Language Value
June 2020, Volume 12, Number 1 pp. 88-111
ISSN 1989-7103
English, Spanish o los dos? Teaching professional writing on
the U.S.-Mexico border
Theresa Donovan
Teresa Quezada
Isabel Baca
The University of Texas at El Paso, USA
ABSTRACT
In ―Spanish for the Professions and Specific Purposes: Curricular Mainstay,‖ Doyle discusses how SPSP
is poised to become an ―adaptable signature feature of future Spanish curricula‖ (2018: 96). For SPSP to
become a mainstay, Doyle argues that it requires ―greater needs-grounded imagination (…) whose
potential SPSP portfolios will vary according to educational missions and contexts‖ and proposes
certificate programs as responsive and adaptable programs to fit diverse curricular contexts (2018: 96-
97). In this paper, the authors discuss the development of a cross-disciplinary certificate program in
Bilingual Professional Writing (Spanish/English) at a public university on the U.S./Mexico border to
meet the needs of our unique student body and to better prepare students as globally-minded writing
professionals. This model values students’ home languages and echoes Collier and Thomas’ (2004)
assertion that a bilingual and dual language approach can be astoundingly effective at the university level.
Keywords: Professional Writing Programs, Bilingual Writing in Higher Education, Language for
Specific Purposes
I. INTRODUCTION
―English, Spanish o los dos?‖ To faculty in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies program at
the University of Texas at El Paso (UT-El Paso), the answer was unquestionably los dos
when we began to redesign the curriculum for a professional writing certificate for
undergraduate and graduate students. At the core of the certificate design is a
curriculum that emphasizes written communication and strives to incorporate both
Spanish and English equally in the required courses. The redesigned curriculum was
launched in fall of 2018 as the Bilingual and Professional Writing Certificate (BPWC)
program. The BPWC is the first and perhaps only program of its kind in the U.S. to
focus specifically on writing in Spanish and English for professional contexts. In the
BPWC, two languages are then used for the specific purpose of communicating
professionally. This UT-El Paso program attends to both local and global needs. At the
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local level, it honors our students’ language assets and maximizes our university’s
unique location on the U.S.-Mexico border. At the global level, it prepares students for
today’s workforce, which is quickly becoming more multilingual and globalized, and
provides them the opportunity to become effective, ethical and dynamic bilingual
professionals. Our goal in this paper is to explain the significance of the program, the
curricular design choices made by the founding instructors and its unique position at the
crossroads of both Language for Specific Purposes and Rhetoric and Writing Studies.
Before entering into the particulars of the program, it is important to note why we
situate the BPWC within the broader approaches of Language for Specific Purposes
(LSP)i and Rhetoric and Writing Studiesii as we draw upon scholarship from LSP and
our discipline, Rhetoric and Writing Studies (RWS). LSP curricula are interdisciplinary
by nature, and draw upon the research and methods of the disciplines they serve. More
often than not, LSP is part of a foreign language curriculum or departments; in our case,
the BPWC is a joint effort with the Translation program in the Department of
Languages and Linguistics but forms an administrative unit of the Rhetoric and Writing
Studies Program within the Department of English at UT-El Paso. On a basic level, the
primary goal of LSP is to prepare students for the practical application of a target
language in professional environments (Lafford 2012), while the primary goal of RWS
is to prepare students for the rigors of writing in professional and academic contexts.
The key tenets of our disciplinary approach to teaching writing is that writing is a
rhetorical, situational and social act, and values students’ own language or language
varieties. Thus the BPWC program allows students to embrace their English-Spanish
bilingualism, value their home languages and enrich their education while improving
their workplace discourse.
The present article focuses on both curriculum design and implementation of the BPWC
and examines the topic in relation to a particular geographical context. The article is
organized by first discussing the background of the university and its student body, the
requirements for the certificate, and then the process of creating the courses and
materials with particular emphasis on three trends in LSP and RWS pedagogies:
technology, ethics, and service-learning. In tandem with the discussion, we argue that
the BPWC is an LSP-writing program and advocate for the advantages of using a
rhetorical approach in LSP instruction.
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II. GEOGRAPHIC AND DEMOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND
The University of Texas at El Paso is a public, doctoral-granting institution located in
one of the world’s largest bi-national and bilingual metropolitan areas which includes
840,000 residents of the far-west Texas city, El Paso, and 1.39 million residents of
Ciudad Juárez, México. Founded in 1914, the university began with an enrollment of 27
students and one degree program. Today, UT-El Paso offers 170 bachelor’s, master’s
and doctoral degree programs in 10 colleges and schools to its more than 25,000
students. As a commuter campus, the student body reflects the demographics of the bi-
national region where it is located;
82% of UT-El Paso students self-identify as
Hispanic and 78% of them further identify as being of Mexican heritage (U.S. Census
Bureau 2018). Additionally, two-thirds of El Paso households identify as Spanish
speakers (U.S. Census Bureau 2018). These statistics do not include the approximately
1,000 Mexican nationals who also attend the university each semester—thus making
UT-El Paso a Mexican-American majority student population that is highly bilingual
and multicultural.
