Lashallah's summary of Peter Elbow's "Inviting the Mother Tongue"

Lashallah Osborne
Adult Language and Literacy – Professor Barbara Gleason
April 20, 2010

Summary – Inviting the Mother Tongue
Peter Elbow


In Peter Elbow’s, “Inviting the Mother Tongue” a chapter of his publication “Everyone Can Write” he proposes ways to make the basic writing classroom a more comfortable and safe environment where students can worry less about their language being “wrong or incorrect.” He introduces ways to promote writing safety in the classroom by allowing students to write in their native dialect while guiding them towards writing in Standard Written English (SWE). While Elbow’s teaching strategy is well intentioned and pragmatic, it still has been challenged by other educators who strongly believe that culture is closely linked to language, thinking and identity and inviting the “mother tongue” into writing will offer students very little access to Standard Written English. Nonetheless, Elbow’s goal is an admirable one. He intends to honor multiple dialects by empowering its user’s to preserve it while striving toward a more acceptable and powerful literacy.
Elbow believes that it is important for students to initially write in their own dialect. One reason is because when people are allowed to write in their own rhetoric their arguments tend to be stronger because they truly own them as opposed to writing out of anxiety of a foreign and/or unfamiliar rhetoric. In addition, if students feel that their language is respected and accepted then chances are likely that they will produce more writing. He also points out that usually when people feel that their language is considered inferior, unsophisticated or broken compared to SWE they will write no more than the minimum requirement. While it is respectful to honor various dialects in the classroom, mainly it is the writing teacher’s responsibility to help students develop competent writing skills for academic purposes. For this reason, Elbow has created strategies to address both concerns.
To achieve both goals of making students more comfortable with their writing in their freshman year college course and helping them to produce writing that eventually conforms to SWE Elbow simply encourages students to seek help. As a major part of his curriculum he implements copy-editing as a requirement. Students are allowed to write the first drafts in their own dialect and are expected to use various resources to re-organize and revise. It does not matter where students seek help as long as they are working towards revising their papers. The assistance can be electronic through technological writing or grammar programs, from professional services such as writing centers, learning labs, paid editors or his office in the English department. He also encourages students to get help through their personal relationships by friends, roommates, loved ones, etc.
Elbow feels that this approach works for several reasons. The main reason is that students are required to take responsibility for their own writing process and do whatever is needed to get the writing (after several drafts) to conform to the conventions of SWE. Secondly, we cannot assume that freshman composition students have the ability to edit their own work. Having outside support takes the copy-editing pressure off of students and offers informal writing instruction at the same time. Thirdly, while it may seem that this approach allows for plagiarism, it actually prevents it because in addition to informal writing in class, it allows the instructor to see plenty of the students writing through several drafts. Lastly but not least, many non-mainstream dialect speaking students will seek the most help.
As a part of the copy-editing teaching method, Elbow uses two strategies to help change the students thinking about writing. The first approach is mostly for an “orthodox structure.” When the essay he is requesting has one main idea and plenty of supportive reasons and evidence, he gives the students a choice of starting the writing in their dialect or not and through several drafts has them expand and transform the essay without totally abandoning their dialect. Only at the end, the student is asked to make the changes from their dialect to more academic writing. Elbow says, “This process raises an intriguing question as to the nature of the dialect: as he gradually transforms his essay – first in thinking, rhetoric, and organization and finally in grammar, syntax and spelling – at what point has he abandoned AAE? I think the answer will be a matter of fruitful debate, but however it is settled, it is clear that I am asking him to make substantive changes in his thinking as he moves his drafts to mainstream or academic or ‘white’ modes of thinking and presentation (337).” In other words, Elbow does not force students to abandon their dialect; however the writing/learning process tends to affect and enhance it.
The second strategy that Elbow uses to help students change the way they think when writing is one of his favorites. He encourages students to write “their way” by beginning with a story and gradually curve around to their point. It is not a conventional 5 paragraph essay with an introduction and a conclusion (although he suggests that students include a brief introductory). More interestingly, it relies on the creativity of the student and has the potential to leave an impressive affect on the audience. Elbow compares this style of writing to that of writing published in magazine and journals. He states, “Indirection and subtlety are much valued and published – as long as they are handled well (339).” This is extremely valuable in building confidence of students who speak stigmatized dialects.
An objection of Elbow’s teaching approach is that it might be ideal for mainstream students who speak and write close to Standard English, but it will probably be less effective for people who speak non-mainstream dialects whose writing require much more revision. Because culture, language, thinking and identity are closely linked, some educators believe that when a student is allowed to write in their dialect, it will be embedded with perspectives and rhetoric than what the assignment requires.
Elbow’s rebuttal to this objection is that the writing is being transferred from a “short distance” of one dialect to another, not across languages. He feels that the hardest part of the transfer would be from oral to written communication because people of non-mainstream dialects are known to rely more on oral discourse and have vernacular based preferences. However, the strategy of having the students write in their own rhetoric will eventually help to improve their writing skills. It will also decrease their anxiety by allowing them to begin in their own style and gradually develop into Standard Writing English.
Finally, Elbow believes that “links are not chains” and just because a particular group of people use a dialect, does not mean that they are locked into one way of thinking. While we understand that language and thinking are intertwined, the dialect does not prevent people from learning to think in other ways. He suggests that we invite students to compose in their “mother tongue” in order to encourage them to write more toward the standard. He further argues that once a student learns to introduce a topic and stay on it, provide relevant details and evidence, show good ideas of his own, argue and reason, in addition to organizing an essay then it is usually not too difficult to make necessary grammatical, syntax and spelling changes to conform to SWE. Although it might be difficult to take responsibility of their writing to by continuously copy-editing final drafts it would not be as difficult as writing all of their drafts in SWE.