Confronting Hegemonies of Language and Power

Confronting Hegemonies of Language: An Anthropologist as ESL Instructor for Generation 1.5 Immigrant Youth Linda Dwyer: Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD Immigration to the United States has grown dramatically in the years since the Immigration Reform Act of 1965. One outcome is the rise in the numbers of immigrant children and youth. By the year 2010, one out of every four children will be an immigrant whose first language is not English or who has parents that do not speak English as their first language. Of these, the greatest proportion will be in middle and high schools in large urban areas. In addition, immigrant children are increasingly found in smaller cities and suburban areas. A large proportion of immigrant youth enters the U.S. educational system in either middle school or high school (Migration Policy Institute 2005), where they comprise approximately forty-four percent of English language learners (Capps et al. 2005). Presently, more than half of all middle school children with limited English proficiency (LEP) receive no language services in school. Half of all children with limited English proficiency attend schools in which at least one third of the student population is also LEP (National Conference of State Legislatures 2006). In 2002, forty-seven percent of immigrant children in grades six through ten lived in poverty, with the rate of poverty for this population rising (Migration Policy Institute 2005). It is estimated that thirty-one percent of language-minority students who speak English drop out of high school; fifty-one percent of those who speak English with difficulty drop out of high school (August 2006). Those immigrant high school graduates who go on to higher education while continuing to learn academic English are often defined in terms of deficits: limited literacy skills and sometimes limited ability in the native language, limited acculturation to the native culture and that of the United States, as well as limited study skills and social skills. ESL specialists at the college level have come to ascribe this population through the label "Generation 1.5" (Gen 1.5) (Harklau et al. 1999a; Harklau et al. 1999b; Harklau 2003; Peterman 2002). This term was borrowed from the work of sociologist Ruben Rumbaut. According to Rumbaut in personal communication with Walter Kamphoefter (1995), this term has been distorted and grossly oversimplified from the generational theory of immigration that Rumbaut had introduced as an undergraduate and first published in 1976 (Rumbaut and Rumbaut 1976). The theory was elaborated in further research (Rumbaut and Ima 1988; Rumbaut 1991, 1997, 2002). Rumbaut's generational theory of immigration addresses the complex interplay between an immigrant's The Joy of Language age at the time of immigration and his or her psycho-social reality. When families immigrate, the time of immigration and their different ages at that time become relevant to the conduct of social life within the family and its communities. In the concept's popularization within ESL pedagogical theory, the term has lost its significance because of its oversimplification in its transformation to a normalizing label. Given the failure of K-12 education to provide basic literacy skills to many immigrant youth, one can understand the humanistic urgency to remediate that is felt by ESL instructors at the college level. Students must now pay for education and adult responsibilities are imminent if not already present; therefore, time is of the essence. Furthermore, ESL specialists are well-intentioned in seeking an appropriate term to distinguish immigrant youth because immigrant high school graduates who are learning English are said to differ in the ways they learn and use language from both those native speakers of English who have graduated with learning deficits (labeled developmental learners) and those high achieving foreign students who attend higher educational institutions (labeled as ESL students) (Harklau et al. 1999a). This “in the trenches” focus on normalization as remediation to a native standard of academic English proficiency is at its root incomplete and potentially destructive, however. The inability to grasp the complexities and opportunities in Rumbaut's theory is only one symptom of its difficulties. Unfortunately, the place of college ESL instruction within overlapping and disjunctive fields of power makes it problematic to obtain a holistic understanding of immigrant youth as a highly varied population and thereby to develop not only language instruction but also programs that are appropriate to their equally diverse lived experiences. In the following pages, I discuss several aspects of these problems and propose a dialectical model of interaction among the varied institutional players and stakeholders so that the students may be integrated in the college community in a holistic manner that empowers students while permitting the variously constituted liminalities of their identities to develop within the larger academic milieu. This dialectic must also characterize pedagogies, as well. A diversity of family, ethnic, sub-ethnic, linguistic, racial, religious, and class experiences comprise the lives of so-called “Generation 1.5” students in complex ways (Rumbaut 1997b). The nature and frequency of a youth's movements across political and sociocultural boundaries, in addition to their ages when they "arrive" in the U.S., are also important to a young person's language(s), identity (ies), and way(s) of living. Therefore, I close the discussion with pedagogical considerations for developing language skills as part of a larger process of developing intersubjectivity(ies) rather than an exclusive focus on normalized linguistic and social practice, a process in which language and social action are

