Revitalising the essay in an English for academic

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structures and appropriate use of academic vocabulary, grammar and ... Conceptualising an L2 essay in critical English for academic purposes (EAP).
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism Vol. 12, No. 3, May 2009, 309324

Revitalising the essay in an English for academic purposes course: critical engagement, multiliteracies and the internet Brian Morgan* Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada This paper describes a content-based English for academic purposes (EAP) course, ‘Language and Public Life’, and its major assignment, a research essay that critiques media coverage of a current event or social issue. The pedagogical context in which this assignment is realised underpins the forms of critical inquiry expected. The selection of course materials integrates a variety of print- and image-based media, complemented by readings that encourage a multiliteracies framework with which to analyse and compare the various informational domains employed. Other important elements of context are the university setting and the formal expectations that arise in any EAP programme. Drawing on the work of Benesch, the course is conceptualised in terms of critical EAP, a dual strategy in which academic language learning and critical inquiry co-develop, towards the added goal of encouraging English as a second language (ESL) students to question the institutional arrangements in which they are positioned. The final section of this paper provides an example of a student essay. One of the key features of this particular essay is the utilisation of the internet, which offered access to diverse voices excluded in the mainstream media. The implications for the course and critical EAP are then developed. Keywords: adult ESL; critical discourse analysis; critical English for academic purposes; critical literacy; internet; multiliteracies

Introduction A colleague of mine at York University, Brenda McComb, once outlined a technique she used to introduce the notion of the essay in her first year, ‘English for Academic Purposes’ (EAP) writing course. Drawing a continuum on the board, on one end, she wrote ‘bombs, guns, violence’. On the other end, she wrote ‘words, negotiation’. Positioned somewhere near the ‘words’ side, the word ‘essay’ was boldly placed. Brenda’s provocative introduction addresses an ongoing challenge that I encounter as an L2 academic writing instructor, and one that underpins the teaching strategies and materials outlined in this paper. Most of my EAP students  not unlike their native-speaking peers, I suspect  regard the essay as an archaic and mysterious entity, a peculiar demand of universities unrelated to real-world practices. In this respect, they view the compositional process as an end in itself, a regrettable but necessary task of reproducing essay-like constructions that conform to conventional rhetorical structures and appropriate use of academic vocabulary, grammar and punctuation. *Email: [email protected] ISSN 1367-0050 print/ISSN 1747-7522 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13670050802153350 http://www.informaworld.com

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Brenda’s point, however, foregrounds additional goals: Essays are not just an end, but also a means  a means of critically engaging with the world, of changing oneself and potentially changing others. Granted, such sentiments have the strong ring of idealism, a nostalgic longing for past eras in which essayists crafted texts that pilloried politicians and inspired needed social reforms. Today, such sentiments seem irresponsibly outdated as educational policies and practices increasingly mould graduates to fit the technocratic and instrumental priorities of a competitive, global economy (see e.g. Block and Cameron 2002; Corson 2002; Gabbard 2000; Spring 1998). While such developments might seem removed from the demands of EAP writing, Atkinson (2003) suggests that market-based principles underpin L2 compositional practices in many tacit ways. Our emphasis upon ‘clear writing’, for example, might be seen ‘as part of a functional system in which efficiency and speed of delivery are central*in which knowledge is defined as a movable, transposable, commercial phenomenon  literacy-as-commodity’ (Atkinson 2003, 52). Expanding on Atkinson’s point, it is also important to see the ‘functional system’ in which L2 writing is embedded as increasingly multimodal, whereby textual meanings are produced not only by way of print media but also through images, sounds, gestures, spatial arrangements and their combination. Most visual and graphic images are iconic (see e.g. Danesi 2000); that is, they are signs that contain an analogous relationship to the objects or concepts to which they refer. Because of this signifying capacity, or affordance, as Kress (2003, 4) puts it, images are perceived as already ‘filled with meaning. There is no vagueness, no emptiness here. That which is meant to be represented is represented. Images are plain full with meaning, whereas words wait to be filled’. We are more likely to activate prior knowledge and generate new meanings if we ‘read’ a photograph, for example, as opposed to when we read a newspaper article in a foreign language with which we are unfamiliar. In terms of functionality, then, visual modes of communication are the most easily commodified and transposable forms of texts available for global consumption. Circulated through mass media, as Appadurai (1996, 35) suggests, visual media such as films, videos, photographs, product logos and advertisements serve to create a global ‘repertoire of images . . . in which the world of commodities and the world of news and politics are profoundly mixed’.1 We live in a particular time, Rutherford (2000) concurs, in which public life is shaped, not so much by the merit of ideas, but by the rhetorical force of images and slogans. In this shift  from a ‘marketplace of ideas’ to a ‘marketplace of signs’  citizens need to negotiate a much broader range of text types  photographs, videos, multimedia and hypertext2  in order to become effective participants in public life. Such realities complicate the conceptualisation of academic essay-writing as posed in this introduction. Specifically, if we hope to persuade EAP students that L2 essays have social relevance beyond conformity to academic standards and assignment of grades, then we should attempt to ground our writing assignments in the realities of students’ textual experiences outside the university. In this sense, we should try to create a compositional environment that facilitates not only a dialogue of ideas but also a dialogue of media  an inclusive, critical literacy in which competing social interests and powerful forms of persuasion are analysed across a broad spectrum of informational domains (see e.g. Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Cummins 2000; Hill and Helmers 2005; Kress 2003; Kress and van Leeuwen 1996; Lotherington 2001,

