Academic Discourse Difficulties in Working Class Students
In an academic setting, students are required to write in a way that their professors will perceive as “scholarly.” In many cases, this includes analytical, complex, abstract and distanced arguments and statements. Students are expected, for the most part, to remove the self and emotion from any piece of writing that they submit. Colleges traditionally being the realm of the wealthy or middle class, meaning that academic discourse most closely resembles the language used in an upper-middle or upper class home. This puts students from such backgrounds at a distinct advantage. These students may find it necessary to receive help in order to acclimate to the conventions of academic discourse, which will in turn bring them to their institution’s writing center. Kean University’s writing center will see many students with these kinds of issues due to the percentage of students from working-class backgrounds.
According to James Gee, working class students have a disadvantage in the way that they use language to relate to the world. Those students from working-class backgrounds value the use of concrete, action-based, narrative-style language, and also base arguments on personal experience and feelings more often than factual evidence (Gee 412-419). This does not mean that they are less literate or cognitively capable then those from upper or middle class backgrounds, it simply means that they must train themselves to respond in a way that would be received favorably by an instructor if they intend to succeed.
According to the Kean University Office of Institutional Research, 1,241 out of the 12,072 undergraduate students enrolled at Kean as of Fall 2009 were enrolled via the Educational Opportunities Fund program, a program designed to give students from the most disadvantaged areas extra assistance to compete with their wealthier peers (Kean University Office of Institutional Research). These students all have household incomes below the poverty level; however, there are more students at Kean who are not eligible for the E.O.F. program who receive financial aid. Additionally, 3,363 undergraduate students received a federal PELL grant in 2009(Kean University Office of Institutional Research), which is meant to assist students from less advantaged homes pay for college. While there is certainly some overlap in the amount of students in the E.O.F. program and the amount of students receiving PELL grants, even the most conservative combination of these numbers shows that 2,122 students receive these forms of assistances. This constitutes 17 percent of the undergraduate population of the university who are considered to be below the national poverty line.
The students who come into Kean University from lower-income backgrounds may not even realize the difference in how they use language. In working as a writing coach, I have seen many students who come in with difficulties constructing distance arguments in their assignments. One problem that I’ve seen as a coach in the Kean University Writing Center is the inability some students have to identify when they should take themselves out of a statement of opinion. Some believe that that constitutes an error in their writing to not identify their own opinions with statements of emotional connection such as “I believe” or “I feel”. In academic discourse, the exact opposite is often true. This can be explained as a difference between the conventions of academic writing and the language they are accustomed to using. According to James Gee, students from upper class backgrounds have more practice distancing themselves from arguments, as shown from the interviews he conducted with thirteen-year-olds from both upper and working class backgrounds. Gee found that the teens from upper class homes already showed the capability to create distanced arguments even when they were speaking from their own emotionally based opinions (Gee 417).
Additionally, as compared to their upper class peers, the teens from working class homes spoke more directly actions or states of being and also are more oriented towards narrative language (Gee 416). This can cause issues in a university writing center because the students who come from working class backgrounds may have difficulty integrating the more abstract concepts of many college courses with their actions, or understanding them based on their more action and narrative based language usage. Recently, I worked with a student in the Writing Center who had this exact issue, rather than focusing on the main points of an experience in her paper, she told a narrative about her actions and the actions of others in the situation. Her problem was directly connected to her inexperience with styles of writing not directly related to action.
Many of the issues that come into the Kean University Writing center can be directly tied to the identities of the students attending the university. Some of these issues come from the students’ socioeconomic background. The students who come from working class families have a distinct disadvantage compared to the students from upper middle or upper class families due to the differences in the way that language is used in the homes of working class students. These issues stem from the more narrative based, emotionally oriented styles common among students from a working class background, as observed by James Gee. This distinction is especially important to the Kean University Writing Center, because there is high number of students that come from a working class background. Coaches who work at the Kean Writing Center should be aware of these differences in order to more effectively help students use the conventions of academic discourse.