8-2 Linda Dwyer, Confronting Hegemonies of Language co-constituting and open for questioning as sites of negotiation and empowerment (Gonzalez 2005). Multiple ways of being and knowing may be present in a class, a small group, even an individual. It is through acknowledging, supporting, and sharing the expression of these complicated possibilities that instructors learn and affirm what it is to be an immigrant in today's world. I. Normalization and its problems. a. A problem with definitions At the college level, ESL is itself a field at the margins, a remedial service for marginal individuals (Harklau et al. 1999a): the foreign student, the immigrant student, and the native student from language enclaves in the US. In a seminal work on the nature of immigrant youth with limited English proficiency in higher education, Harklau Siegal, and Losey provide a banal overgeneralization of Rumbaut’s generational theory: “US high school graduates who enter higher education while in the process of learning English” (Harklau et al. 1999b, vii), including among the Gen 1.5 population “primarily immigrants and students from multilingual enclaves such as Puerto Rico ... [youth who have] traits and experiences somewhere between the first and second generations” (ibid.). At a national conference and among discussion with ESL instructors, I have observed "Gen 1.5" also defined as primarily those who immigrate near the age of puberty, over the age of ten years. In contrast, Generation 1.5 as a sociological theory is richer and more complex than is either acknowledged or addressed in the literature and practices of ESL instruction. Formulated over a number of decades, Rumbaut’s theory affirms that age at immigration and the historical particularities of a family cohort are key to both the psychological actuality and the social locatedness of each decimal generation within a family: ages 0-5 constitute generation 1.75; ages 6-12 constitute generation 1.5; ages 13-17 constitute generation 1.25; ages 18 and above constitute young adults of the first generation. What is central to Rumbaut’s theory is that a child’s stage of psycho-social development at the age of immigration strongly influences not only language acquisition, but also the way in which the child orients himself to both the cultural practices left behind and those he encounters in his new nation. The decimal generation experiencing the most difficulty in terms of language acquisition and cultural adjustment is that of Gen 1.25, who tend to enter after what may be their peak years of learning a second language, whose memory of the native country is strongest, and who have spent the bulk of childhood acquiring the perspectives and skills to assume adult roles in the native culture. Generation 1.5, the seesaw generation, is viewed as that most skilled and at ease in crossing linguistic and cultural boundaries yet still having some gaps in knowledge of both sociocultural landscapes. Generation 1.75 may be indistinguishable from the second generation because they arrive in

8-3 The Joy of Language their new country before the start of formal schooling—they will become fully socialized and taught in their new language and society. The theory thus presents a sliding scale of psycho-social proficiencies and identifications that provides each member of an immigrating family his or her own specific location (Rumbaut and Rumbaut 1975; Rumbaut and Ima 1988; Rumbaut 1997b; Rumbaut 2004). Rumbaut's theoretical approach is useful when applied to detailed analysis of language acquisition among different populations of first and second generation immigrant children, and it has been thus helpful in illuminating differences within and among these groups of immigrant youth (Oropesa and Landale 2004). When used appropriately, then, this concept may enlighten educators regarding their students' strengths and needs, their perspectives and orientations, both linguistically and in their relationship to the social landscapes they negotiate. Nonetheless, Rumbaut’s theory as a developmentally based theory that is useful in understanding the psycho-social reality of individuals within immigrant families is not designed to address the experiences of some immigrant high school graduates who find themselves ascribed the label of Gen 1.5. Developed to address the nature of families who migrate together to a permanent residence in a new nation, his theory cannot adequately address a number of different forms in which families experience migration under contemporary globalization processes. There is the situation of children who migrate alone or ahead of their nuclear families; in contrast, there are other circumstances in which only part of a family may migrate as a cohort (Ong 1993). Families may thus experience even more fragmented relationships with language and psycho-social identities than anticipated in Rumbaut's initial conception of the migrant experience. His theory also seems to ignore the complexities of family settlement for those who may have both legal and illegal residents living together. For example, second generation children who are legal residents may be returned to the parents' home nations to live with relatives for years in order to be fully imbued with their parents' language and cultural identities, as students and adults have shared with me. This is because legal residents may pass national borders freely, while older siblings who are illegally present in the U.S. would face high risks in attempting a return to the US from abroad. Ironically, therefore, it is sometimes the illegal resident who has the stronger English skills and deepest identification as an American, while the younger sibling who is legally a U.S. citizen may have the weakest linguistic skills and cultural expertise. Transnational lifestyles often constitute a continual back and forth experience between home and sending nation and an active identification with both societies. Entire families and/or individuals within families may take part in that way of living (Schiller et al. 1992). This phenomenon also complicates the family's different relationships with language and culture beyond the tolerance of Rumbaut's assumption of the family as a cohort with a singular point of entry. Nonetheless, use of his generational

