Tutoring Second Language Writers (18 page)
Read Tutoring Second Language Writers Online
Authors: Shanti Bruce
1. What are the attitudes and perceptions of code-switching/mixing in your writing center? What do the tutors think about using multiple languages to tutor English? What do students think?
2. Record several tutoring sessions at your center and transcribe the conversations. Read through the transcriptions to note how and when tutors and students use nonacademic language during their conversations (see Babcock, this volume). What seems to prompt the use of nonacademic English?
3. Some writing centers, such as the one at Baruch College in New York City, have asked students who speak a variety of languages to contribute to projects for which they write expressions like
I write
or
hello
in languages other than English, which the staff then post somewhere in the center. These projects support multilingualism in the center as well as one of Dr. Mendez’s recommendations in Shanti Bruce’s chapter in this collection: “Present a multicultural scenario.” These efforts show students the different ways writers speak and write at their institutions. If you were to do a project like this at your center, do you think it would make a positive difference?
Horner
,
Bruce
, and
John
Trimbur
.
2002
. “
English Only and U.S. College Composition
.”
College Composition and Communication
53
(
4
):
594
–
630
.
http://dx.doi.org/10 .2307/1512118
.
Bruce Horner and John Trimbur show how composition classrooms promote a “tacit policy of English monolingualism” (594). The authors examine historical reasons for this practice and invite readers to consider ways to incorporate multilingual approaches into teaching composition. Their essay provides a foundation for understanding how code-switching and -mixing in writing centers can be one way of resisting a culture of “unidirectional monolingualism,” which Horner and Trimbur believe to be a “problem and limitation of U.S. culture” (597).
Newman
,
Beatrice Mendez
.
2003
. “
Centering in the Borderlands: The Writing Center at Hispanic-Serving Institutions
.”
Writing Center Journal
23
(
2
):
43
–
61
.
Beatrice Newman claims that “little has been written . . . about Hispanic students and writing centers, and nothing has been written about Hispanic students at writing centers in borderlands institutions” (44). Over ten years later, Newman’s claim still holds true. Though there has been a growing movement toward recognizing writing center work from multicultural perspectives, there is still little research and literature regarding Hispanic students’ experiences in writing centers, as either writers or tutors.
Young
,
Vershawn Ashanti
, and
Aja Y.
Martinez
, eds.
2011
.
Code-Meshing as World English: Pedagogy, Policy, Performance
.
Urbana, IL
:
National Council of Teachers of English
.
This collection examines the potential role code-meshing may have in the future of teaching English in a variety of contexts. Chapters focus on how code-meshing can be used to democratize educational settings and “help expand the ways in which students learn English” (xx). The essays in this collection can help tutors think about ways in which their writing centers can help promote linguistic diversity at their institutions.
Research presented in this chapter was funded by an International Writing Centers Association Research Grant. I would like to thank Dr. Joanne Pol for assisting with translations and Aileen Valdes for assisting with data collection and early translations.
Bruce
,
Shanti
.
2009
. “
Listening to and Learning from ESL Writers.
” In
ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors
, 2nd ed.
Edited by
Shanti
Bruce
and
Ben
Rafoth
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217
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29
.
Portsmouth, NH
:
Heinemann
.
Canagarajah
,
A. Suresh
.
2006
. “
The Place of World Englishes in Composition: Pluralization Continued
.”
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–
619
.
Fry
,
Richard
, and
Mark Hugo
Lopez
.
2012
. “Hispanic Student Enrollments Reach New Highs in 2011.” Pew Research Center.
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/08/20 / hispanic-student-enrollments-reach-new-highs-in-2011/
.
Grimm
,
Nancy Maloney
.
2009
. “
New Conceptual Frameworks for Writing Center Work
.”
Writing Center Journal
29
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11
–
27
.
Guerra
,
Juan C.
2012
. “From Code-Segregation to Code-Switching to Code-Meshing: Finding Deliverance from Deficit Thinking through Language Awareness and Performance.”