Apart from our student demographics, the geographic, cultural and economic ties
between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez provide prolific options for bilingual employment.
Geographically, the two cities share an international border and three ports of entry
where millions of passenger vehicles and pedestrians cross annuallyiii, yet the
relationship between the cities transcends this divide. The concept that is used often to
describe the link between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez is symbiosis (Chamberlain 2007),
and the interaction between the cities is, according to El Paso city leaders, ―a unique and
unbreakable historical, familial and economic connection that has resulted in a rich
culture and vibrant economy...bolstered by $51.1 billion in trade‖ that ―account[s] for
18% of all trade between the two countries‖ (El Paso City Resolution 2010: 3).
Furthermore, every year ―Juarenses spend $1.2 Billion in the El Paso economy and over
60,000 jobs in El Paso are dependent upon economic activity in Juarez‖ (El Paso City
Resolution 2010: 3)iv.
This brief snapshot of the relationship between the sister cities and the larger regional
economy demonstrates the extraordinary business and job opportunities available for
bilingual professionals on the border, and explains the impetus for the development of a
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Bilingual Professional Writing Certificate Program at UT-El Paso. Our unique
situatedness and student body made it an obvious choice to implement a bilingual
writing certificate.
III. THE BILINGUAL PROFESSIONAL WRITING CERTIFICATE
Housed in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies
(RWS) Program within the English
Department, the certificate program aims to prepare students:
1)
to analyze the workplace situations that demand written responses in
English, Spanish or both
2)
to ethically consider the audience and purpose when composing
The certificate was also designed to enhance the students’ specific discipline rather than
focusing on writing within a discipline. In other words, the certificate can complement
any degree plan or be earned as a stand-alone certificate, and students have flexibility in
choosing the courses required for the certificate from a limited menu of options, which
will be discussed in a later section.
Although an administrative unit in the English department, the BPWC is a cross-
disciplinary endeavor with the Translation Program in the Department of Languages
and Linguistics. However, it’s important to highlight the atypical nature of the
program’s placement in the Department of English and define it within the LSP
framework. To do this, we draw upon national survey results on the state of LSP
reported in 1990 and 2012 to demonstrate that this program is, based on the survey data,
the only LSP that we know of that comes out of an English Department and is the first
of its kind to focus on the study of writing. In 1990, Grosse and Voght published the
results from a mail-in surveyv on the state of LSP in U.S. higher education which
included information on the types of institutions that offer LSP; the number and types of
LSP courses and degree tracks; the LSP partnerships among administrative units; the
perceptions of administrators regarding LSP offerings and expected growth of the field,
among others. Two decades later, in light of advances and challenges to LSP, Long and
Uscinski sought to understand how much the field had progressed since 1990 and
―deemed it fit to conduct a new survey modeled on Grosse and Voght’s work‖ (2012:
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174). The new survey incorporates and expands upon the questions used in Grosse and
Voght (1990). In ―Evolution of Languages for Specific Purposes Programs in the United
States: 1990-2011,‖ Long and Uscinski present the results of their 2011 survey and
compare and contrast them to the 1990 survey. Much like Grosse and Voght, Long and
Uscinski sent invitations to participate in the survey to department administrators of
foreign languages. Of the
1,435 survey invites, only
13%, or
183 departments
responded (2012: 174). The researchers used the online platform, Survey Monkey, to
administer the 53-question survey, ―27 of which came from the survey conducted by
Grosse and Voght (1990)‖ (Long and Uscinski 2012: 175). The survey results reported
are extensive, but we would like to focus on three areas that are pertinent to the current
discussion: LSP partnerships, LSP courses taught by non-foreign language faculty, and
LSP programs offering a degree track, minor or certificate. Respondents were asked
whether they partner with other academic units to provide LSP courses and to identify
who they partner with across campus. Twenty-four percent of foreign language
departments answered ―yes‖ and indicated that partners included professional schools of
business, nursing, public programs and education (Long and Uscinski 2012: 182) -that
is disciplines with specialized language and vocabulary. The researchers also asked
about the teaching of foreign languages by other (non-foreign-language) departments at
their institution. Ten percent of the respondents answered that other departments or
units on campus taught their courses (Long and Uscinski 2012: 182). Of all of the
responses for departments or units that were involved in foreign language teaching, the
Department of English was not listedvi, nor was it listed in the original Grosse and
Voght study in 1990 (Long and Uscinski 2012:182). Given the data collected and the
participants in both studies, UT-El Paso’s BPWC, then, may be the first non-English
LSP that emerges from a Department of English.