8-4 Linda Dwyer, Confronting Hegemonies of Language categories to explore these more complex dynamics in transnational families may still be fruitful.

Furthermore, refugee and immigrant youth may find themselves in multiple ethnic, linguistic, and national contexts, both prior to and subsequent to fleeing their home nations. Refugee children may suffer from the traumas of exile and loss (Rumbaut and Ima 1988; Rumbaut 1991; Rumbaut 1997). Some youth may have been ethnic and linguistic minorities in their countries of birth as well as in the U.S. This was the case of my students who had lived in an Armenian enclave in Iran prior to becoming refugees in the U.S. As a result of globalization processes and the emergence of English as a lingua franca, some immigrant youth may have been exposed to the English language and American culture in educational contexts and through mass media prior to immigration. My students from China and Korea had all experienced some English language education as children, for example. The Internet brings media across the globe to youth in many social locations (see, for example, Condry 2002). Of great concern, the issue of racism's effect on assimilation (Portes and Stepick 1993; Portes and deWind 2004) is also lost in ESL's adoption of Gen 1.5 as a totalizing label. As stigmatized racial minorities in the U.S., some immigrant children are assimilated to an ascribed lower class position that affects their relationship to language, self, family, school, and society. Thus, although an important theoretical resource for sociological research, Rumbaut's generational theory when collapsed to the single label "Generation 1.5" may obscure rather than illuminate. It also may not fully describe a family's psycho-social characteristics due to the different ways that children and families move across spatial boundaries. As a result, the ESL profession's usage of Gen 1.5 as a normalizing label is not up to the task of describing the linguistic and educational needs of immigrant youth as a single group. The ESL community's sense of Gen 1.5 cannot do justice to the complex varieties of psycho-social experiences, histories and identity formation in transnational and global contexts. In short, an overarching definition, a panoptic perspective of the subject for the sake of normalization (Foucault 1977), fails. b. A problem of cultural contexts Many immigrant students come from societies or ethnic groups that prioritize the oral over the written, the contexted and relational over the “objective” and linear. This is often known but not necessarily understood in its full implications among college ESL instructors. Those students who think in terms of situational context or who use rhetorical devices suited for oratory, such as repetition, are often labeled by instructors with whom I have worked as disorganized and confused. In

