Accessibility Tools

Maximizing Student Agency in Placement Decisions

December 13, 2016
© Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com © Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com

In Decisions, Agency, and Advising: Key Issues in the Placement of Multilingual Writers into First-Year Composition Courses, I investigate how multilingual writers—including international students and residents or US citizens who are non-native users of English—make their placement decisions and find that students’ own agency is essential when they decide to take a mainstream or multilingual composition course. 

shutterstock 200546537

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com

In Decisions, Agency, and Advising: Key Issues in the Placement of Multilingual Writers into First-Year Composition Courses, I investigate how multilingual writers—including international students and residents or US citizens who are non-native users of English—make their placement decisions and find that students’ own agency is essential when they decide to take a mainstream or multilingual composition course. Agency, as I propose in the book, is the capacity to act or not to act, contingent upon various conditions. Building on these students’ placement experiences and interviews with academic advisors, writing teachers, and writing program administrators (WPAs), I argue that student agency can inform the overall programmatic placement of multilingual students into first-year composition courses and subsequently propose ways in which writing programs can maximize student agency in the process of placement decisions. My goal for this current blog post is twofold: to reiterate how important student agency is in placement decisions and to consider some practical strategies to maximize student agency. I would also like to note that while my data sources came from multilingual students, I believe that what I discuss below is relevant to all student populations in writing programs.

To begin with, agency is contingent upon various conditions, such as freedom to choose writing courses and placement information that students obtain from various sources (e.g., academic advisors’ recommendations, new student orientations, and other students’ past experiences in taking first-year composition courses). When conditions for agency are made available to students, they will be able to negotiate placement, choose to accept or deny placement, self-assess when making placement decisions, and plan for and question placement. These acts of agency lead to students’ ability to make well-informed placement decisions. Thus, a critical question is, how do we maximize student agency?

In addressing this important placement question, I think about making or improving placement procedures to allow conditions for agency to be optimal. For this to happen, all placement stakeholders—students, academic advisors, writing teachers, and WPAs—must be involved. First, writing programs, if possible, should provide various placement options for students to choose. In the body of second language (L2) writing placement literature, current placement options include mainstream composition, basic writing, L2 writing, and cross-cultural composition in which an equal number of native and non-native English students enroll in the same class. Second, since accurate and complete placement information is essential for students to make well-informed placement decisions, I urge writing programs to keep students, academic advisors, and writing teachers informed about placement. Writing programs can make placement information readily available at different venues, including on websites and at new student orientations. It is also a great idea to create placement handouts/brochures that include necessary information, including placement options and how placement is determined, and distribute them to students, academic advisors, and writing teachers. At my current institution, the placement brochures and handouts are distributed to students at new student orientation and to academic advisors via e-mail. I have found this practice one of the most efficient ways to communicate placement to the placement stakeholders. Based on my experience as a WPA, communication plays a key role in the placement of students into first-year composition courses. Finally, once students are provided with different placement options and are informed of necessary placement details, they will be able to make well-informed placement decisions. I maintain that we listen to students and allow them to make their own placement decisions.


Tanita Saenkhum is assistant professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she directs the English as a Second Language (ESL) program and teaches courses on second language writing and TESOL. She has published in Journal of Second Language Writing, WPA: Writing Program Administration, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, and WPA-CompPile Research Bibliographies. Her writing has appeared in several edited collections. She is the author of Decisions, Agency, and Advising: Key Issues in the Placement of Multilingual Writers into First-Year Composition Courses.

University Press of Colorado University of Alaska Press Utah State University Press University of Wyoming Press