Working Papers Series on Negotiating Differences in Language and Literacy
5: 1–12.
Horner
,
Bruce
, and
John
Trimbur
.
2002
. “
English Only and U.S. College Composition
.”
College Composition and Communication
53
(
4
):
594
–
630
.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307 /1512118
.
Hudson
,
R. A.
2001
.
Sociolinguistics
.
Cambridge
:
Cambridge University Press
.
MacCauley
,
Ronald K. S.
2011
.
Seven Ways of Looking at Language
.
New York
:
Palgrave MacMillan
.
Pew Research Center
.
2012
. “Latinos by Geography.”
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012 /03/16/latinos-by-geography/
.
Pratt
,
Mary Louise
.
1991
. “
Arts of the Contact Zone
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Rymes
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Betsy
, and
Kate
Anderson
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2004
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Second Language Acquisition for All: Understanding the Interactional Dynamics of Classrooms in Which Spanish and AAE Are Spoken
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Research in the Teaching of English
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34
.
United States Census Bureau
.
2013
. “Miami-Dade County, Florida.”
http://quickfacts .census.gov/qfd/states/12/12086.html
.
Young
,
Vershawn Ashanti
, and
Aja Y.
Martinez
.
2011
. “
Introduction: Code-Meshing as World English
.” In
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, edited by
Vershawn Ashanti
Young
and
Aja Y
.
Martinez
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xix
–
xxxi
.
Urbana, IL
:
National Council of Teachers of English
.
The Digital Video Project
Self-Assessment in a Multilingual Writing Center
GLENN HUTCHINSON AND PAULA GILLESPIE
Our campuses, particularly our urban campuses, are increasingly multilingual. Many colleges have large numbers of international students while others have populations that reflect our Miami demographics, so they are a mix of students who have studied English grammar abroad and those who immigrated to this country and have learned English without necessarily having studied it. At our growing urban campus, the majority of students are Hispanic, many speaking Spanish as a first language; our university has international students from over one hundred countries. Also, most of our tutors speak more than one language.
So how do we approach and best help our students learn English as a second or third language? How do we, as two writing center directors, help our staff best utilize their skills and resources? One effective way to study tutoring sessions involving two or more languages is to record and review them, followed by reflections and director-tutor conversations. This chapter describes a process approach to educating both tutors and directors through the use of video recording and analysis. After an explanation of the project, we explore three main ideas about what we as directors learned from our tutors and possible implications for writing center research.
1. Ongoing training: Directors have as much to learn from tutors’ reflections and looking at videos as tutors do. Tutors trust us with segments of their videos that show their weaknesses as tutors, and their attitudes show an openness to ongoing learning. We are able to reflect on and revise our tutor education based on this project.
2. Diversity: A diverse tutoring staff, including multilingual tutors, can strengthen a writing center, particularly in working with multilingual writers. Many of our tutors use more than one language in a tutoring
session. In addition, our tutors draw upon their own experiences as language learners when tutoring.
3. Politics of language: Tutors and center directors must continue thinking about their relationship with language and how that informs the way they interact with students. For example, our Digital Video Project often helps us explore our belief that there is no Standard American English, that all dialects are equal, and the possibility for the kind of code-meshing of different languages and dialects Kevin Dvorak discusses in this book.
Writing centers can use both audio and video recordings to help tutors reflect upon their work. For example, tutors at the University of Kentucky videotape sessions and reflect upon their body language. They then transcribe the dialogue of a section and write a reflection: “Self-conscious examinations of these texts teach them about their practices and their limits” (
Rosner and Wann 2010
, 9). In addition, these kinds of projects can make the writing center a place of research for tutors as they watch themselves on video: Who does the talking in the session? What body language do you see? What is working and not working? (
Gillespie and Lerner 2008
).
In our Digital Video Project, writing consultants in FIU’s Center for Excellence in Writing videotape tutoring sessions, write reflections, and conference with the center directors. Writing consultants reflect upon what they learn from watching the videos and what they learn about themselves and the roles of tutor and writer.