8-5 The Joy of Language some non-Western academic traditions, both the rhetorical style and the writer's relationship to the reader may differ from that of Western academic writing (Canagarajah 2002a; Connor 2002; Dong 1999). It may be possible for an instructor to come to understand, anticipate, and to engage directly with several different rhetorical styles (Connor 2002; Dong 1999) in a relatively homogenous classroom due to similarity in student backgrounds. Due to the diversity of immigration in globalization processes, however, students may practice discursive forms that instructors have not encountered. Furthermore, students may also come from backgrounds in which they had been either aliterate or illiterate prior to arrival in the U.S. As part of their cultural upbringing, students may nonetheless possess knowledge of oratory and verbal persuasive strategies appropriate for situational needs in their own cultures, whether those from which they immigrated or that of their family and community (ies) in migration. Thus, it is not just a variety of written rhetorics that students may bring to a classroom, but diverse oral rhetorics, as well. Equally important is that each rhetoric has culturally specific audiences and purposes. Therefore, in those settings in which students are characterized by their multiplicity of languages and experiences, instructors would find it extraordinarily difficult to anticipate the diversity of rhetorics and underlying assumptions regarding those rhetorics that students may possess and through which they may attempt to negotiate their lives. Yet pedagogy must find a way to permit students to make use of their cultural strengths in analysis and expression, even if significantly different in nature from the academic approaches expected of undergraduates. Direct engagement in discussions that demystify the nature of rhetorics, their purposes, and the varied kinds of relationships to readers or listeners is essential. Students must be able to find both themselves and others in the discursive spaces they navigate. Western academic discussion and writing are only two such spaces. In addition, those students engaged in the writing process are often best served by pre-write strategies that permit them to analyze orally before writing since participating in group analysis may support needs for consensual problem solving. Engaging in analysis and writing as a group also helps to bridge the divide between those who have been socialized for shared oral analysis and/or global problem solving and Western rhetorical practices. Collaborative discussion serves to affirm strengths and to create a bridge to alien ways and purposes for analysis. Additionally, appointing a note taker for group discussions, then organizing those points into a linear (agonistic) mode of writing as a group helps students to transition to academic writing structures and processes. Before this sort of activity can even begin, it is essential to first discuss with students how analysis is part of social practice in American academic writing in contrast to the place of analysis in other social locations, including ethnic and

8-6 Linda Dwyer, Confronting Hegemonies of Language class locations in the US, as well as in other societies. Comparing where, how, and why analysis occurs and is shared with others helps to demystify both the writing process and its product for students. Tapping into student knowledge of their own discursive practices empowers them to gain insight into their own relationship to discourses in which they have particular strengths that they may choose to adapt for the demands of western academic praxis, which is demystified for them. This process therefore provides everyone, including the instructor, with new perspectives regarding the nature of human experience and new ways of working analytically. Thus, especially in settings in which a classroom is comprised of students from many national and cultural locations, the strengths developed through their lived experiences are highlighted and then may be applied successfully in this alien world of Western academic reading and writing. Academic writing in the Western world, after all, has as its goal an individual piece of written analysis presented in a linear “objective” framework as an expression of individual creativity that competes for authority with other texts, themselves disembodied and atemporal discourses. The "discussion" may transcend centuries and the immediate social needs of those so engaged. And this nature may differ from academic praxis in other non-Western cultural traditions today (Canagarajah 2002a; Canagarajah 2002b). This sort of discourse may be truly foreign to students from social contexts in which the face-to-face and relational aspects of human existence, and hence discourse, take priority. c. A problem of outmoded concepts For some ESL practitioners whom I have known, the concept of culture remains that of mid-twentieth century: bounded nation-states whose citizens possess particular stereotyped cultural traits and behaviors. Similarly, they often believe migrants move to a new nation and stay put. The complex liminalities of immigrant students thus may lead to stigmatization because they cannot fit a diagnostic list. Indeed, within college language classes such students are sometimes seen as disruptive, resistant, noncompliant, and lacking in basic social skills (Leki 1999). Static models of culture and social roles do not help an instructor to understand and serve a student engaged in a shifting sociocultural dynamic and who must cross any number of sociocultural and linguistic boundaries in the course of a day. Those students who appear "lazy" may be supporting their families through their labor. They may be unprepared and unfocused due to the exhaustion of working a double shift prior to class, as one young woman was often compelled to do in order to help feed her family. One student who isolated himself from others had been compelled by parents to socialize only with fellow members of his language enclave. He thus had great diffidence and difficulty relating to others in a mixed cultural environment.