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2003; Luke 2002; Morgan and Ramanathan 2005; New London Group (NLG) 1996; Quinlisk 2003; Rassool 1999; Warnick 2002). In a later section of this paper, I will outline a content-based EAP course designed to encourage such engagement. In describing the various resources utilised in the course, Language and Public Life, I will also describe how internet resources helped promote the forms of critical inquiry and ideological awareness that frame the course. But first, I will begin by sketching out some of the conceptual underpinnings for a critical EAP approach to academic writing. Conceptualising an L2 essay in critical English for academic purposes (EAP) Advancing a course notion of an L2 essay as a form of critical social practice might strike some as precious time wasted. This view would hold that EAP instruction should be primarily focused on the cognitive processes of writing and close, descriptive analyses of discipline-specific genres and model compositions. In short, EAP should provide bi- or multilingual writers with the competencies needed to conform to the dominant expectations and rules of the academic discourse community. This critique of critical EAP can be addressed on several fronts. First, it assumes that ‘good’ academic writing should imitate universal prototypes in that the forms of logic, textual organisation and critical reasoning employed in ‘good’ essays are shared by all competent writers. Many L2 researchers question this assumption by emphasising writing’s embeddedness in interpersonal, sociocultural, disciplinary and institutional contexts (see e.g. Atkinson 2003; Benesch 2001; Canagarajah 2002; Casanave 2002; Ramanathan 2002). Linguistic and rhetorical elements, for example, are not sole determinants of perceived uniformity in text types in that ‘shared experiences and understandings’ (Casanave 2002, 274) contribute significantly to perceptions of unity in writing. Likewise, textual coherence, a demand frequently made of L2 writers, is ‘in some sense subjective and unmeasurable, building as it does on perceptions and interpretations of wholeness and continuity rather than on identifiable elements’ (Casanave 2002). Academic genres and discourse communities, similarly, are neither uniform nor independent of the activities of participants who are, in effect, co-creators of the knowledge that is acquired. Ramanathan (2002) employs the term thought collectives to describe the shared means by which academic genres and discourse communities come to embody the creative and critical practices that typically occur in seminars and analyses of course texts. In short, academic knowledge and writing skills are not just ‘out there’, reified in curricula. Rather, they are enacted, maintained and cumulatively transformed through situated practices. In Canagarajah’s (2002, 30) words, ‘It is the linguistic activity of the members in debating, revising, and legitimising the ‘‘paradigms’’ that make sense to them that constitute knowledge’. Opposition to critical EAP can be challenged from a second perspective, one that is enriched by the theory and pedagogy of Benesch (1993, 1998, 2001). As Benesch (2001, Ch. 12) details, a focus on decontextualised writing skills reflects a longstanding belief that EAP is essentially a pragmatic and politically neutral activity (Benesch 1993, 2001). Benesch’s own first-hand accounts, however, provide a far more complex and ideological perspective, one in which institutional hierarchies and educational discourses position EAP courses, their teachers and students in ways that work against the professed purposes of instruction. In linked EAP courses she

