why am i in eng 101?

What is the point of English 101? In high school we attend classes of different subject matter, and are slightly exposed to the idea that not all disciplines communicate the same. We know to use slightly different words when describing aspects of literature and narrative in English class than we do describing chemical reactions in chemistry. However, at the university level the difference in language usage is even more pronounced, the ways of developing and presenting an argument are more specific, so a student must learn to communicate in different ways in different classes. As a student progresses through their major courses the goal is the communication will become easier because they are now engrained in the disciplinary discourse of their major.


The problem with this model is the lack of exposure to this type of communication prior to beginning university life. Most high school students naturally shift their discourse as they move between situations, speaking one way with parents, a different with teachers, and a different with friends. They do this code switching unconsciously. At the university level they are expected to code switch into impersonal academic discourse, communicating properly within the discipline of their choice without direct instruction. When they fail at this task, when they can’t pass their PSY 400 paper off as psychology lingo enough, the English 101 teacher is blamed. Clearly no one at the university taught that student to write. But is it really writing that’s the issue, or is the lack of understanding by the student that they need to learn the code of psychology to write a paper for PSY 400 and earn a good grade. It has become the burden of the English 101 teacher to teach the student not just academic discourse, and the way to construct a rhetorical argument at the university level, it has now also become the job of ENG 101 to teach students to be aware of code switching and how to code switch themselves into discipline specific lingo.

So . . .in the classroom setting, what’s language (what the code is presented in) have to do with anything? In the course of a normal day we use language to create an image of ourselves in specific context with specific people. We think through language, we describe through language, we create our reality through language. In the university, disciplines have created themselves and their importance through specific language. The language is then used as a test of identity. If you can’t use the language properly, you clearly aren’t a member of this group. Language and identity presentation through language is the way we test each other for authenticity. So . . .the ENG 101 classroom now not only has to teach argument presentation, academic discourse, code switching, we also have to teach the importance of code switching. These are all things we do every day in settings we have innately learned these skills, why is it so hard to do all this in the university setting?