Read Tutoring Second Language Writers Online
Authors: Shanti Bruce
Tutoring Second Language Writers (15 page)
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Research Opportunities
Inquiry can take many forms when tutors stoke their curiosities, pursue them in a sustained and disciplined manner, and create new knowledge beneficial to themselves and others. The chapters in part 2 illustrate various approaches to inquiry and how tutors can become involved in their own projects. While examples of research may be found in every chapter, this section raises ideas for research that intersect with the everydayness of writing center work. In chapter 5, for example, a writing center director overhears a conversation between tutors about whether or not it’s okay to use their L1, Spanish, when tutoring. With a bit of encouragement, the tutors and director turn this conversation into a research project. Chapter 6 shows how tutors in one writing center were able to examine the complicated dynamics of showing respect in tutoring sessions. The issue arises when tutors try to critique or challenge some Latino writers, who sometimes misinterpret the tutor’s attitude toward their work. Video recordings allowed tutors to view their sessions multiple times and discuss what they observed and heard at granular levels. The last chapter in part 2 is devoted to research and speaks directly to tutors about ideas, methods, presentation, and publication. In this chapter, experienced tutors and professional researchers share stories about how they got started—and the mistakes they learned to avoid.
Multilingual Writers, Multilingual Tutors
Code-Switching/Mixing/Meshing in the Writing Center
KEVIN DVORAK
I walked into the writing center one quiet afternoon while Alezka was tutoring Stephanie; it was the only session in progress. They did not notice me at first. When they did, Alezka looked at me, wide eyed and worried, as if I had caught her doing something wrong. She had been speaking with Stephanie in Spanish. Alezka turned back to Stephanie and continued their conversation—in English. Recognizing that I had already disrupted their dynamic, I decided to disrupt it a little more.
“So, what are you two working on?” I asked.
“It’s an essay for her basic writing class,” Alezka responded. I had spoken with Stephanie on several earlier occasions, but she remained quiet.
“Okay,” I responded.
“I was just explaining something to her in Spanish because I thought it would make more sense that way,” Alezka continued. It was clear Alezka thought she was guilty of violating writing center policy.
“Okay. Did it help?” I asked Stephanie.
“Yeah,” she replied shyly.
“Great, then keep doing it,” I said as matter of factly as I could.
I walked out of the center wondering why Alezka thought she had done something wrong. Our writing center was at an institution where approximately 50 percent of the undergraduate population was Hispanic, most of whom spoke Spanish. In addition, the university was located in Miami-Dade County, which has the third largest Hispanic population in the United States (
Pew Research Center 2012
). According to the 2012 US Census Bureau report, Hispanics comprised 64.3 percent of the population in Miami-Dade, and 72.3 percent of overall residents spoke a language other than English at home (
United States Census Bureau 2013
).
So, we were located in a cultural context in which using two languages was common. Alezka and Stephanie both spoke English and Spanish, and I knew they both used both languages frequently during conversations, so why would this one be any different?
“Because we’re in the writing center,” Alezka said to me afterwards when we discussed her session. “I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to use both because we’re supposed to be teaching English.” Alezka was reinforcing the underlying assumption—and sometimes requirement—in US educational settings that English is the only language faculty, tutors, and students are allowed or supposed to use, especially when teaching and learning English.
Alezka and I talked at length about her session, and we brought up the issue at our next staff meeting. The staff consisted of six undergraduate peer tutors—all of whom could speak Spanish. Three were in favor of using Spanish during sessions and three were opposed, though no one was entirely convinced his or her opinion was right. The staff and I discussed how using Spanish might benefit a session and how it might detract from a session. We talked about how tutors reacted when students used Spanish first—and vice versa—and we talked about times when the tutors refused to engage students in Spanish. This conversation lasted for weeks without a definitive resolution, so we decided to investigate it more deliberately the following semester.
The next fall one of my undergraduate tutors, Aileen Valdes, worked with me as a research assistant to explore the pedagogical implications of code-switching among multilingual (English- and Spanish-speaking) students and tutors. Based on anecdotal data from our staff meetings, there seemed to be varying opinions on how and when to use Spanish during sessions and whether or not Spanish should be used at all. Therefore, we developed a project based on the following questions: When and how might code-switching be used during a tutoring session? What are students’ and tutors’ attitudes toward code-switching in the writing center? From these questions, we wanted to learn, is it possible that students and/or tutors prefer using both languages, since this reflects the culture surrounding them? Or do they prefer to work toward the exclusive target language since English is the language of the university and professional world? As writing centers become more linguistically diverse, these are important questions all centers should be examining as the answers will likely be different from one center to the next.