Moreover, to assess the strength of LSP offerings at U.S. institutions of higher
education, Long and Uscinki added a question not included in the original survey by
Grosse and Voght (1990) regarding whether the LSP was part of a formal program such
as a degree track, certificate or minor (2012: 181). At least 27% of the 183 departments
responded that they offer at least one of the above (degree track, minor or certificate);
the most common was a minor in Spanish for Business, followed by other degree
offerings in Spanish for Translation (Long and Uscinski 2012: 181). Long and Uscinski,
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however, provide a quick overview of the data on LSP programs and do not offer
specific information on certificate programs. We believe that it is of great significance
that certificate programs are not explained, and there is no mention of a bilingual
certificate program. Nevertheless, since the publication of the survey results (2012),
there has been a call from scholars to deepen and expand LSP offerings, and specifically
in the area of certificate programs. Doyle (2018: 98) promotes certificate programs and
their flexible nature and sees certificates becoming an ―adaptable signature feature of
future Spanish Curriculum‖. Although the BPWC is not strictly part of a foreign
language curriculum or department, we agree with Doyle that the certificate program is
adaptable and relevant to diverse disciplines and degree plans.
At this juncture, we would like to further define the BPWC within the LSP framework.
We have discussed earlier that, because of the nature of the program, we have drawn
upon literature in LSP to include English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Spanish for
the Professions and Specific Purposes (SPSP), yet our program does not fit into the
traditional labels as it shares some commonalities with ESP and SPSP but its primary
emphasis is written discourse in both languages. To determine how to situate the
program within an LSP framework, we turn to Doyle
(2013). In
―Continuing
Theoretical Cartography in the LSP Era,‖ Doyle predicts that non-English LSP will
undergo ―its fuller maturation process within American Higher Education‖ (2013: 3)
and:
the maturation will surely continue as all language use can be defined as LSP, one way or
another, either narrowly…or more broadly and less traditionally (e.g. LSP-Literature, i.e., the
specific use of language for literary studies and criticism, or even the supposedly more general
LSP of being able to engage in tourism…) (2013: 4).
Doyle’s emphasis on the future maturation of non-English LSP allows for ―all language
use‖ to be defined as an LSP and includes ―broader‖ and ―less traditional‖ programs that
focus on the specific use of language for diverse study areas. As such, we apply this
broader definition to the bilingual certificate program and identify it as an LSP-writing
program.
Finally, we should point out that there are different types of LSP programs. In
―Languages for Specific Purposes Business Curriculum Creation and Implementation in
the United States,‖ Fryer
(2012:
132) notes that some LSP programs focus on
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acquisition and proficiency of the target language while others, ―special collaborative
programs,‖ such as the MEXUSvii program at San Diego State U., ―requires a high
degree of language proficiency in English and Spanish, the target language‖. The
BPWC program falls into the latter category, where students must take an entrance
exam to demonstrate a high degree of language proficiency in both languages. UT-El
Paso’s program seems to be unique in its faculty’s expertise and orientation. While LSP
programs aim to teach subject matter in the target language, the BPWC faculty are
specifically trained to teach in two languages and to teach communication, both written
and oral communication, with a partnership between RWS and Translation faculty.
Thus, the certificate program’s unique blend of RWS and Translation faculty and
courses provides opportunities: learning opportunities for its students and research and
pedagogical opportunities for its faculty not previously explored in the teaching of
languages for specific purposes. Undoubtedly, the fact that the certificate program at
UT-El Paso falls under the auspices of the Rhetoric and Writing Studies program within
the Department of English has allowed for the flexibility to create curricula that are not
bound by an English-only language policy. Further, the cross-disciplinary collaboration
among the faculty also allows for cross-pollination of teaching practices from one
discipline to the other. We argue that this cross-disciplinary approach provides fertile
ground for exploring themes from multiple perspectives. In the following sections, we
present the course requirements for the certificate and discuss themes and practices that
emerged from our collaboration to support our position.
III.1. Certificate Requirements
As indicated in the UT-El Paso academic catalog (2019), the BPWC program ―is
intended to prepare students to communicate in print and digital environments ethically
and responsibly in both English and Spanish‖. UT-El Paso’s program curriculum also
emphasizes
―the practice of rhetoric, technology, and language as they apply to
bilingualism and translation in professional settings.‖ The certificate is open to students
enrolled at the undergraduate and graduate levels to enhance their degree plan or as a
stand-alone certificate. The certificate comprises
12 credit hours and 4 courses: 2
courses in Translation and 2 in Rhetoric and Writing Studies. The courses include
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Introduction to Translation, an elective in Rhetoric and Writing Studies (either Bilingual
Workplace Writing or Bilingual Technical Writing), an elective in Translation (Legal,
Business or Healthcare Translation), and a Rhetoric and Writing Studies Practicum
course. Students can choose from these pre-approved electives and enroll in the courses
that most align with their career goals. This allows for a versatile and adaptable
certificate that is applicable to numerous degree plans. So far, the majority of students
who have completed the certificate have been from the Translation Program, but interest
in the certificate program is growing as more students recognize bilingualism as a
personal and professional asset. The certificate program not only honors students’
home/heritage language; it prepares them to write professionally in two languages
regardless of their discipline. Students who leave the borderland can boast an asset that
no other university develops: bilingual composition in a professional setting. Students
who remain in the borderland region can demonstrate documented proficiency in
written bilingualism in both languages. Either way, proficiency in professional writing
in both languages, according to an European Union Report on Languages and
Employability, translates into increased employability as ―multilingualism is no longer a
choice or an option; it has become a must for business growth‖ (European Commission
Joint Research Centre 2015: 20).
