Rutgers' Writing Program

For many reasons, intercultural understanding has become a major theme of English 101. A substantial body of research suggests that the learning difficulties of college students often result from their inability to bridge the gaps between their home cultures and the various “cultures” of the university. These same gaps strongly influence the performance of many students in the process of writing about college-level texts that can seem impossible to understand at first or that contradict their long-held beliefs.

Rather than attempt to address cultural difference in the spirit of directly imparting proper values and beliefs, English 101 is designed to give students many different ways of understanding diversity, ways intended to serve as the starting points for reflection, debate and further reading. A sequence of writing assignments might require a class to read Lani Guinier on the dangers of majority rule, Martha Nussbaum on the contradictions of cultural relativism, and Lila Abu Lugod on women in Bedouin society. By engaging with cultural differences in their real complexity, Rutgers students can become more sophisticated readers of the world as well of the many texts they will read during their years as undergraduates.

Link to: Rutgers University Writing Program, New Brunswick Campus