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Another student's family pressured him to work in the family business and quit school, thus he was often unprepared, frustrated with his lack of progress, and despairing of his ability to achieve the American dream of a better way of life. Unless an instructor is attuned to a student's reality, it is difficult to teach successfully. Pedagogies that do not permit the development of intersubjectivity in complex social spaces such as these students navigate cannot succeed. They do not facilitate communication; they do not and cannot access student understandings, motives, or strengths. There are many ways to not fit the environment. Success in class is also affected by a student's membership in the larger community. Outreach efforts to understand the ways in which higher education is experienced holistically within students' lives are needed in order to better integrate community and college to adapt support services, such as financial aid, tutoring, and counseling. Students may not have access, or may not feel legitimated in seeking access due to the nature of their lives outside the classroom. Providing such access effectively may need a re-thinking of the assumption underlying the structures in higher education: a student is now "independent" of family and may be treated as a single social unit. II. Practical Issues. a. Textbooks and software products Although textbook publishers are designing resources to include the immigrant youth by adapting works for either the ESL classroom (Houghton Mifflin) or the developmental English classroom (Prentice Hall), there are scarce resources that adequately relate to the cultural and linguistic experiences of immigrant youth. Nor are these materials easily adapted to serve the phonemic challenges and issues of fossilized error in English production of the LEP student. Often in ESL texts, prompts and written tasks are those that draw upon the life experience of the international student and are oriented toward an “eye learner,” who acquired prior English primarily through texts. Developmental texts assume an ease with US culture that may not yet exist; prompts and exercises are designed for native speakers, not English learners. b. Students’ social isolation from the academic community The one study that did measure student success in terms of holistic experience had a finding that might prove disturbing to those focused solely upon what happens in the classroom, i.e. pedagogy. In this study, the most important factor to indicate student success among English language learners in college is the density of ties with those who understand the nature of the college experience. The greater the density, the stronger the social networks related to understanding of college, the more likely a student will succeed. The ties may be with a co-worker

8-8 Linda Dwyer, Confronting Hegemonies of Language in a fast food restaurant or a landlord who had attended college. Those students least likely to succeed are those with the fewest such ties. Neither a student's language ability at entrance to college nor instructional pedagogy matters. Obtaining practical knowledge of how to act and how to make good decisions is the most critical resource for the success of these immigrant youth (Rodby 1999). Therefore, higher educational institutions must find a way to create opportunities for students to receive multiple sorts of mentors, formal and informal. Some institutions have established programs that prepare high school students for college so that they have some of this information in hand at entry (Lay et al. 1999). Even so, what matters is that students find those who act as mentors to consult as difficulties arise. One way that I attempted to support students in acquiring practical knowledge and social connections was to invite to the classroom successful leaders from the immigrant community, especially former students. These guests briefly presented their life experiences, focusing on how they managed to succeed in college and go on to develop careers. Students were expected to take notes and interview the guests, who often shared contact information. They were then instructed in writing and addressing thank-you notes and emails, which were sent to these community leaders. Student motivation to "look good" to those they admired was very strong. They sought feedback for every punctuation mark and capitalization. Writing exercises were then developed from these experiences in such a way that the prompts related directly to experiences and future aspirations. Other exercises required students to first interview the different student support and advising programs regarding careers and academic transfers to four year institutions. For those students with weak skills or lack of opportunity in developing connections, this skill development was thereby integrated into class activities. They were learning how to network, use English in diverse professional situations that include academic textual production, and analyze material directly related to their lived experiences. c. Interdisciplinary Cooperation ESL as a specialization within education approaches its purpose by attempting to borrow insights from psychology, sociology, and linguistics. Nonetheless, as with Rumbaut's theoretical concepts, such borrowing may prove to be unfortunate in its outcome. Thus, I propose a more direct cooperation with researchers in the social sciences, cognitive sciences, and linguistics to craft pedagogical approaches. In addition to working with social scientists to better gain insight into the nature of immigrant youth who must continue to develop English language proficiency, cognitive scientists may provide valuable help in crafting approaches to language learning.