III.2. Theoretical foundations
As mentioned previously, the certificate also emphasizes rhetoric, technology and
ethics. All program instructors, regardless of departmental affiliation, have received
targeted training in these three areas, including training in teaching bilingual writing as
a requirement for their teaching in the program. The courses’ theoretical foundation is
rhetoric since the certificate is aimed at the teaching of effective writing in professional
contexts - whether the resulting text is in English, Spanish or both, the focus is on the
written word. Given its rhetorical orientation, the program looks to the National Council
of Teachers of English’s position statement on Understanding and Teaching Writing,
Guiding Principles (2018) to guide the program’s teaching and course objectives. As
the position statement explains, ―when it is effective, writing is rhetorical, i.e., it takes
into account the values, ideologies, interests, needs, and commitments of the people, the
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audiences, for whom it is intended.‖ It is necessary to point out that we rely heavily on
using the rhetorical situation as a means to teach students how to create effective
messages for diverse audiences and contexts. Scholars in RWS have used the term
rhetorical situation since Bitzer defined it in 1968. Loosely, we follow Grant-Davie’s
characterization of the rhetorical situation ―as a set of related factors whose interaction
creates and controls discourse‖ (1997: 265). The NCTE Position Statement (2018)
names the related factors of writers, purposes, audiences and contexts as key to
informing the choices that writers make when composing. The related factors should
guide writers’ (NCTE 2018):
content (the subject or focus of the writing);
form (the shape of the writing, including its organization, structure, flow, and composition
elements like words, symbols, images, etc.);
style/register (the choice of discourse and syntax used for the writing, chosen from among the
vast array of language systems [often called ―dialects‖] that are available for the writer), and
mechanics (punctuation, citational style, etc.).
Particularly in the RWS courses within the BPWC, students are asked to carefully
consider how their specific audience will use their text. That audience analysis leads
them to identify appropriately worded content, form, register and language, to include
dialect. Assignments are designed where students must consider the specific rhetorical
situation of an assigned prompt in order to do well; for example, in the Workplace
Writing course, students have a sensitive letter assignment that is scenario-based.
Students are provided with the assignment and important details that they will use when
analyzing the writing situation. For example, one scenario asks students to respond to
the president of the local chamber of commerce. The president requests free or reduced
prices for a company’s services as a ―favor‖ because of his/her position. The student
responds as the owner of the company where the services are requested. It is not enough
for the student to craft a letter in the correct format or in ―good‖ English or Spanish, for
the letter to be effective students must carefully analyze the scenario and the interaction
of the factors when crafting their response because the response must consider their
standing in relation to the president of the chamber of commerce to choose the right
tone. They have to weigh carefully their word choice because the letter could have real
consequences (i.e., blacklisting from the chamber of commerce or alternately other
business owners could expect the same ―deal‖). In the Technical Writing course,
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students are asked to develop a set of instructions for a process or procedure of their
choosing, and ideally in their field or future profession, and also prepare an
accompanying memo that identifies the cultural elements that must be considered as the
instructions are prepared for translation to be used in a specific Spanish-speaking
country. To complete the assignment successfully, students must demonstrate that they
understand not only how the language must be tailored to the instruction set users, but
what language, register, and cultural aspects must be considered when composing the
instructions.
This deliberate and explicit focus on rhetoric enhances what Ruggiero alludes to in her
―Graduate Courses in Languages for Specific Purposes: Needs, Challenges and Models‖
(2014). Ruggiero’s survey of graduate programs in the area of languages for specific
purposes identified
―few opportunities for graduate students to gain the necessary
experience, training and expertise to either teach or pursue non-academic interests in
this area‖ (2014: 56). She thus recommends transforming graduate foreign language
programs from their current focus on training future academics by developing courses
―that situate language within broader social, historical, geographic and cross-cultural
perspectives‖ as advocated by the 2007 Modern Language Association assessment of
the state of foreign languages
(2014:
59). Her re-centered course
―presents a
multicultural approach to the teaching of Spanish for Specific Purposes (SSP)viii and
civic engagement‖ (2014: 62). Although Ruggiero does not specifically address how
she incorporates rhetorical studies or theory into her re-centered course, the 2nd section
of her
5-part course focuses on
―The Rhetorical View of Specialized Languages:
Effective Communication in Intercultural Context‖ (2014: 64). Ruggiero’s background
and expertise is not rhetoric and writing rather a foreign language discipline, yet she has
nonetheless woven rhetoric into her language teaching. Her rhetorical approach
emphasizes the need to communicate effectively for broad audiences and provides
students the opportunity to develop cultural and intercultural competence. For the
BPWC, both its graduate and undergraduate students can expect to incorporate
rhetorical theory in their coursework that expectation is explicit in all program courses.