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has taught, for example, ESL instructors are expected to service the functional language requirements of higher-status academic courses such as psychology or anthropology  a subservient role rejected by Benesch (2001, 39): ‘ESL faculty and students do not have to position themselves as compliant objects in the relationship. They can instead participate as active subjects, influencing the content class rather than passively submitting to its requirements’. Benesch’s critique of the passive and transmission-oriented norms of EAP illuminates what I see to be a persistent ideological bias in second language education  a tendency to trivialise and simplify thematic content in many ESL and EAP settings. Specifically, dominant Applied Linguistic discourses regarding native speaker norms and language standardisation (see e.g. Brutt-Griffler 2002, Ch. 7; Canagarajah 1999) serve, in part, to infantilise EAP students, positioning them in a kind of cognitive limbo, in which they are seen as ‘partially formed’ learners in need of linguistic remediation before they can be taken seriously as either producers of legitimate academic knowledge or as worthy participants in public life (see e.g. Morgan 1998, 2002). Benesch’s own strategies for EAP writing provide sharp contrast. Topic assignments such as anorexia, for instance, are presented in ways that challenge students’ assumptions and encourage critical awareness of the partiality of academic disciplines: framed through psychology’s dominant discourses, anorexia is individualised and pathologised. Through critical EAP research, it is also gendered and socialised, linked to impossible images of feminine beauty that saturate public spaces and contribute to self-perceptions of inadequacy (Benesch 1998). Most important, the critical awareness raised through pedagogy extends beyond this specific topic and assignment. Through analyses of power relations, texts and discourses, Benesch’s critical EAP encourages minority language students to question and not just accept their often-marginalised position within the university and the broader society. Benesch’s critical EAP offers important guidelines towards revitalising L2 essay writing. Following her coverage of anorexia, L2 academic writing can be seen as inseparable from issues of power and identity, a perspective shared by many (e.g. Casanave 2002; Cummins 2001; Ivanicˇ 1998; Kubota 2003; Ramanathan 2002; Starfield 2002). Through the processes of researching, composing and revising an L2 essay, self and collective understandings are (re)imagined and potentially transformed. These same processes foreground a teaching strategy, inspired by the work of Cummins (2001), in which cognitive academic abilities and language awareness in an L2 are co-developed through meaningful social inquiry and not as isolated skills. In support of this strategy, students need to feel that the products of their research  their authorial voices3  have social validity, and that they are not ‘partially formed’ citizens due to their L2 limitations. Towards this end, the prior knowledge and L1 textual experiences of EAP students should be treated as resources and not liabilities for critical inquiry (see e.g. Cummins 2001, Ch. 5). The following section describes a content-based EAP course organised around these principles. Language and Public Life: course description I first started teaching Language and Public Life about seven years ago at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto. Judy Hunter originally developed this 12-week, one-semester course, with assistance over the years from Louis Buchanan, others and myself, who continue to revise and improve the course offerings. Six years ago, I was

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hired at York University in Toronto, and decided to integrate part of the course within the second semester of an existing full-year course called English in Use. Both Language and Public Life and English in Use are second-year, EAP credit courses for non-native English speaking undergraduates. At Ryerson, part-timers can take the course in the evening, out of general interest or to improve their academic skills. The following course description provides an indication of its content: Language is not neutral or objective. It is often framed by cultural and institutional perspectives; language represents, creates, and reflects social perspectives of the world, of reality. Along with the importance of agencies like schools and businesses, the sophisticated technologies of media and communication networks affect and reflect the way we talk and write to each other and the ways we see the world. This course deals with the above academic subject matter in a supportive, language sensitive manner. It asks questions such as: What are the dominant messages in public language; how are they constructed; and how we do take up those messages? In addition to learning about the nature of public language, you will learn strategies for increasing your language fluency, accuracy, and appropriateness. You will have the opportunity to practice a variety of academic tasks including formal and informal presentations, group discussion, essay writing, timed writing, using and documenting outside resources, library and Internet research, and to receive feedback and guidance on your progress. (Hunter and Morgan 2001, 102)

When I taught this course at Ryerson, it had three major assignments: (a) a short essay (i.e. 500700 words) analysing and comparing two advertisements from newspapers, magazines or the internet; (b) an oral group presentation based on an analysis of a public language event (e.g. a lecture, courtroom trial, walking tour of a neighbourhood, investment seminar); and (c) a major research essay (i.e. 12001500 words) on a social issue or recent current event (including small assignments: annotated bibliography; evaluation of a related website; informal presentation). The scope of these assignments attempts to satisfy the criteria for essay-writing and critical EAP stated in the sections above. Essay assignments, for example, are placed within an intertextual environment that reflects a multiliteracies framework (e.g. Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Kress and van Leeuwen 1996; Lotherington 2001, 2003; NLG 1996). Persuasive texts are constructed not only with words, but also images, sounds, spaces and their combination in multimodal formats. A key course idea is to get students to analyse rhetorical forms across text types  to get them to see how images and words interact, or how spaces are organised to enhance the authority of speakers, in some ways parallel to how particular grammatical forms and lexical choices enhance the authority of writers. Following Benesch’s (2001) critical EAP, the course is explicitly grounded in its institutional context and the multivariate language needs of L2 learners. Conventional EAP writing skills (i.e. documentation, paragraph development, grammar, vocabulary, etc.) are featured prominently  but not as discrete skills to be mastered prior to social research. Instead, the syllabus for Language and Public Life is based on a notion of cognitive academic language learning, identity negotiation and critical social inquiry as inter-animating, co-developing processes (Cummins 2001). In bringing about this process of co-development, one major course challenge involves the selection, combination and sequencing of instructional materials. Specifically, students need analytical and descriptive tools  a metalanguage  with which to identify, abstract, interpret and critique meanings across various informational domains. At the same time, and as a reflection of the diverse L1

