5. Myth of "Just a Technique"

Research into the experiences of non-native English speakers makes it abundantly clear that American university faculty are mistaken in assuming that, for ESL and multicultural students, learning the conventions of American university academic discourse is merely about learning different forms of presentation. It is important that faculty understand that students who are learning to write this unfamiliar academic discourse often suffer a crisis of identity, both personal and cultural.

Helen Fox's study of international students' experiences in learning to write academic prose in American colleges dramatizes vividly these students' personal and cultural dilemmas as they try to write for their American professors. In an interview with a student from Chile, Fox relates her own realization that as a teacher she had underestimated the complexity of international students' experience in learning how to write in American colleges: "Carla told me how painful it had been to write in a way that felt unnatural to her and how much anxiety she had felt as she tried to force herself to adopt the style that I so cheerfully and naively was calling 'just another technique'" (72).

Fox describes her growing understanding of the dramatic metamorphosis that these students must experience in order to succeed as writers: "A graduate student from Chile made me realize the implications of the paradigm shift we are asking them to make when she examined her own resistance to learning 'a new way to write.' 'You said it was just a technique, but what I discovered was that it meant I had to look at things differently. Real differently. And in that sense, my world view has to change'" (Fox 44).

If we listen to some non-native speakers' accounts of their struggles which Fox provides, we hear the pain and confusion that students from other cultures experience when learning how to write American academic prose:

A Chilean student writes of her fear of acculturation:

I was afraid that if I forced myself to write in this new style, I would become acculturated…But at the same time, I know I need to change to survive here. Personally, I was rebelling to write. The ideas didn't come. (qtd. in Fox 72)

The same Chilean student explains the complex implications for identity in adopting a new rhetoric:

Learning to write in an American style, it is much more than learning a new technique. It is a way this culture 'normalizes' you to the system, shaping on you new values and new ways of looking at the world. Therefore, the writing style is not value free; it has ethical consequences, depending on if it is empowering or disempowering for you in this new culture or in your home culture. (qtd. in Fox 77)

A student from Sri Lanka writes about how he felt that others were deriding his culture:

I felt like a misfit...very unwanted, very put down…I thought everybody must be laughing at me. I wondered if people knew that I had a culture of my own, or that there are even any worthy people in my society. I even wondered what people here must think of Buddhists. Are we a passive group of people? Can't we do anything without being told? (qtd. in Fox 3 )

A student from Japan writes about how he had to create a new self, and the fear he felt in having to do so:

I was very struck when I read an article by the Chinese student who had to construct a different self-identity in order to be able to write the way Americans do. That made me think a lot. Because I was resistant. I had been trying to make a single identity, somehow my Japanese and my American self merging, so I wouldn't lose the Japanese part of me. That was my fear, that I would lose my old identity, which was important to me. Creating a new self-identity would mean that I would have to evaluate the one I originally had. And that was such an incredible fear! So as I read the article, I guess I finally accepted that I would have to construct, in a sense, a second personality. I told myself, "Well, I may have to." (qtd. in Fox 71-2).

A student from Nepal writes about his conflict of selves:

And so I began to lose confidence. I began to feel, "Gee, Surya, you're stupid." And you know, "You can't write." That voice was coming from here, from this culture. But at the same time another voice which was with me saying, "Surya, don't worry, you're all right, don't lose your confidence, you can do fine, just try to learn the ideas, you don't have to concentrate on the language or the writing style." And really, sometimes it got very tense between the two voices, and I would feel very depressed. And then I would just sit and watch TV and not do anything, not even read for my courses, and them I would begin to worry and think about home. (qtd. in Fox 70)

This same Nepalese student writes about the enormity and complexity of the change that is asked of him:

Because of my cultural background, I would never confront anyone about the comments they made about my writing. Besides, I had to succeed so I wouldn't lose face with my family back home. That's what all international students have to put up with, the terrible importance their families put to learn to use a very aggressive style that would more or less-you know-slap the reader in the face. My God, that was really hard. You cannot change your habits of a lifetime overnight. Imagine, a person who spends half his life, thirty, forty years, writing, working with people, and the come here for one or two years, do you expect him to be able to change his style? (qtd. in Fox70)

In Academic Writing in a Second Language, editors Belcher and Braine provide more compelling evidence of international students' crises of identity, relating a Chinese student's crisis of self:

By such a redefinition I mean not only the change in how I envisioned myself, but also the change in how I perceived the world. The old "I" used to embody only one set of values, but now it had to embody multiple sets of values. To be truly "myself," which I knew was key to my success in learning English composition, meant not to be my Chinese self at all. That is to say, when I write in English I have to wrestle with and abandon (at least temporarily) the whole system of ideology which previously defined me in myself…I had to put aside an ideology of collectivism and adopt the values of individualism. (qtd. in Belcher and Braine xx).

Danling Fu in The Trouble Is My English tells of her own experiences as a student from China trying to learn correct ways to read and write about literature on her journey toward a doctorate in English literature:

…no matter how hard I tried to learn the "proper" ways to read and write about literature, I continued to suffer feelings of loss and confusion. (5).

These testimonials to the crisis of identity in ESL and multi-cultural students caused by their efforts to adopt a new rhetoric point to the need for American university faculty to acknowledge that these students are not merely being asked to try on a different costume, but rather to question their cultural ways of seeing and knowing.