1. At least one time each semester, tutors choose one session to videotape. They ask the writer to sign a consent form. If writers do not agree to be videotaped, the session is not recorded and the tutor chooses a different session.
2. Tutors videotape the forty-five-minute session with a Flip, laptop, or phone camera.
3. Tutors watch the video and focus on a pivotal moment in the session.
4. Tutors write a one-page reflection about the session and focus on a clip.
a. What did you notice from watching the video?
b. What was the main goal of the session?
c. To what extent were these goals achieved? Explain.
d. What did you learn from watching the video? Would you do anything differently? Explain.
5. Tutors upload the video to the director’s office computer.
6. The center directors schedule a forty-five-minute conference to discuss the reflection and video. They watch the five-minute clip with the tutor and then discuss what the tutor has learned or questions he/she has.
7. The directors reflect on the conference and discuss with one another what they learned from the session and how they can make use of this knowledge.
All of our peer tutors complete a course on writing center theory and practice before working in the writing center, and the Digital Video Project gives us an opportunity for more tutor training in subsequent semesters after the course. Also, we as directors learn much from our tutors, their work with multilingual writers, and our writing center.
Prior to meeting with the tutors, we read their reflections. During the forty-five-minute conference, we first ask tutors if they want to add anything else to their reflection before we view their five- to ten-minute video clip. We watch the video and then have a conversation about the tutoring session. Following the conference, we, the director and assistant director, often have an e-mail exchange about how we can use what we learn, particularly during our weekly staff meetings. Over the past year, we noticed the following themes emerging in our conversations about working with multilingual writers.
Many tutors choose to show their five weakest minutes, a possible indication that they internalize the value of this kind of reflection and that they trust this process to help them become stronger tutors. However, we would not want to discuss only the negative, as sometimes happens when responding to student writing. We often refer to Donald
Daiker’s (1989)
essay “Learning to Praise” and the importance of encouragement, particularly “for students who have known little encouragement and, in part for that reason, suffer from writing apprehension” (105). In a similar way, we need to help tutors identify what is working well in their sessions, for sometimes they do not notice the effective moves they are making as tutors.
In our peer-tutoring class, we discuss what we have come to think of as a continuum along a line of directive or nondirective tutoring, and that we should be flexible, perhaps shifting within a session, as needed. Along with our textbook,
The Longman Guide to Peer Tutoring
(
Gillespie and Lerner 2008
), we compare essays such as
Brooks’s (1995)
“Minimalist Tutoring” and
Shamoon and Burns’s (1995)
“A Critique of Pure Tutoring.” We emphasize that we do not need to approach every tutoring session in the same way. For example, international students from China may need direct guidance on the use of articles in their writing. However, at the same time, we do not want to take over a writing session and prevent the writer from expressing what he/she wants to say, and we definitely don’t want to overlook issues or problems relating to the student’s not meeting the goals of the assignment. We discuss Carol
Severino’s (2009)
chapter in
ESL Writers
, different scenarios of working with multilingual writers, and the possible tutor roles of “assimilationist,” “accomodationist,” or “separatist.” One of our tutors, Jennifer, reflected upon the danger of becoming too “directive” or “assimilationist” and that tutors can “risk removing the writer’s unique voice from the paper.” She added, “I would suggest always trying to keep in mind that you are trying to help the writer to more clearly convey their own voice rather than teaching them to say things in a way that you believe is better.”
The videos help us as directors see what complex tasks the tutors face. We place a heavy emphasis on respect in our center. The research of
Castellanos and Gloria (2007)
on the retention of Latino students shows they succeed better and are retained to graduation if they find a community where they can be in communication with peers who respect them and are interested in their traditions and language use. Maintaining that respect, though, while perhaps disagreeing with a writer’s immediate goals can create tensions for the tutors. Some students who were educated in countries whose writing conventions differ from Standard American English conventions, and even those multilingual writers who were educated in this country, have a hard time not falling into traps of novice writing: summarizing when they should analyze or defaulting to a five-paragraph organization when the assignment calls for something different. Some have also been severely criticized and underestimated by instructors when they hand in work that contains usage considered nonstandard.