Our goal is to thus provide students with the opportunities Ruggiero found lacking in
graduate language education.
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We also believe in using Bitzer’s (1992) formal exploration of rhetorical situations
across the disciplines as a way to frame the intentional choices we made in curriculum
design and instruction. Also echoed in the NCTE’s position statement, Blitzer defined a
rhetorical situation as one where ―a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations
presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed
if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as
to bring about significant modification of the exigence‖ (1992: 6). Our curriculum
design and instruction both utilized this concept and included it as part of the
curriculum. We understood that the certificate program involved: 1) people, that is, the
University’s administration, both faculty departments teaching in the program, students
desiring to augment their skill set to become more marketable in a burgeoning
interconnected and global society; 2) events, in the sense of an increasing awareness of
multilingualism as an asset in the border region, the appropriate mix of capable
instructors; and 3) relations, meaning the complex of the people and circumstances
identified. These interrelated factors allowed us to address the need to teach writing in
two languages: the exigence. Our curriculum is designed to help students recognize the
exigence in situations that demand an appropriate response and then teach them to use
appropriate rhetorical strategies to craft the appropriate response. Along with our
understanding of the rhetorical situation in which we developed the program, we also
recognized trends in higher education that would also inform our pedagogies and
practices in the program. We discuss those in the following section.
IV. PEDAGOGIES AND PRACTICES
Many scholars assert that students who take LSP courses tend to approach the courses
as applied learning environments—meaning that they ―intend to use that knowledge on
a frequent basis in their future work environments for the benefit of the enterprise for
which they work and/or the clientele base with whom they will interact‖ (Lafford 2012:
21). With that in mind, we knew that we had to approach course design by carefully
considering both student and future employer expectations. Three main trends emerged
from faculty discussions and research that we believed had to be addressed in course
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content, delivery, or as part of the final program outcomes to address student and
industry expectations: digital technologies, ethics for writers and service-learning.
IV.1. Digital technologies
In regards to digital technologies, we aimed to understand Generation Z, also known as
iGeneration. Gen Z are students born between 1995-2012 (see Stillman and Stillman
2017). General observations that can be made about Gen Z students may be helpful in
informing teaching practices; they are the first generation, from birth, to have access to
technology and the Internet
(Seemiller and Grace
2016), and they have been
characterized as having short attention spans and expecting the use of up to date
technology in their educational experiences. Scholars such as Hopkins et al. (2018) have
suggested the use of social media and other web-based tools such as podcasts, YouTube
and FaceBook instead of traditional methods of teaching. Arnó-Macià (2012: 95)
asserts, too, that online learning: ―seems to be especially appropriate for LSP given that
it allows for the customization of learning to suit students’ needs…‖ For this reason, the
BPWC was designed as a 100% online program where instructors could customize the
learning experience albeit within the university-selected learning management system.
Our courses are conducive to an online environment because they are writing intensive,
and students have to use writing as the primary means to communicate they are writing
more in this delivery format than any other because much of the student-teacher, and
student-student interaction must be in the form of written discussion boards or emails.
The RWS courses, as bilingual classes, are designed using a 50-50 model such that the
content and assignments are divided equally between Spanish and English. This may
take on diverse structures in the online environment, but the most common format is
alternating weeks between Spanish and English. The determining factor in selecting the
language for major assignments is the nature of the assignment and its fit into the
overall course. In informal assignments, such as discussion board posts, students are
also encouraged to use both languages. Often, students are told they need to
compartmentalize the use of different languages; our courses afford students the
opportunity to choose the language/s that they have commonly used to write. Further,
while RWS courses require writing as the principal mode of completing an assignment,
not all assignments follow traditional print format. Students may complete assignments
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that call for a twitter feed, a presentation deck, a podcast script or they may have to
determine the most rhetorically effective mode to use for a specific scenario.
