Welcome

International Voices in the U.S. Academy

At George Mason University, one of the most diverse institutions in the nation, we recognize the importance of valuing and appreciating diverse accents, whether spoken or written. With this is mind, our research team at the Writing Center gathered stories from 26 students from varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds on their experiences as multi-lingual writers.

The purpose of this research is to present those experiences and stories as a way to build a bridge between faculty and students by promoting dialogue in the university community. We also are committed to giving voice to those whose voices are often unheard.

We recognize that the complexity of multi-lingual writers’ experiences complicates this endeavor in many ways, and, while attempting to generalize, categorize, and re-present the students’ experiences was difficult, we hope that by focusing primarily on the students’ own voices with limited analysis or interpretation, other than our selection of categories, quotes, and voices, we have allowed them to speak for themselves.

We hope that you, whether you are a student, an educator, or a researcher, will find our research interesting and useful and that you will contribute to the conversation.

Please read our monograph, Valuing Written Accents, and go to our community exchange page for information about our blog and Facebook group.