Our tutors themselves, many of them, have experienced discrimination firsthand when they have ventured outside of Miami, discrimination
based on skin color, hair texture, or the languages they might be speaking with their parents or friends. Within Miami, the most recent immigrants might have experienced shunning and ridicule on the playground, where they are taunted about their accents or lack of understanding. Because of their own experiences, our tutors often embrace
Castellanos and Gloria’s (2007)
assessments of what makes Latino students succeed, and they are strongly motivated to help our students.
In a recent staff meeting, we asked our multilingual tutors how they balance ideas of respect with realistic goal setting. What follows are some responses to the question.
Some students come to Somaily very focused on grammar, and about such a student she says,
I communicate to the student that if the paper isn’t answering the intended prompt, then having perfect grammar won’t prevent [the writer] from receiving a lower grade. Sometimes, if the student brings the paper’s grading rubric, I show them what percentage of the grade is dedicated to grammar. Usually, grammar isn’t one of their professor’s main concerns. I assure them that we will come back to grammar once we fix other issues on the paper.
Jennifer writes,
During sessions where the student and I have established differing hierarchies of problems we’d like to address, I find that letting the student be heard is extremely helpful. Allowing them to state why they are so concerned with a particular aspect of their paper may sometimes make them feel even more in control of their draft. If a professor has stressed the importance of using “correct” grammar, it’s understandable that this would be a primary concern for the student. Once we establish what each of us feel are the most important things to address, I try to find a middle ground. If their organization is presenting a serious problem but they want to mainly focus on grammar, I will try to combine explanations for both. So, as we discuss how the order of certain paragraphs may hinder the reader’s understanding, I may also inject discussions of sentence-level clarity. At the end of the session, if I feel that we have not addressed everything, I always give them a quick “wrap-up” of things they should still look for.
Luis writes about those students who focus more on whether something is correct rather than if it belongs in the first place. He listens to their concerns, but then asks them a question.
“So what are you trying to say here in the first place?” This calls the student to think about not only the sentence at hand and their immediate goals, but also forces them to think of the topic they are handling at the moment and whether that sentence even addresses what they were thinking. . . .
This allows our goals that may be separate to align in a way that doesn’t involve me forcing the student away from their concern, and keeps the session about the content. Sometimes students are insistent and respect is harder to control, so I sometimes back off and remind them that the time we have won’t be enough if they try to tackle these minute issues yet that I am here to work with them.
Syed creates a bulleted suggestion list when there is “disagreement with expectations.”
1. Create comfort.
2. Briefly mention “higher order concerns”
3. Praise—Something specific—so confidence is boosted—Everyone likes compliments + builds comfort
4. Address the concern
If writer disagrees show genuine interest, ask why . . .
Talk about it so it is “addressed”
Try again (use “Polite Persistence”) to help the writer see “errors”
Syed probably puts
errors
into quotation marks because we have made an effort to avoid this word since its translation into Spanish is a word with strong negative connotations. We are more likely to stress correctness than use the word
errors
for usages that many would consider nonstandard.
Common responses to the writing prompt include listening and asking genuine questions and respecting the writer’s priorities by agreeing to work on what they value most, but also mentioned is incorporating minilessons on structure, organization, and other global issues while working on grammar or usage.
Our tutors must understand that what seems to them to be a first-order concern (the text is not doing what the assignment asks) might not be a first-order concern for the writer (I need help with correctness). Like Nancy
Grimm (2011)
, we attempt to make less of a distinction between HOCs and LOCs.
However, navigating this continuum of being nondirective and directive requires continual reflection. Some videos show tutors not encouraging students to read their papers aloud, not reading the entire essay, and making changes on the students’ papers or computers. And although each session is different and we avoid mandating that a tutor should never mark on a student’s paper, these examples lead to discussions in our weekly staff meetings about other possible methods, like the practice of taking notes on a separate sheet of paper that can be shared with the writer.