Those “Gen 1.5” students in need of language instruction after high school tend to be poor readers with limited vocabulary. They are identified as "ear learners," engaged primarily in the oral aspects of language usage (Harklau et al. 1999a). This connection between a student's preference for verbal interaction and poor reading has also been made in studies of dyslexics (NIH 1998; Shaywitz and Shaywitz 2005). Text-to-speech readers that can be adjusted for speed have been shown to improve both reading rate and understanding among this population (Elkind 1998). Cognitive science's finding regarding the critical relationship between phonemic recognition and reading may be of importance to ESL since this skill may be underdeveloped in some immigrant youth (Koda 1998). Some linguists assert that puberty may be a time in which the ability to learn language slows down, although this is still contested. Hence, positron emission tomography (PET) scans and functional MRI studies of second language acquisition are beginning to develop a complicated picture of the brain in second language learning and acquisition (Klein et al. 1999; Perani et al. 1998; Tan, L.H. 2005; ven Den Noort et al. 2006; Xue et al. 2004). Findings regarding the neurolinguistic character of second and multiple language acquisition are not in agreement at this early stage, perhaps due to the many variables involved in second language acquisition. Given the plasticity of the brain in response to the demands upon it, cognitive mapping is an important area of research for those who teach a second language. With the success of text-to-speech software in serving those with reading disabilities, such software that permits other students with phonemic challenges to read and listen simultaneously may be enable them to gain phonemic awareness more readily, read more quickly, and heighten understanding of texts. Acquisition of the vocabulary needed for college work may also be sped along in this manner. Language learners often use simple sentence structures, while college texts tend to be written using complex sentence structures. Thus, hearing a text read exposes students to pacing and intonation, perhaps facilitating a student's understanding of this sort of writing. Finally, hearing their own writings may help students identify errors of organization and language, especially those habituated or "fossilized" errors so hard to eradicate. In 2005, I began teaching a specialized class in advanced pre-college composition designed especially for immigrant youth who had arrived prior to high school graduation. Students self-selected for enrollment in ESL, developmental writing class for native speakers, or the Gen 1.5 class. Several of the students enrolled in the Gen 1.5 class after failing the developmental classes or the ESL classes that they had attempted earlier. These students came from a large variety of national, ethnic, educational and class backgrounds. Native languages spanned all inhabited continents. For example, a young Kurdish female refugee only began

8-10 Linda Dwyer, Confronting Hegemonies of Language her education at the age of thirteen, when she immigrated to the U.S. As with other students, she had been illiterate and unschooled in her native language and culture. One young Kenyan woman spoke four native languages as well as a dialect of English spoken in the public schools in her region. Others were affluent youth who had begun studying English in their native countries, yet remained in language enclaves by choice. Placed among them were several adult students who had immigrated years earlier and who also wished to work in a class that allowed them to employ their strong conversational skills. Students in this class had difficulty decoding words efficiently. They guessed poorly at meanings and pronunciation when they read their text at high school level, and they used wildly different words from those intended when they wrote, whether by hand or computer (thus this was not necessarily an error in the use of spell-check). In one developmental composition class, students were trained in the use of Kurzweil 3000 text-to-speech software in order to read and write; students then used the software for most reading and writing in the classroom, which was equipped as a networked lab with one computer for each student. Several Kurzweil readers were also provided on computers in the writing center so that students could do homework using Kurzweil as well. This software "reads" text aloud at rates that the students may set for themselves. Although immigrant youth who had graduated from U.S. high schools tended to dislike using the software, they performed better when using it in classroom reading and writing activities, as well as in testing situations. Those students who arrived in the U.S. as adults tended to both appreciate using Kurzweil and to benefit from its usage. At the end of the semester, students who had started with failing grades on their initial essays still showed a marked difference in quality of work when using the software, indicating that their decoding skills and reading fluency required further development. It also demonstrated that they could detect and correct writing errors more readily when they heard their compositions read to them. Spell-check was not helpful in that students could not always decode the written words that they might otherwise know. This supports earlier studies that found such software enhanced student learning (Kurzweil Education Systems 2005). Text-to-speech readers are not always available outside of the disability community and may be prohibitively expensive when obtainable. Based upon my experience, ESL instructors often are unaware of both the research and the resources available to support poor reading skills. Reading "pens" that can read line by line, and others that can copy an article to be pasted in a computer for text- to-speech support also may be of use to students with poor phonological skills. Instructors in my institution's developmental language classes became interested in using text-to-speech software in their classes since phonological weakness is not exclusive to immigrant students and the dyslexic.

