The main point of Matsudas essay, The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity
in U.S. College Composition, is that most college institutions do not recognize the different forms of english that students may speak. They assume that students that enter their classes are all at the same level of proficiency in what he calls privileged english. This however, as Matsuda explains, is rarely ever the case. All students do not fit the profile that college teachers have which is that of a person who grew up speaking a formal english and writing in perfect grammatically correct sentences. They fail to take into account students that do not fit this profile or do not give enough attention to these students. Professors who do this are not to blame though because they get this perspective of students from what they see the most in their classes. Most students that they see are indeed proficient in the privileged form of english but not all of them. Some are proficient in other languages and those students that are are, for the most part, international students but instead of stopping to help these students most professors send them to tutoring centers instead of doing their part to adapt to the student body. This is more of a modern day issue, Matsuda explains, as in the past most students were the ones that spoke this english and it wasnt until the end of WWI that there was an influx of international students due to the Unites States wanting to maintain healthy relationships with european countries. With this influx of students came the differences in language that we see today and this in it of itself brought major problems for composition english classes. Students no longer all spoke the same form of english thus began the problem of monolingualism in classes. Moreso, colleges have been alienating students way before this as most institutions began to use placement tests beginning with Harvard in 1874. One main point in Matsudas essay is that colleges do not do enough to help students that do speak different forms of english. They send students to get help from even less prepared tutors (Matsuda 5) rather than doing their part. This is important because it does not help these students and makes it so that only privileged english speaking students can thrive in these classes. Another main point was how these language differences became prominent in the early to mid 20th century after World War 1. The war caused the relationships between the United States and countries in Europe to become less stable so one of the things that the US did to attempt to keep good relations with European countries was admit more students to their universities. This influx of non-native english speakers into a predominantly english speaking university environment introduced new challenges for universities and professors. One way that universities attempted to fix this was by creating separate english courses for these students.