefly after their first draft, I encourage them to talk about their identities more. Sometimes, when students speak, they say something which they have not addressed in the written responses because they write for their classmates and instructor under the impression of being judged. In the conference, I provide a non-judgemental conversational environment for them by encouraging them to speak as much as they feel comfortable with. It is important to hear students out. However, it is also crucial to deal with their personal stories in a delicate manner. I always believe that care and respect are earned. When I respect students’ personal space and sense of boundary, they feel cared for and more comfortable with me. As a result, it happened to several of them that the conversation made them think of adding more details to their draft. In such cases, students revise their draft and resubmit it after the conversation. I do not treat students’ drafts as a final product. This gives my students more confidence in writing in their own unique and comfortable voices.
I have noticed that students have a diverse range of experiences in their lives. They come from different sociocultural and economic backgrounds. Deep inside, they want to tell their own stories and write about something that matters to them. They do not want to conform to the White language supremacy. The Conference of College Composition and Communication (CCCC) position statement on White Language Supremacy writes, “WLS assists white supremacy by using language to control reality and resources by defining and evaluating people, places, things, reading, writing, rhetoric, pedagogies, and processes in multiple ways that damage our students and our democracy.” My goal was to create a more inclusive learning environment for my students so that their personal and linguistic identities are safeguarded.
When students write narrative or reflective essays, they write more comfortably, and thus, use more colloquial expressions. “This Ain’t Another Statement, This is a Demand for Black Linguistic Justice” encourages teachers to “stop using academic language and standard English as the accepted communicative norm.” Keeping the demand in mind, when I encourage my students to write in their own way, meaning in their own voice, they write with more interest. I tell them that the number of heads does not matter to me, but the number of voices does! So far, my students remain interested in participating and interacting with the class because they know they are part of the discourse community.
The mini-interview session helps me know about how my students want to proceed with the voice they have developed in one assignment. They show interest in writing other assignments with the same level of comfort and ease. This reflection helps me to move forward and introduce the concept of genre awareness.