Further complicating the matter is that text-to-speech resources, such as Readings for the Blind and Dyslexic and digitized textbooks created by publishers are unavailable to LEP students who could benefit from them due to the nature of the disability laws that restrict such products to the disabled. Open source products such as www.readtome.com are available online for free, but produce poor quality of intonation and pronunciation. This software is also limited in terms of the amount that can be cut and pasted onto their sites, and hard copy texts must first be transformed into computerized form. Yet few ESL instructors even know of this software, which is a staple among those serving the reading disabled. The trend toward commercially available recorded books is also one that may benefit students still learning English. Clearly, greater communication with and support from those researching the neurolinguistics of language learning as well as with those who are skilled in serving students with gaps in phonemic awareness would benefit the field of ESL. Such collaboration requires the interest of these other professions and the funding to support that interest. d. The marginal status of ESL in higher education In the past, ESL instructors in higher educational settings have worked primarily with high achieving international students. As such, these instructors have occupied a niche treated as short-term remedial support rather than an academic sub-field within the academy. Many positions in both four year institutions and community colleges have been for part-time adjuncts who are not fully integrated into their institutional communities. Even if this marginal specialization is valued in an institution, it nonetheless may lack the resources to invest in full time instructors, to provide them with ongoing professional development opportunities and the technical resources that enhance learning. Furthermore, where second language instruction is housed matters. Instructors are often placed, not on the academic, credit-bearing side of the institution, but rather in student services or the continuing education sides of the institutions (Harklau et al. 1999a). There they may be further isolated from the academic culture that their students have to navigate and the resources for professional development made available to faculty who teach credit bearing courses. Instructors merit the professional development opportunities, access to technology, research, and opportunities for interdisciplinary work that is afforded academics and professionals in such respected fields as medicine, law and management. Additionally, because most youth who are English language learners are served in community colleges and other two-year institutions, these institutions are especially challenged financially to provide full-time employment and professional development opportunities. Indeed, teachers may be volunteers in community colleges (Blumenthal 2002). Funding for physical resources and training may be equally difficult to obtain. In the community college setting, it is difficult, therefore, to find educators with the

8-12 Linda Dwyer, Confronting Hegemonies of Language credentials to conduct research and collaborate with researchers from other disciplines regarding the students that are served there. III. Towards a dialectical ESL High school graduates who are learning English when they enter college arrive with diverse linguistic and sociocultural experiences. There are two things that these students share: a need to acquire skill in academic English as a cultural product and the need to learn the praxis of higher education while balancing obligations to family and social group(s). All students deserve the opportunity to develop and express their sociocultural identities with others who are willing to learn from them as part of that process. Supposedly, it is one of the important features of higher education to widen student experiences and deepen understanding of the nature of the diversity of views, experiences, and peoples that make up our nation and our world. Too often the immigrant experience is treated as a problem, not a respected and valued aspect of our nation and its history. Furthermore, as Gonzalez (2005) reminds us, language itself is deeply implicated in the ways in which identities and the social relations that enmesh them are structured and negotiated. Thus, the need to provide a respected space in which developing and shifting identities may find expression extends to the classroom in all its aspects: pedagogies, social environment, articulation with the institution and the community in which it is nested. Only then can educators gain insight into the nature of student realities. Given the varied life trajectories and social locations of the youth that instructors serve, teachers can no longer assume that they understand student background experiences in the native country based upon a list of cultural traits. Nor can they assume that any student, native or immigrant, has lived continuously in the US after “arrival.” Indeed, with the presence of language enclaves in some communities, neither generation nor age of arrival may be reliable indicators of academic English proficiency. Furthermore, rhetorical practices that are brought by a student to the classroom may diverge in significant ways from that of academic writing, yet may themselves be evidence of critical thought. Finally, the cognitive means by which analysis takes place may also be strongly influenced by a student’s previous cultural experiences and must be understood in order for the student to be taught effectively in a second language classroom. In other words, educators and administrators in higher education can no longer assume that language and culture are bounded systems, with social roles that are equally bounded and categorized. Rather, a dialectical approach to education and administration is needed. English language learning in higher education may be a burdensome expense for students, for whom time is an enemy. Mastering academic English takes time. It is essential therefore that there be ongoing interdisciplinary research on language

