Lending a Sensitive Ear: Examining Rhetorical Listening as Heuristic for ESL Students in Composition Classrooms Melanie Santarossa English Graduate Student University of Windsor 12 May 2009

“Because what exactly does it mean for a student to be ESL?” -Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, English May Be My Second Language, but I’m Not ESL, 8.

How do you approach difference in your classrooms?

Sensitivity entails an instructor’s ability to recognize that “the linguistic form that a student brings to school is intimately connected with loved ones, community, culture and personal identity” -Lisa Delpit, Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, 53.

English=assimilation

“Contrastive rhetoric is the study of the discourse patterns and features of writers from different language backgrounds” -Carlo Severino, Introduction to Contrastive Rhetoric from Writing in Multicultural Settings, 1.

“Rhetorical Listening allows for cross- cultural communication” -Krista Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness, 19.

As instructors grade “[we are] usually evaluating, judging, ranking; [whereas] when responding, [we are] often suggesting, free association, playing” -Lad Tobin, Writing Relationships, 71.

Why should we care who our students are?

Thanks so much. Thanks so much. Contact me: Melanie Santarossa