The overall instructional design is one of a flipped classroomix that incorporates a
variety of educational sources from YouTube videos, academic articles and other web
content, and students engage in their learning through peer, teacher, team and external
audience interactions. For example, for a module on writing an application letter (cover
letter) and résumé for a current job or internship, in addition to readings in the
textbooks, students learn about the different terms that are used to refer to a résumé in
Spanish (C.V., hoja de vida, etc.), read an academic article on ―Translating Politeness in
Bilingual English-Spanish Business Correspondence‖ by Fuertes-Olivera and Nielson
(2008), watch YouTube videos on tips for creating an effective CV and visit websites
from diverse countries such as Chile, Mexico, and Spain. Students engage with the
content in three discussion boards: a class, reading and team forum. Discussion board
questions foster debate, problem-solving and reflection so students gain a critical
understanding of the rhetorical choices they make in communicating effectively with
multicultural audiences. According to King de Ramírez (2017: 68), ―...this is especially
important for HLs [Heritage Learners] who may assume that cultural practices learned
at home are shared by all Hispanics in their community‖. Typical questions posed in the
discussion forums are designed for students to consider the rhetorical situation to help
them to understand and manage cultural differences, such as:
What is the appropriate tone in professional writing contexts?
Are there differences in how appropriate tone is defined in English and Spanish?
What does goodwill mean? How do you create this in your writing?
After the reading, explain what differences you found in the norms for writing
résumés in Spanish and English? Did you identify any differences among the
examples from Spanish-speaking countries?
By way of discussion boards and other collaboration tools, the courses foster
engagement, and also teamwork. In the technical writing course, students complete their
final project in teams and are expected to develop their own parameters and roles for
group members to finalize their technical report. Online and distributed collaboration is
intended to mirror today’s globalized workforce environment and aligns with the
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attributes that employers value most: ―problem-solving skills and an ability to work in a
team‖ (National Association of Colleges and Employers 2018). We recognize students
are navigating different time zones, and personal, work and school schedules, so they
are encouraged to use both the university’s learning management system and other
communication technologies that foster collaboration and coordination as they produce
a multi-step and complex text. The goal is to foster adaptability and awareness of
various technology that allows for collaboration and coordination—the same
adaptability that employers will expect our graduates to demonstrate when they join a
global workforce.
To reinforce concepts of external audiences, that is audiences other than the instructor,
and foster intercultural sensitivities, we have laid the groundwork for collaboration
between sections of technical writing at UT-El Paso and the University of Puerto Rico,
Mayagüez campus. In a pilot study, students participated in peer reviewing a technical
report and presentation and provided feedback on the process. The peer review is
important because it allows students to appreciate the complexities of writing for a
global audience while developing cultural sensitivity and intercultural competencies.
Donovan and Quezada assert that the peer review brings to life the Conference on
College Composition and Communication (CCCC) ―Principles for Post-Secondary
Teaching of Writing;‖ specifically our writing instruction ―considers the needs of real
audiences,‖ ―recognizes writing as a social act [and] writing processes as iterative and
complex,‖ and
―depends upon frequent, timely, and context-specific feedback to
students…‖ (2015). The cross-cultural peer review added another audience to both the
UT-El Paso and UPR-Mayagüez students. They knew they were now writing not only
for their respective instructors, but that other readers would be reviewing their work for
overall understanding and clarity and that these new readers were culturally diverse.
Their peers would also be looking for ideas to strengthen their own writing since both
sets of students were enrolled in technical writing courses. Students were then asked to
reflect on the process and comment on the strengths and weaknesses in the drafts they
reviewed and consider how the review further informed their subsequent revision
process. Although there were challenges to conducting peer review digitally, across
time zones, and with unique student populations, we believe that this is a sustainable
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pedagogical practice and important to LSP curriculum development for the
21st
century.
Recognizing Gen Z’s desire to customize and have additional resources available to
them at the push of a button, BPWC faculty have collaborated with UT-El Paso Library
professionals and developed a Library Research Guide (or LibGuide) that includes
carefully curated additional electronic resources for all courses. The LibGuide provides
both students and faculty with bilingual and monolingual resources for writing in
different contexts as well as glossaries, and style and grammar handbooks. The
LibGuide and an embedded course/program librarian, who has been a critical resource
to the certificate program since its inception, provide students an organized reservoir
that can further enhance their sources while managing the materials instructors must
require or provide in individual courses.
IV.2. Ethics for writers
An ongoing element of RWS curriculum has been writers’ ethical considerations and
the development of those considerations as students develop their assignments.
Recognizing that having the certificate program designation on student transcripts
would increase prospective employers’ or graduate programs’ expectations of our
graduates, we understood that ethics had to be foregrounded for students and
incorporated into the overall program structure. The desire to infuse more general skills,
such as leadership, in foreign language study was also forwarded in 2011 in the 21st
Century Skills Map by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
(ACTFL) and P21 (2011). Other scholars such as Uribe et al. (2014), Long et al. (2014)
and Doyle (2017) propose developing leadership with integrity as a core value within
the curriculum. The need for leadership skills is also seconded by the National
Association of Colleges and Employers study (2018) that lists leadership as the fourth
most desirable attribute that employers seek. We agree, then, with Derby et al. (2017:
85) that
―leadership as an educational notion is rising in importance throughout
academe that we should ...find creative ways to incorporate this key concept into FL
[Foreign Language] curricula as often as possible‖.