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literacy experiences in any EAP setting, an instructional metalanguage should be ‘flexible and open ended. It should be seen as a tool kit for working on semiotic activities, not as a formalism to be applied to them’ (NLG 1996, 77). My own experiences in this course corroborate NLG’s instructional recommendation. Some students prefer image-based models and analogies for description; others feel more comfortable with grammatically based analytical categories; and some combine or improvise their critical tool-kits based on the various materials presented in class. Not surprisingly, many EAP students demonstrate critical literacies in their L2 that native-speakers would find hard to duplicate, which underlines, again, the importance of avoiding prescribed forms of awareness and singular analytical techniques and methodologies (e.g. Pennycook 2001, Ch. 4). The following materials comprise the metalinguistic resources for Language and Public Life.

Videos (in order of presentation) (1)

(2)

(3)

Manufacturing consent: Noam Chomsky and the media (Achbar and Wintonick 1992). I use a short section describing Chomsky’s ‘propaganda model’ of mass media as way of introducing the course’s underlying rationale. Still killing us softly (Kilbourne 1987), or Killing us softly 3 (Jhaly 2002). These videos analyse depictions of women in advertising and link these images to particular social consequences (e.g. eating disorders, violence against women and trivialisation of women’s participation in society). Pack of lies: the advertising of tobacco (Kilbourne and Pollay 1992). This video provides analyses of cigarette ads that target adolescents. It is also strong in its analyses of how particular images act on identity formation, invoking desires for status and peer acceptance and linking these desires to ‘cool’ self-images attained through smoking.

With their focus on visual images, their combination with print and the social meanings invoked by this blend, these three videos have been especially useful for the first assignment on analysing two advertisements. Study questions and critical prompts are provided for each video, and used to generate small and large group discussions after viewing. The videos are interspersed with the following course readings, which also influences how the videos are received and utilised.

Key articles (in order of presentation) (1)

(2)

Selection, slanting, and charged language (Birk and Birk 1995). This article provides examples (i.e. for first year EAP students) of how word order, choice of connectives and vocabulary can slant for or against our perceptions of an event or person. With these words I can sell you anything (Lutz 1995). This article is always popular, and Lutz’s categories of ‘weasel words’  hollow, meaningless words that appear substantive but promise nothing (e.g. the qualifier help in

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(4)

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phrases such as ‘helps reduce aging’, ‘helps control dandruff’)  are frequently employed in assignments. Methods of misrepresentation (Parenti 1986). Parenti’s chapter is quite accessible and effective for critical readings of mass media. Analytical concepts such as ‘framing’, ‘greying of reality’ (i.e. the appearance that both sides of a conflict are equally responsible) and ‘unbalanced treatment’ provide strong links between specific text-internal features (e.g. newspaper headlines, photographs, article placements, vocabulary choices) and their intended functions in respect to power relations in liberal, democratic societies, which makes this article a valuable complement to the video excerpt on Chomsky’s propaganda model. A critical approach to the teaching of language (Janks 1991). Janks’ article draws from a Hallidayan, systemic-functional approach to Critical Discourse Analysis. Some students find the article too formal and abstract. Others find it a revelation of sorts, in that seemingly familiar grammatical categories (e.g. passive voice, nominalisations, article system) are reconceptualised in an ideological framework  described in terms of how specific lexicogrammatical choices position readers and frame the reception of content.