8-13 The Joy of Language learning and the development of technologies and pedagogies that are efficient and effective. Such research may also end up supporting other populations of students with language related challenges, such as developmental readers and writers. Additionally, more work is needed to understand the ways in which institutions of higher education and their policies may need to adapt to the realities of these diverse language learners. The Western assumption of a student's "individual autonomy and independence" may problematize the immigrant youth who must work to help support family. Indeed, devising ways to more holistically integrate the immigrant student may also benefit similarly challenged students, such as nontraditional students, who may also have responsibilities and commitments beyond themselves. The normalized label of "Gen 1.5" reduces a varied population of students to an overly simplistic classification that distorts and hides the very complexities that compel attention and response. Rather than totalizing labels, lists of typologies, and other short-cuts of normalization, educators must build into pedagogies and institutional practices a means for dialectical relationships. For the instructor, a hermeneutic spiral must occur so that she may gain insight into the cognitive and rhetorical practices that students bring to her. After all, Ruth Behar is a Latina anthropologist whose writing was considered poor by her undergraduate philosophy professor at Wesleyan University (Behar 1993), but this style later contributed to Behar's selection for a Macarthur genius award. There are other future Macarthur geniuses among immigrant youth if we give them the chance to use the gifts they bring to education. The rising numbers of immigrant youth in the US, especially those in poverty, provide evidence that the need to better serve immigrant students is both urgent and immediate, and that in many cases it may be impoverished and financially strained institutions that must take on the task. At the policy level, it is essential to address the class aspects of differential access to appropriate education and its resources. It is essential to fund permanent and full-time positions in institutions, provide those institutions with needed resources, and to fund interdisciplinary research and connections so that language learning is as effective and efficient as possible. Because migration is even greater below the equator as a result of globalization processes, serving the language educational needs of migrating youth is a global challenge. Thus, liminality within societies may be the new "normal" in an age of mass migrations and evolving technologies of transportation and communications. The dislocations of war, environmental degradation, and disease trigger movement as much as the need for economic opportunity in the new and emerging century.

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Ironically, it may be the very methods of normalization created in and for modern nation-states that must be overcome in order to both understand and address the linguistic and psycho-social needs of youth in migration. As national, social, linguistic, ethnic, and class borders are crossed in increasingly complex ways, the gross systems of classification and methods of serving populations become ineffective in that they cannot focus a panopticon created for discreetly bounded groups. Past forms of advocacy for human rights and services that have arisen in response to the inequalities of modernity may find themselves equally compromised in that they have evolved in response to the hegemony of the nation-state and its normalizing classificatory systems. What is therefore timely and urgently needed is a methodology for creating intersubjectivity, based upon dialogic encounters between those who serve and those who obtain services in such a fashion that each party involved learns about the other and experiences empowerment to act upon that knowledge. For such an interaction to work, power must also be shared, with room for adjustments and change as understanding grows. Such a vision is not utopic, but pragmatic. Modernity's panopticon is not a tool that serves a dynamically diverse society in either a humane or effective manner. ------Appreciation must be expressed to Dr. Jean Svacina, former Director of English as a Second Language and currently Associate Chair of the Division of English and World Languages at Howard Community College, Columbia, Maryland. It was Dr. Svacina who made the pilot courses for immigrant (Gen .15) youth available, provided funding for technologies, travel to conferences, and opportunities to collaborate with other instructors in the region who also were working with these students. I would also like to thank her for the $500 grant to cover my library research. REFERENCES August, Diane and Timothy Shanahan. 2006. "Executive Summary." In Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language- Minority Children and Youth, edited by Diane August and Timothy Shanahan. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Behar, Ruth. 1993. "The Biography in the Shadows." In Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza's Story, 320- 344. Boston: Beacon Press. Blumenthal, Amy. 2002. "English as a Second Language at the Community College: An Exploration of Context and Concerns." New Directions for Community Colleges 117: 45-53. Canagarajah, A. Suresh. 2002a. "Conventions in Knowledge Construction." In A Geopolitics of Academic Writing, 77-101. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

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