Where do Composition Studies and ESL Writing overlap?  It seems to me that Matsuda’s main point is that we need to find the answer to this question to better provide for our second language writers.  His history of the division of labor between the two disciplines was interesting.  In some ways it’s a relief that we seem to have come so far—we no longer (in most circles), for example, send ESL students to speech clinics to remedy their “speech defects” (708).  But it saddens me that the division of labor, which in effect left support for ESL writers falling into the chasm between the two disciplines, was mostly due to the perceived needs of the two disciplines—to polish their “professional status” on the side of ESL, and to avoid expanding to take on something deemed outside their profession on the side of composition.  Thankfully Matsuda, and it seems others, are now asking:  What works best for students? 

I wonder what the state of ESL Writing is now, given that a decade has passed since this article was written in 1999.  It seems to me that much is being made of composition’s need to expand to include ESL writers as well as those native-English writers with “alternative discourses,” and I wonder what direction composition studies is headed.  Will we move toward “multicultural” composition which encompasses ESL writers, alternative discourse writers (often in “basic writing” or preparatory classes now), and “mainstream” students together?  Or will each of these strands remain separate?  I ponder whether the separation of these two disciplines along with the institutional separation of remedial classes is a matter of “separate but not equal.”  If, as Matsuda is proposing, regular composition instructors need to be prepared to teach ESL students, maybe other disciplines need to be prepared to support them as well as they continue to develop their writing.  As Matsuda says, it would be unrealistic to assume all of their issues with the English language will be resolved with a semester of ESL class.  And to continue this argument further, or in a different direction that Matsuda takes it, “basic writers” aren’t necessarily going to be able to be completely comfortable with academic discourse after a semester of a remedial class, so perhaps they need to be supported in regular composition classes and in other disciplines for longer.  Matsuda’s ideas seem to me to work here, too.  What do you think?