As a teacher’s reference, Reading images: the grammar of visual design (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996) is a challenging but insightful book that encourages readers to conceptualise visual structure and functionality in a way analogous to oral and written language  the realisation of modality and transitivity through images, for example  also, from a Hallidayan perspective. Recently, I have started to assign Corbett’s (2003) Chapter 6 on developing visual literacy, which utilises Kress and van Leeuwen’s framework, but in a more accessible way for undergraduate EAP students. In addition, my own personal tool-kit for critical media literacy has been enhanced by Rutherford’s (2000) Endless propaganda, especially Chapter 1’s description of advertising properties (10) and functions (136), as well as Danesi’s (2000) Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics, media and communications and Berger’s (2005) Media analysis techniques. Problems in revitalising an essay: media concentration, censorship and the internet This section takes up one of the major challenges in Language and Public Life and how it has contributed to a greater reliance on internet-based research. Students are required to write a major research essay, between 1200 and 1500 words, including intext quotations and referencing following APA format. In this essay, students are asked to analyse how the media treat a particular topic or current event: How do the media handle your topic (For example, ‘How do the media treat squeegee kids, or homeless people?’). This will be an analysis and critical judgment of your topic as it is treated in the media. What images of your topic do the media present? How are these images constructed and conveyed? What social implications do these images have? (From the assignment handout)

Conducting research for this type of essay is potentially problematic. Given the contemporary nature of the assignment, newspapers and magazines are a prime source of information. However, and depending on the topic selected, perspectives

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from mainstream newspapers and magazines are often the same or only different in superficial ways, a significant constraint on the essayist ideals of critical engagement, or self- and collective transformation as mentioned in this paper’s introduction. In short, it can be hard for students to conduct independent research, or even imagine competing social interests when some of these viewpoints are absent from public view. Moreover, the compositional effect is a source of concern. Students may feel the need to overuse anecdotal material in the absence of objectifying data and external sources, thus reducing the rhetorical force of their ideas and the validity of their texts in respect to particular academic and political genres. Indeed, an argument could be made that doing the type of social issues essay proposed in Language and Public Life is, if anything, becoming more difficult based on the diminished presence of independent thought in the mass media. The growing concentration of media ownership is one contributing factor. In the USA, a recent Federal Communications Commission ruling led to a single company being able to own ‘TV stations that reach 45 percent of U.S. households’ if not 90%, due to a loophole in the way cable subscribers are counted (Roll back the FCC’s rule changes 2003). That increase from 35% portended the further expansion of media giants such as AOL Time Warner, Disney or Fox (see for e.g. McChesney 1997, 1999; Steger 2003, 7682). Increased concentration, on its own, does not necessarily or directly lead towards greater public censorship. But it does create an environment that encourages media convergences  single corporate entities that encompass newspapers, television, movies and news collection agencies. And in order to cover the inflated costs of expansion, media corporations tend to downsize newsrooms and replace content and background information with excessive opinion (e.g. Siddiqui 2002), contributing to a state in which the news becomes, in many aspects, indistinguishable from entertainment  superficial and simplistic, requiring only minimal or passive engagement (e.g. McChesney 1997, 1999; Rutherford 2000). Within such an environment, the pressure on news professionals to affirm or conform to the political views of their employers is amplified in the realisation that job options in other news organisations are scarce. Add to this mix, in the case of the USA, the traumatic attacks of September 11, and the result is an escalated climate of fear and self-censorship in which reporters and editors go about their work. As demonstrated in the media coverage of the Iraq war, exuberant and unquestioning patriotism is the preferred option of many. Doubt and critical analyses, on the other hand, can incur the wrath of sponsors, viewers and shareholders, the resulting loss of market share becoming career threatening as a result (e.g. Zerbesias 2003).4 Canada is not immune to such pressures. Can West Global Communications is the largest media giant in Canada, with holdings that include a national newspaper (The National Post), 27 urban dailies, 120 community papers and a national television network (Global TV). This concentration of ownership has had significant effects on the information Canadians receive. Two years ago, Can West’s owners required all their newspapers to run editorials written in their head office. A number of editors protested in print and were fired (Siddiqui 2002). In another incident, Doug Cuthand, an aboriginal columnist working for 10 years for a Can West paper in Saskatchewan, had a particular column in which he compared the plight of Palestinians to that of Canadian aboriginals censored  this action from head office reflecting what critics see as Can West’s unquestioning support of Israeli policies in its publications (Desbarats 2002; Siddiqui 2002, A13). Such incidents, no doubt,

