Madeline Crozier
Assignments & Activities Archive
Activity Description
This activity helps students develop writing and listening skills through an exploration of how identity, language, and writing are connected. By including one or more podcast episodes as supplemental course content and then inviting students to reflect on and discuss the episodes, the activity brings multiple languages, perspectives, and voices into the first-year composition (FYC) classroom. The inclusion of multimodal resources into the curriculum, especially those that address language-related topics such as standard language ideologies, endangered languages, and misconceptions in English language learning, can also move students’ knowledge beyond the Western rhetorical tradition or standardized American English. An FYC classroom that prepares students to listen, speak, and write in an increasingly globalized world equips them with linguistic awareness. The activity asks students to listen to the podcast episode “Speaking a Single Language Won’t Bring About World Peace” by Lingthusiasm, write a guided reflection, and then participate in class discussion. In doing so, students can experience multimodal learning, expand their conceptions of communicative practice, and learn about and develop critical language awareness (CLA). CLA refers to the ability to think critically about “the intersections of language, identity, power, and privilege, with the goal of promoting self-reflection, social justice, and rhetorical agency” (Shapiro 4). As a framework, CLA can better support writers and particularly multilingual students in their engagement with rhetorical knowledge and skills by helping them make connections across multiple languages, communities, and experiences to further their individual development as writers. CLA can extend writers’ rhetorical knowledge toward an understanding of “how the politics of languaging function” (Beavers et al.), developing skills necessary for productive participation in public and professional life.