Although some US universities have redesigned their first-year composition courses by including some multicultural materials and technologies (new media) in recent years, much more work remains to address the increasing linguistic diversity of US university student populations. Hence, in my dissertation, I propose further revision for first-year composition courses because they still tend to be US Anglo-centric and do not tend to validate multilingual and multicultural rhetorics outside of the Anglo-American rhetorical tradition. On the other hand, due to the rapid development of modern science, technology, and business communication in the 21st century, the world has become a global village. As a result, the students we produce in one corner of the world will be serving in the other corners of the world in this postmodern globalized village. Therefore, instructors, composition administrators, and publishers should think about what kind of pedagogy, course materials, and technology we have to include in first-year college composition courses to meet the needs and expectations of the 21st century’s globalized world.
My primary research interests include Web 2.0 and writing, cross-cultural composition, theories and practices of writing, postmodern rhetoric, L2 theories and writing, and global indigenous rhetorics. I believe that these areas help me create a new area in writing that better serves the needs and expectations of the 21st century’s audiences. Furthermore, my dissertation—Cross-Cultural Composition 2.0: Mapping/(Re)mapping Spaces of ESL Students in the First-Year Composition Course—examines the course materials, technology/new media, pedagogy, and theories and practices of US academic writing in first-year composition courses. In my dissertation, I theorize cross-cultural composition 2.0 (CCC 2.0), which is a construction of inclusive and democratic spaces because it includes multicultural materials, Web 2.0 tools, critical pedagogy, and theories of composition studies from the glocal (global and local) perspective. Similarly, my work also encourages bilingual/multilingual immigrant and monolingual students to constantly engage in dialogues in a non-threatening environment to become critical and analytical writers. Through the dialogical process, I want students to create multiple realities (as social constructs) by validating various cultural and linguistic rhetorical traditions.
In the near future, I plan to write articles and books on CCC 2.0 and will present at conferences to demonstrate its importance. In addition, my semesters teaching professional writing at UTEP have led me to research how traditional theories and methodology of workplace writing and technical writing have to be revised in the context of a globalized world. Moreover, understanding the value of praxis, I will connect my research and teaching, asking questions such as why my research matters to a student’s life and how it can be taught effectively to connect glocal settings. By addressing these lines of inquiry, I will, in near future, propose/introduce a new global academic discourse to develop a new writing paradigm in first-year composition, workplace writing, and other genres of writing. My research provides students with knowledge regarding how they have to embrace technology, theory, and writing to bring their voices in their academic writing and other genres of writing. In short, by addressing glocal writing issues, I will remap writing in a way that will encourage students to create democratic and inclusive spaces in the 21st century’s global village.