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linger in the thoughts of employees, conditioning their interpretation of events and the types of language choices they employ in their texts. Let me suggest that such developments are not incidental to how we understand critical or multiliteracies and how we evaluate the persuasiveness of an L2 essay. Powerful forms of language and texts do not exist in a political or semiotic vacuum. Nor should they be viewed as static or insular codes that index timeless social and institutional structures. Rather, their production and reception are always intertextual, bound up with the flow of local, national and global events, as well as shifting political arrangements and modes of economy (see e.g. Luke 2002; Pennycook 2001, Ch. 4; Rassool 1999). Helping our students master the formal properties of prestige genres and text types, while beneficial and pragmatic, does not necessarily guarantee their acceptance as equal participants in public life. As my brief analysis of mass media suggests, powerful social groups have formidable resources with which to shift the terrain upon which our perceptions of rhetorical credibility stand. In response, ‘critical work must always be on the move’ (Pennycook 2001, 100), and adopt strategies and resources that reflect changing conditions. In sum, the mass media can be an inadequate source  or a one-dimensional source  of information for a research essay on social issues. Finding alternatives, then, is an important dimension of the Language and Public Life course. For such purposes, the internet seems to be particularly well suited. Many community and advocacy groups have impressive websites that include hypertext links to other organisations and relevant sites. Some pages are multimodal, as well, often providing visual evidence and oral texts not included in mainstream publications. Another added benefit for critical research and language awareness is the internet’s hypertext environment. Students can easily go back and forth across documents, doing the kinds of textual comparisons and analyses encouraged by the course readings and, in the process, increasing their exposure to a broad range of authentic texts. Biliteracy and bilingualism are correspondingly enhanced. Depending on the issue, many students use the internet format to compare how the media in their native countries and L1 frame the same topic, which I encourage, provided APA style referencing for translations are used. As part of the course, I have compiled and distributed lists of internet-based critical media resources (see Appendix 1). Given the fact that most internet-based information is ‘disintermediated’ (i.e. free of the quality control of editors and peer reviewers; Lotherington, 2001), I also include an assignment adapted from Collins (2001) on how to critically evaluate the quality of research data found on websites. Student essay The following student essay, of which several highlights will be presented, embodies the combined foci of critical social inquiry and media insights as anticipated through the syllabus design of Language and Public Life. The student, Eric Kim (a pseudonym), chose to research Toronto’s official bid for the 2008 Olympic Games. The essay was written in the spring of 2001, a few months before Beijing was awarded the Games. For his essay, Eric used 14 research sources, 13 of which came from the internet. Of the 13, seven were on-line issues of major newspapers, TV programmes and news agencies such as the Canadian Press. Of the remaining six, two stories came from the official Toronto Bid website, two from sports organisations and two from alternative

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media sites, Citizens on the Web and the Tao Organization, which were included in the course list of websites for alternative media (see Appendix 1). Eric incorporated several analytical concepts from course readings. Drawing from Parenti (1986), he explored the function of headlines in framing how a story is initially received. One example he analysed was ‘Games bid ‘‘perfect’’ boosters believe’, which came from the Globe and Mail newspaper (Immen 2001). The quoted source for this headline is the official Chair of the bid committee, who is also directly quoted in the article as saying, ‘We felt that we nailed a perfect 10’ (n.d.). The writer of the Globe article goes on to report that the Chair of the bid committee actually didn’t know if IOC members felt the same way. As Eric indicated in his essay, the objective credibility of these quotes is deeply compromised, given the Chair’s vested interest in a positive framing of events  a conflict of interest absent in the headline. The purpose of the headline  ‘Games Bid perfect’  in Eric’s view was not to report the truth or reality, but rather to make Torontonians feel good about their chances, and encourage them to support the bid. Other feel-good strategies Eric wrote about included the bid committee’s use of famous athletes such as Vince Carter, of the Toronto Raptors, to endorse the Games in the media. Another focal point of Eric’s essay was his analysis of the Toronto Sun newspaper’s attempt to discredit Beijing by printing a full, front-page headline (‘Olympic furor over China’s St. Bernard meat industry’, 22 March 2001) and photo (e.g. several St. Bernard’s in a cage) related to the Chinese practice of eating dog meat. From a related story inside the paper, Eric examined how quotations were employed to connect this practice to the Olympic Games. Eric cited the following quote attributed to someone named Malcolm Lowe: ‘Is this the kind of country you want hosting a world event? No. They’re just not ready for it’ (Honywill and Clement 2001, 10). From this and similar examples, Eric concluded, ‘the media is trying to eliminate Beijing from the competition by attacking their cultural differences’. In examining alternative internet sites, Eric took up issues that had been marginalised in mainstream media sources, all of whom officially supported the bid. Groups such as Bread Not Circuses and the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee5 argued that the city couldn’t afford the games, and that much more pressing problems required attention, especially homelessness in Toronto. In Eric’s classroom presentation, he brought in a chart on the problem, including a list of people who had recently died from exposure to the elements due to lack of shelter. His concluding paragraph, below, is unchanged from the original: As demonstrated above, the media uses many methods to convince people that their opinions are logically correct. Some of the media in Toronto used particular phrases, famous names, and other countries to promote Toronto’s needs for the Olympics. Others who stand against the Olympic used similar methods, including reports from important organisations that are against hosting the Olympics, as well they try to focus on the financial problems it will create and they emphasise the current problems Toronto has, to support their opinions. Both opinions are reasonable and convince readers. However, I, personally think that we should not cater to the desires of Olympic tourists and athletes who will make Toronto their home for a month or less. Torontonians should focus on social problems more than the Olympic Games because the most important thing for Toronto is the people who live in Toronto now and after the Olympic.