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For the BPWC curriculum, we focused on one key attribute of leadership: the principle
of ethics. Following Uribe et al. (2014) and Doyle (2017), ethics was ―infused‖ into the
curriculum, starting first with the program outcome statements and then into each of the
course outcomes in the syllabi. For example, the Bilingual Workplace Writing syllabus
highlights in the outcomes statements that students will ―consider the ethical dimensions
of composing and working within and with organizations as well as the ethical
dimensions of translation in professional settings.‖ Ethics instruction is supported in
BPWC courses through specific modules that ask students to consider the ethical
implications of their writing. While translation brings with it a specific ethical
consideration usually found in professional associations’ codes of ethics (See American
Translators Association Code of Ethics and Professional Practice 2019), students are not
always aware of how ethics relates to their professional and technical communication.
The RWS faculty carefully considered the inclusion of ethics discussions in their
textbook and instructional material selection; they provide specific discussions of
ethical implications for student writing at the outset of the courses, and also weave those
ethical considerations into subsequent assignments. In Workplace Writing, an ethics
section is included in every weekly lecture. Students are asked to explore the
Professional Ethics-Code of Conduct on the Association for Business Communication
website (2019). They also discuss recent ethics’ scandals in the local, state or national
government. In the Technical Writing course, students are introduced to the ethical
considerations for technical writers as described in the Society for Technical
Communication Ethical Principles
(2018). Further discussion regarding specific
scenarios through assignments helps students understand how their writing can result in
or respond effectively to ethical dilemmas or ethical lapses. As we continue to refine the
BPWC curriculum, we see ethics as a fundamental part of a curriculum that responds to
the growing need to develop future leaders and professional, ethical writers.
IV.3. Service-Learning
In the Rhetoric and Writing Studies Practicum course, students are asked to work with a
non-profit organization as bilingual, professional writers. The benefits that come from
this experience are underscored by Deans (2000) who argues how service-learning is
one means by which we can emphasize how writing is a social act. He relates service-
learning to writing by showing us how service-learning exposes students to multiple
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discourses and asks them to write within these different nonacademic discourse
communities. In addition, service-learning asks students to situate their work in wider
non-academic communities, and it has students cross cultural and class boundaries by
working with community organizations and their clients who often hold subject
positions different from their own (Deans, 2000). In short, service-learning can be
viewed as the fruition of some of the most important contemporary theoretical claims of
rhetoric and writing studies.
Furthermore, in the practicum course, Deans’ paradigm of ―writing for the community‖
is used. By having students write in both English and Spanish for the community, the
primary site for learning is the nonprofit organization rather than the classroom, and
workplace discourse becomes the most highly valued discourse. Students work with the
agency contact (their agency mentor) and the instructor becomes a facilitator of the
process (Deans 2000: 17). Thus, students learn nonacademic writing practices and
reflect on the differences between academic and workplace discourses, and students
provide needed writing products for agencies, focusing on different audiences,
purposes, and contexts. In addition, other benefits come from this service-learning
experience. As King de Ramírez (2017: 56) states: ―service learning allows students the
opportunity to observe authentic language usage, network with individuals outside
academia, and become familiar with sociocultural issues that affect their immediate
community‖.
The writing practicum begins by students selecting a community writing partner (a non-
profit organization who has partnered with the Department of English for this type of
service-learning experience) and developing a practicum contract with the agency
mentor. Students are informed ahead of time what the organization’s literacy, writing,
and communication needs are, and these needs include the production of texts in
English, Spanish, and/or both
(bilingual). Based on these needs and the student’s
academic background, skills, and interests, the student negotiates the projects to be
completed with the agency mentor. The instructor must approve and sign off on this
contract before the student begins working with the agency mentor. A major
requirement is for students to produce texts in both languages, English and Spanish.
Throughout the course, students provide progress reports to the course instructor where
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they outline the status of their projects and how close they are to completion of the tasks
listed in their contract.
Consequently, students, by the end of the practicum, have produced texts, in print
and/or digital, in English and Spanish, for their community. Deliverables can include
websites, newsletters, grants, recommendation reports, brochures, PowerPoint
presentations and other workplace and professional texts. At times, students will create
these texts in English, Spanish, or both. At other times, students may translate existing
texts from one language to the other. But for the texts created and/or translated, students
revise, edit, and proofread these texts before submitting them to the non-profit
organization. The deliverables are evaluated by both the course instructor and the
agency mentor; this way, as Bacon (1997) advises, instructors call upon the expertise of
the community writing partners (the agency mentors). Students then benefit from the
input of two experts—the writing instructor and the agency mentor. This practice helps
instructors too in that it can support the teacher’s expectations of students in the
classroom when the same expectations and standards are echoed by the agency mentor
who represents the needs of real readers (1997: 39-55). In addition, students, through
their writing practicum, are working now with professionals outside academia, and as
Long (2017) asserts, ―the most successful LSP programs include courses in a variety of
approaches to several disciplines and put students into contact with experts in the field‖
(2017: 4).
