Grade: 8/10

Miguel Duarte

Professor Masha Fedorova

Writing 2

14 May 2019

Writing and First-Generation Students

First-generation college students are thrown into the gates of writing as soon as they

begin their college career. It is as a test of skill and courage. Writing is the interdisciplinary

“gate” that never fails to keep disciplines like the arts, history, language and literature alive and

consistently passed onto others. More importantly, writing protects the identity of those like first-

generation students. It proves time and time again that writing is the path to many students’

identities. Literary works like Theron Snell’s “First Generation Students, Social Class, and Commented [MOU1]: Combine?

Literacy” and Jessica Early’s “Mi’ja You Should Be a Writer” prove that writing is the key to

success in many disciplines despite many challenges in issues like social class, parental

influences, and social environment. These literary works differ greatly in their usage of diverse

approaches, including writing strategies, to approach this topic. Most discourses around first-

generation college students are typically concerned with class and authors make sure to

emphasize that throughout the works. While Snell and Early’s works are on the same topic of

first-generation students in writing, they manage to present it in their own ways, according to

their content, their style and organizational choices, and their usage of evidence.
 Most discourses around that of first-generation students typically involve social class, or

lack thereof. Both Early and Snell strongly believe that writing is the pathway to success. Good

writing skills would mean good conveyance of future messagesan ability to convey a message

from these first-generation students. When it comes to that of social class many first-generation

students find themselves disadvantaged because as Kenny Smith, a Writing Program professor at

UCSB, said in an interview, “In a lot of middle class and upper-class families they have parents

that went to college and that understand what is going on. I think that is a big challenge for a lot

of people is just understanding the system and how it works” (Personal Communication, May 13,

2019). Most of the time, those students that are not first generation typically find their parents

doing a lot of planning for them thus leading to social class playing a huge role in writing skills.

Writing is a discipline that requires a lot of skill and a lot of trial and error. First-generation

students should learn writing to assure themselves that they would reach the gatekeeper as

Jessica Early states to “have a continued success in college and in the work-place” (Early 278). Commented [MOU2]: Remember Stedman. Avoid finishing
your paragraphs with a quote.
When comparing Snell’s and Early’s literary works, you can easily see their perspectives

differ. Theron Snell’s work is written from his own perspective as an academic adviser and

fromwho teaching teaches at a small regional university. He hopes to look at the concerns of his

colleagues who have worried about first-generation college students and the academic and social

challenges these students face. Furthermore, he wants to help ensure that these students can

succeed. On the other hand, Jessica Early’s perspective is that of a researcher who utilizes study

from a third person view and is all evidence based and backed by thorough and plentiful

evidence and concise datato provide impartial analysis of the problem. While both writers use

reliable and enough sources to back their claims, Snell’s approach maintains a personal Commented [MOU3]: This is not a contradiction.

connection between himself, his own study, and his reasoning behind it. This helps maintain a
relationship with the reader and shows that he seems to care about what he is studying and wants

to provide data, opinions, and inputs on his findings. Moreover, the way he structures and Commented [MOU4]: New idea?

organizes his work in columns almost as if it was a newspaper article that made headlines, helps

readers get a sense of being informed. Early’s style is that of a formal research study, and thus

her literary work contains an introduction, subtitles for her arguments, research questions, tables,

data, analysis of that data, a conclusion and more. The audience for Early plays a huge role in

how evidence and claims are presented in her research. Presumably, Early is trying to reach out

to an audience that are most likely specialists and researchers. Due to this, her study is very

dense and impersonal with all her claims heavily backed by multiple sources as evidence, most if

not all peer reviewed and official. On the other hand, Snell aims his attention towards professors,

teachers, and any other educational professionals. He uses his personal connections and

experiences along with statistics to explain and back up how and what he observed from his

students.

Both Early and Snell’s use of evidence greatly differs. Early uses peer-reviewed or

journals and published work as evidence after every claim that she makes. Snell tends to make

claims from personal experience and backs it up with statistical data as evidence. Both of their

works are kept very Academic and formal, although Early and her study required formality due

to it being a full-on study of first-generation students. Snell on the other hand proceeds to

keeping it formal yet giving his opinion and take on things along the way. Snell throughout his

literary work constantly makes points, cites his sources, gives data, and even puts out an

anecdote or two. One example is when he talks about working in universities and the impacts of

the social environment and first-generation students that he had observed there (Snell 28).

Moreover, he chooses to include data in big bold text in the middle of the column to draw the
readers’ attention to information that some may feel boring but necessary to his argument. Snell

utilizes this as a “speed bump” to keep the audience hooked onto his findings and paying

attention to the information that he conveys.

In conclusion, both Early and Snell focus on the importance of literacy for these students

and furthermore the impacts that social class may hold when concerning first-generation

students’ success. Moreover, the content they presented was enhanced by their organizational

methods that they were able to implement into their work as well as the style that they held that

made it their own. While evidence differed, they used their evidence to support every claim they

made in a way that their intended audience was able to pick up, understand, and connect the

pieces to said claims. Both Jessica Singer Early and Theron Snell help prove the importance of

writing as a discipline, whether first-generation or not.

 Works Cited

Early, Jessica Singer. ""Mi'ja, You Should Be a Writer": Latino Parental Support of Their First-
Generation Children." Bilingual Research Journal 33.3 (2010): 277-91. Web.

Smith, Kenny. Personal interview. 13 May 2019.

Snell, Theron P. “First-Generation Students, Social Class, and Literacy.” Academe, vol. 94, no.
4, 2008, pp. 28–31. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40253218.