"Multilingual Writing Students..."
"...Opportunities and Challenges."
Presented by Kate Mangelsdorf and Evelyn Posey at the Speaking about English Online Conference on March 31, 2011.
Kate Mangelsdorf is a Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies and Director of University Writing Programs at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Her research interests include critical literacies and second language writing. She has published many journal articles and book chapters and is a frequent presenter at professional conferences. With Evelyn Posey, she has published two textbooks for Bedford/St. Martin's Press: Choices: A Basic Writing Text with Readings (4th ed.) and Discoveries. Also with Posey, she is writing The World of Writing, a textbook for multilingual first-year composition students, that will be published by Pearson Longman in December 2010. Her current scholarly focus is on standard language ideologies and language demarcations. She is the Principal Investigator on a grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that supports a major redesign of UTEP's second-semester composition course. She also serves on the Executive Committee of CCCC.
She has held many administrative positions at UTEP, including Associate Dean of University College, Director of Developmental English, and Director of First-Year Composition. She is also the former Director of the Rhetoric and Writing Studies program and the PhD program in Rhetoric and Composition.
She received her PhD from the University of Arizona and has taught at UTEP since 1990.
Evelyn Posey is a Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). She has been active in the computers and writing community, writing articles and presenting papers on using technology in the composition classroom and serving on the CCCC Computer Committee. With Mangelsdorf, she has co-authored two developmental composition textbooks: Choices: A Basic Writing Guide with Readings, now in its 4th edition and Discoveries: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Paragraphs and Essays for Bedford/St. Martin's Press. She and Mangelsdorf are currently writing a first-year composition textbook, The World of Writing for Pearson Longman, to be published in December 2010.
She received a 3.4 million National Science Foundation grant for the advancement of women in science and engineering academic disciplines. She now serves as a consultant to universities who wish to improve the recruitment and retention of women faculty.
She was hired by the UTEP Department of English in 1990 as a specialist in Composition and Rhetoric. She has served the university as Chair of the Department of English, Associate Dean of Liberal Arts, and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs. For five years, she served as Director of English Education and Director of the West Texas Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project.
Together, these two presenters will discuss how In many writing classrooms, students come with a variety of language backgrounds—some are monolingual English speakers, while others speak English as their second or even third language. Mixed-language classrooms give us an opportunity to prepare students for a globalized workplace—and offer unique opportunities for teaching students about language and writing. In our talk we'll give tips and suggestions for teaching students from different language backgrounds, focusing on creating writing assignments and responding to student writing, including second-language errors. We'll also discuss how to enhance multilingual instruction in online learning environments through the use of asynchronous tools such as e-mail, discussion boards, and social media Web sites and synchronous tools such as chat, instant messaging, and white boards.