Moreover, aside from being grounded in service-learning scholarship, the practicum
course responds to Wu’s lament that ―a limited number of foreign language programs in
the United States...provide their students with experiential learning opportunities that
require them to functionally use their linguistic and intercultural skills in professional
contexts‖ (2017: 567). As students work with their agency and faculty mentors, they
practice writing, in English and Spanish, within a professional context and for an actual
audience in the community.
V. CONCLUSION
We asked English, Spanish o los dos? The BPWC program most emphatically answers
―los dos‖. Achieving los dos, however, in ways that meet current industry and student
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Theresa Donovan, Teresa Quezada and Isabel Baca
demands as well as meeting pedagogical and curricular trends presents both challenges
and opportunities. As we developed the program, we considered UT-El Paso and the
program’s location, both geographically, interculturally and within the University
structure. The program developed in response to the El Paso community’s implicit and
tacit need for bilingual communicators, but it also responds to the global and
intercultural realities our students are expected to navigate once they graduate,
certificate in hand. Making the program attractive to students and effective as an online
certificate meant we had to design the program with current trends in mind and
operationalize those trends in each of the courses. We believe in doing so, we will
become part of future LSP transformation and can contribute to the specific purpose by
introducing rhetorical theory used in monolingual and general purpose composition
courses. As the program grows, we anticipate we can evaluate individual courses, assess
pedagogical practices, enhance digital technologies used and track our students’
successes while keeping our program’s goal, to develop ethical, bilingual, culturally
sensitive and dynamic communicators, firmly in mind.
Notes
i Language for Specific Purposes is an approach most often applied to the teaching of English for
professional contexts (English for Specific Purposes) although there is increasing demand and growth in
Spanish for Professional and Specific Purposes (SPSP) in the US. Given the bilingual nature of the
BPWC, we include LSP scholarship from all three of these areas.
ii Rhetoric and Writing Studies (RWS) in the United States emerged from English Departments and
literary studies in an effort to study, initially, the traditional Greco-Roman concepts of rhetoric and how
students learn and instructors teach composition. Since about the mid-twentieth century, however, the
discipline has grown to encompass multiple concepts of rhetoric and explores writing process(es) through
various lenses. The discipline has continued to grow and is a separate field of study from its English
Department roots. Degrees at undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels are awarded by a number of
programs. In many instances, RWS programs have become independent academic departments within
their universities.
iii In
2011, the City of El Paso International Bridges Department reported that ―more than 3.6 million
passenger vehicles, 4.2 million pedestrians and 300,000 commercial vehicles crossed into Ciudad Juárez
through the three bridges‖ (City of El Paso 2020).
iv See also El Paso Regional Economic Development Corporation. REDco (2005-2006 Labor Market
Assessment by the Wadley Donovan Group).
v The mail-in survey consisted of a two-sided questionnaire and was mailed to chairs of departments of
foreign and classical languages at 4-year institutions in the U.S. The total surveys sent out were 3,093;
26%, or 790, responded (Grosse and Voght 1990: 37).
vi In the
1990 survey, departments that taught foreign languages included Continuing Education,
Theology, Religion, History, Asian Studies, Native American Studies, Schools of Law, Engineering,
Social and Behavioral Sciences, Education, Foreign Service and Diplomacy. In 2011, Long and Uscinski
added to this list: Anthropology, Biblical Studies, Business, Humanities, Linguistics, Philosophy, and
Pan-African Studies (2012: 182).
vii Undergraduate transnational dual degree program in the U.S. and Mexico (Office of Postsecondary
Education 2007).
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viii Some scholars use Spanish for Specific Purposes (SPS); Others use Spanish for the Professions and
Specific Purposes (SPSP). Depending on the context and the material we are citing, we use both terms
and acronyms in this article.
ix Flipped classroom model or inverted classrooms occur when instructors assign class content to students
to be completed outside of traditional class time. The content may include traditional readings or multi-
media content such as videos from multiple sources. The goal is to allow for more active learning during
class time. Class time is then dedicated to working through problems, discussing complex, complicated
concepts and engaging in collaborative learning (Roehl et al. 2013). In the RWS class, these activities
may include workshopping students’ writing, discussing rhetorical concepts, peer review and student-
teacher conferences or reviews.
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Received: 28 November 2019
Accepted: 23 May 2020
Cite this article as:
Donovan, Theresa; Quezada, Teresa and Baca, Isabel. 2020. ―English, Spanish o los dos?
Teaching professional writing on the U.S.-Mexico border‖. Language Value, 12 (1), 88-111.
Jaume I University ePress: Castelló, Spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es.
ISSN 1989-7103
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