In spite of minor grammatical errors, this conclusion  and the paper in general  exemplifies the notion of an EAP essay as a form of critical engagement in which self and others are potentially transformed. Eric’s text shows the strong development of

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an authorial voice, in respect to the writing demands of an academic discourse community, but also a confident, social voice, shaped in part through a research process invigorated by multimedia and hypermedia environments. Identity negotiation was also clearly part of this process. Being Korean, Eric was initially surprised to hear that anyone would be opposed to the games, given the positive associations for Korea’s national self-image that arose from its hosting the Seoul Olympics of 1988. This apparent contradiction motivated a kind of personal dialogue  a desire to become informed not only about the long-term effects for Toronto but also about the urban history of his former home. Unfortunately, there is insufficient space to describe other students’ essays. Eric’s paper was part of an impressive group of compositions on the media, which included topics such as the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, the Israeli Palestinian conflict, privatisation of energy in Ontario, international coverage of racism and the Oscar awards, the trial of an Ontario teacher  a woman  accused of having sex with one of her students, the US rejection of the Kyoto accord, internet dating, coverage of the Arthur Anderson accounting firm and others. Each student  there were 14 in Eric’s group  presented the results of their investigation to the whole class during the last couple weeks of class. Conclusions Literacy is clearly too complex and too socially pervasive to be satisfactorily described as the ability to read and write. Written language imbues everyday life. To function in society, we critically mediate an encoded world. However, the exponentially increasing communication technologies we have at our fingertips increasingly complicate what used to be distinguishable lines drawn between written and spoken language. (Lotherington 2003, 202)

As Lotherington indicates, we live in an encoded world of ever growing complexity, where print technologies co-exist alongside multimodal and digital domains. It might be tempting to suggest that as the line drawn between written and spoken language grows faint, essay-writing, as conventionally addressed in EAP settings, will become obsolete as a format for organising and disseminating knowledge. Such a suggestion, in my view, seems premature and grounded in a worldview based more on technological determinism, and less so on political, economic and institutional power relations. As of yet, law schools, PhD and MBA programmes, and other elite-certifying institutions do not generally employ videos, websites, sculptures and performance pieces in the assessment of their disciplinary knowledge. Until they do, the essay will continue to be a valued commodity in the political economy of education, and one whose rhetorical possibilities will continue as a prime site for revitalisation in EAP. At the same time, if an EAP essay is to realise its potential as a form of critical, social practice, following Benesch (2001) and Cummins (2001), then this potential is enriched when imagined within a broader, multimodal context. Towards this end, pedagogies that integrate a multiliteracies component enhance students’ capacities to participate in either a ‘marketplace of ideas’ or a ‘marketplace of signs’ (Rutherford 2000) when the need arises. In a highly restricted marketplace  where ownership of information systems is concentrated  digital technologies such as the internet are particularly suited for

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critical inquiry, providing access to diverse voices marginalised by mainstream media, as demonstrated in Eric’s essay. This expansion of research capacities correlates with positive increases in L2 academic language abilities, as EAP students utilise the internet’s hypertext environment to read across a broad range of texts or utilise language support software in these domains (e.g. Cummins 1998). Given these tools, researchers such as Kasper (2000) are particularly enthusiastic about the internet’s contribution to the dual purposes of supporting content knowledge and academic language learning in content-based EAP programmes. Kasper’s assessment is one I mostly agree with, though I would offer one important qualification based on the content area assigned to the research essay described above  the media’s coverage of social issues or current events. Simply put, the nature of this content lends itself to internet use, but the use of the internet does not guarantee critical engagement. The internet can be used to drill and kill grammar or trivialise serious issues, as easily as it can be used to explore the potency of texts through a multiliteracies framework. The key point here is that information technologies (ITs) such as multimedia and hypermedia, in and of themselves, are not intrinsically empowering in social and educational settings (e.g. Cummins 2000; Warnick 2002; Warschauer 1999). It is, instead, in the social organisation of pedagogy around information  print or digital  where the possibilities for transformative knowledge are created. The kinds of questions we pose, the types of critical readings we encourage and the collaborative strategies we employ are of much greater consequence than the advanced state of our educational technologies. Language and Public Life is a course that attempts to negotiate these tensions and realities. Its syllabus design reflects the need to both utilise and critique powerful information systems in the service of social inquiry. This duality, at the same time, foregrounds the multimodal and digital world in which academic essays are produced and received. By doing so, it hopes to enhance a critical understanding of texts with relevance both within and beyond the university. Notes 1.

