In these instructional notes, I share practical strategies for using ESL students’ first language as a resource for English language and literacy acquisition. These strategies emerged from a bilingual writing program that linked ESL and Spanish writing instruction at Bronx Community College (CUNY). After discussing how I was able to circumvent the monolingual orientations of my institution and set up this program as a learning community cluster, I illustrate ways in which translanguaging can help ESL students take ownership of English for academic purposes.

Reviewed are: Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy by Anis S. Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff, Reviewed by Kara Poe Alexander Beyond Post process, edited by Sidney I. Dobrin, J. A. Rice, and Michael Vastola, Reviewed by William Duffy Code-Meshing as World English: Pedagogy, Policy, Performance edited by Vershawn Ashanti Young and Aja Y. Martinez, Reviewed by Gregory Shafer Autism Spectrum Disorders in the College Composition Classroom: Making Writing Instruction More Accessible for All Students edited by Val Gerstle and Lynda Walsh, Reviewed by Gary Vaughn

This essay offers an example of one course that focuses exclusively on Ebonics as a specific African American linguistic practice and on rhetoric and composition scholarship as the primary topics of investigation.