Developing a contextualized understanding of code-switching as a tutoring pedagogy is especially valuable because an increasing number of multilingual students and tutors, particularly those who speak English
and Spanish, are populating our writing centers. Hispanic students are now the largest minority group on college campuses, comprising over 16 percent of all US college students, a number that increases to 25 percent for two-year colleges (
Fry and Lopez 2012
). Many of these students are bilingual, speaking combinations of Spanish and English at home, school, and work. In many sections of the country, particularly South Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, New York, and the Chicago area, the growing numbers of Hispanic students are reflected in the student demographics we see in our writing centers—both as student-writers and, in increasing numbers, as writing tutors (See Gillespie and Hutchinson, this volume).
As the number of Hispanic and multilingual students continues to increase, writing center tutors can expect to experience more languages within their daily work environments, whether those languages are for social, professional, or educational purposes. Tutors should be aware of how and when multiple languages can be used during tutoring sessions (see Liu, this volume), and tutors should expect to have more conversations and debates like the ones I had with Alezka and the rest of my staff. Writing center directors can expect some students and tutors to be in favor of a multilingual approach, one that accepts and promotes using mixtures of languages and language varieties; they can also expect some community members to resist multilingual approaches to tutoring writers, holding steadfast to an English-only approach that results in code-segregation (
Guerra 2012
); and directors and tutors should expect others to be ambivalent, perhaps because they can see both positive and negative outcomes of such an approach.
If writing centers choose to embrace multilingual approaches to writing center work, we can expect to disrupt some of the more traditional dynamics of our centers. As Nancy Grimm notes,
When a writing center embraces multilingualism rather than monolingualism as a conceptual norm, many things change. Most importantly, the writing center begins to actively recruit tutors who speak other languages and varieties of English. Not insignificantly, the racial composition of the staff changes. The writing center becomes a place where multiple varieties of English are spoken rather than only historically privileged varieties of English. (
Grimm 2009
, 18)
Using Grimm’s call as a starting point, this chapter discusses a research project that investigated what happens when “multiple varieties of English are spoken” in a center, not only for social conversation but also during sessions between multilingual tutors and students. The chapter defines key terms related to facilitating multilingual approaches
to writing center work and shows transcriptions of tutoring sessions in which tutors or students used both English and Spanish during tutoring sessions. It then discusses tutors’ and students’ attitudes toward using both languages during writing center sessions. The chapter concludes by offering ways to build on this research and to bring languages other than English into writing centers. This research benefitted our work because it helped develop a contextualized understanding of our students’ and tutors’ attitudes toward and experiences with code-switching during writing center sessions.
If multiple languages are going to be used in a writing center environment, there are several key linguistic terms worth noting in order to understand how people incorporate different languages into conversations. These terms—
situational code-switching
,
metaphorical code-switching
,
code-mixing
, and
code-meshing
—all offer us ways to envision how tutors and students can utilize multilingual approaches for pedagogical purposes. This section defines the first three terms, while the fourth will appear toward the end of this essay.
Sociolinguist R. A. Hudson defines “code switching” as a situation in which someone “who speaks more than one language chooses between them according to circumstances” (
Hudson 2001
, 51). For many multilingual students, a US writing center is likely to be a place where they choose to speak English. Hudson calls this type of act “situational code switching,” which happens when
the switches between languages . . . coincide with changes from one external situation (for example, talking to members of the family) to another (for example, talking to neighbors). The choice of language is controlled by rules, which members of the community learn from their experience. (52)
The controlling rules of a typical US writing center would likely appear to be constructed by an English-only philosophy due to the center’s being situated in an institution of higher education guided by, as
Horner and Trimbur (2002
, 595) suggest, “a tacit language policy of unidirectional monolingualism.” This “tacit language policy of unidirectional monolingualism” may have been what scared Alezka when she realized I heard her using Spanish during her session. Her educational
experiences, up to that point, were likely grounded in the implied understanding that English was the only language we used in the writing center. So, Alezka and her classmates performed situational code-switching when they shifted from speaking Spanish with friends around campus (external situation 1) to speaking English with student-writers once they entered the physical space of the writing center (external situation 2).
As the tutors became more comfortable using Spanish in our writing center—for either social or pedagogical purposes—more students began using Spanish in the center. This created a more multilingual environment, a change in dynamic that allowed tutors and students to engage in what Hudson calls “metaphorical code switching,” which is when “the choice of language determines the situation” (
Hudson 2001
, 53). Based on our observations, it appeared to be common for our bilingual tutors and students to take a break from the “work” of the session—discussing an assignment or the immediate writing task at hand—to have a moment of general conversation. It was during these times that one of the two might code-switch from English, the language of “work,” to Spanish, the language of conversation. This kind of switching should not be surprising since, as Hudson writes, “it is entirely to be expected that bilingual speakers will use their choice of language in order to define the situation, rather than letting the situation define the choice of language” (
Hudson 2001
, 52).