2.

3.

For Appadurai, however, visual and cultural commodities do not circulate in a uniform or unidirectional manner. Though mass media images and products may originate from economically dominant nations, they are given new meanings (i.e. indigenised, hybridised, resignified) at the point of their local reception and subsequently recirculated in ways that transform how they are understood  even in the contexts of their original creation and commodification. Hence, these mediascapes, to use Appadurai’s (1996, 32) term, are a key dimension of a dynamic ‘global cultural economy . . . a complex overlapping disjunctive order that cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing center-periphery models’. Still, given the ‘centre’s’ domination of mass media networks (see e.g. McChesney 1999; Steger 2003), the diversification of global cultural flows, as theorised by Appadurai, may be somewhat exaggerated. At the least, these mediascapes exert a strong, homogenising influence on our perceptions and expectations regarding persuasive forms of language and texts. Hypertexts, as typically found on the internet, combine data in various forms (e.g. moving images, sounds and print) and have instantaneous links to other electronic texts. This facilitates nonlinear forms of reading. As Rassool (1999, 167) suggests, ‘hypertexts and hypermedia in their very constitution demand non-sequential reading and promote nonsequential thinking’. According to Warnick (2002, 1045), this ease of movement across texts can undermine authorial intentions and textual coherence, on the one hand, while making intertextual references and allusions more explicit and immediate, on the other. The concept of voice, itself, is a controversial notion in L2 writing. Emphases on individualism (i.e. expressing one’s ‘true self’) and argumentation, though socially and

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culturally embedded values, are often treated as universal cognitive strategies in many North American academic writing programmes (Matsuda 2001; Ramanathan 2002; Ramanathan and Atkinson 1999). Essentialised ‘voices’ of a different kind are highlighted by Harklau (2003), whose study describes the interactional processes through which students are schooled towards the imitation of particular dominant discourses or representations  an ‘Ellis Island’ representation, as one example, whereby immigrant students come to display an ‘authentic’ writing voice of gratitude amplified through stories of prior hardship and deprivation. Media analyst Antonia Zerbesias (2003) has an insightful anecdote on how dissenting voices are tarred and feathered in the mainstream media. When CNN war correspondent Christiane Amanpour publicly criticised American news coverage of Iraq, Fox Network spokesperson Irena Briganti responded in USA Today by saying, ‘Given the choice, it’s better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for Al Qaeda’ (n.p.). The specific press release that Eric cited from the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee (TDRC) is no longer available at the URL originally referenced in his essay. Current information about the ongoing advocacy and social justice work of TDRC can be found on their website: http://tdrc.net/resources/public/index.html (accessed September 9, 2007). the Bread Not Circuses coalition no longer has a website on the internet. The rationale behind the organisation’s opposition to Toronto’s failed 2008 Olympic bid can be found at the following website (accessed September 9, 2007): http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2001/03/09/ tor_breadnotcircuses030901.html.

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Appendix 1: Course handout Canadian-based websites for research on media and/or social issues (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

Flipside: An alternative daily newspaper: www.Flipside.org Straightgoods: Canadians informing Canadians: www.straightgoods.com Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives: www.policyalternatives.ca Newswatch Canada: http://newswatch.cprost.sfu.ca Council of Canadians: www.canadians.org PAR-L: A Canadian Electronic Feminist Network: www.unb.ca/PAR-L Citizens on the Web: www.interlog.com/ cjazz Adbusters: www.adbusters.org Rabble: The News for the Rest of Us: http://rabble.ca Tao Organization: http://www.tao.ca/

American/international media research sites (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting: www.fair.org Greenpeace Environmental Organization: www.greenpeace.org Pacifica Organization (Democracy Now Radio): www.pacifica.org Institute for Global Communication: www.igc.org Magazine: www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm Guerilla News Network: www.guerrillanews.com Independent Media Center: http://www.indynews.org CorpWatch: http://www.corpwatch.org/ Project Censored: Tracking the news that didn’t make the news: www.projectcensored.org/