Hudson defines “code mixing” as a communicative moment “when one fluent bilingual speaker speaks to another fluent bilingual speaker and changes languages without any change at all in the situation” (
Hudson 2001
, 53). The major difference, then, between code-switching and code-mixing is that, for the latter, the situation does not change. As I will show in the next section, bilingual tutors and students may occasionally code-mix in the middle of sentences, using combinations of Spanish and English words, to discuss an assignment, for instructional purposes, or for general conversation. In these examples, the situation becomes one in which the languages seamlessly blend together, perhaps changing the sense of “unidirectional monolingualism” to one of “multidirectional bilingualism.”
To examine how and when bilingual tutors and students were employing Spanish during writing center conferences, Aileen and I decided to gather data via three primary research methods: observations, surveys, and interviews. We applied for a research grant from the International Writing Centers Association (IWCA), which we received, to purchase a recorder, transcription machine, and $10 gift cards for participants, and we applied for approval from our university’s Institutional Review Board, which we also received.
For our observations, we decided to audio record tutoring sessions between tutors and students who could speak both English and Spanish. We asked staff members for their permission ahead of sessions, and then one of us asked for the student’s permission at the beginning of each session, reviewing IRB protocol and asking the student to sign a consent form; therefore, all sessions were recorded with both the student’s and tutor’s permission. After the sessions, we asked the tutor if any instances of code-switching occurred during the session. Not all sessions included code-switching. The tutors and students discussed in this section, though, did use both languages during their sessions, as the observations captured instances of metaphorical code-switching and code-mixing.
When Yessica entered the university as a first-year student, she was placed in a developmental writing course for which she needed tutoring. That semester, she became a regular at the writing center, and she continued to visit regularly into her junior year. While she worked with most of the tutors, she developed a strong rapport with Ashley. For their tutoring session discussed below, Yessica brought an assignment from one of her upper-level English classes, taught by Professor González, to the center hoping to get assistance with citations. In this session, you will see the student introduce an example of metaphorical code-switching in order to create a moment of solidarity between her and her tutor.
About six minutes into the session, Yessica and Ashley discussed the use of quotation marks when quoting a resource. Ashley explained how to use quotation marks and when Yessica should and should not use them. Here is an excerpt:
ASHLEY:
And why is that italicized? You don’t know?
(laugh)
YESSICA:
It’s not a quote. Well, it is a quote from what I read but is not, you know, it’s like a saying.
ASHLEY:
You could just put quotation marks. You don’t need to italicize, and this is part of your writing, so you don’t have to italicize that either. None of that actually.
YESSICA:
González me tiene loca
. [González is driving me crazy.]
(mutual laughter.)
YESSICA:
I swear to God. When this like . . .
ASHLEY:
(laughing)
Yeah, but you’re almost finished.
YESSICA:
Yes, I can’t wait.
ASHLEY:
Okay
(speaks softly while reading the revised text)
.
Okay, good.
YESSICA:
(continues to read text)
In her moment of frustration, Yessica code-switches, initiating in Spanish a conversational comment to Ashley: “
González me tiene loca
.
” Ashley acknowledges the moment of solidarity by laughing with Yessica about her feelings toward the professor. Yessica then code-switches back to English, transferring her emotional claim to her academic/professional language (“I swear to God. When this like . . .”). There is a moment of conversational overlap, as Ashley speaks over Yessica during the second half of Yessica’s complaint. Still laughing, Ashley interjects some reassurance in English: “Yeah, but you’re almost finished.” This may be in conjunction with Yessica’s most recent language use, Ashley’s understanding of her role as English tutor, or simply because she just chose to speak in English. Yessica’s tension appears to have dissipated a bit, as she continues in English: “Yes, I can’t wait.” Ashley concludes this portion of their conversation, using English to move the session forward: “Okay, good.” Yessica begins reading the text Ashley has started, and they refocus on Yessica’s work.
In this particular case, Yessica provides us with an example of what Hudson refers to as “metaphorical code switching.” The physical situation where Yessica and Ashley are engaged does not change—they are both sitting and talking in the writing center. However, the metaphorical situation does change. Yessica’s use of Spanish changes their roles momentarily from tutor and tutee to one that is less formal and more casual in that moment. In this moment of tension, Yessica removes herself momentarily from her work mode. Ashley’s laughter signals an acknowledgment of Yessica’s comment, but Ashley quickly refocuses the conversation back to English and, thus, back to working on the assignment.
This was the only time Spanish was used by either during the session. Yessica initiated the usage during a moment of solidarity when she appeared to be trusting Ashley’s judgment about her feelings toward her instructor.
