Tutoring Second Language Writers (13 page)

Sometimes, the debate about various labels used to refer to speakers of English and other languages can feel like an abstract, academic exercise of little consequence, but Méndez clearly explains how crucial the ESL/EFL difference can be. A similar debate occurs in French-speaking Canada. There, many Canadian educators use the term
EAL
(
English as an additional language
) to sidestep the question of whether or not English is a second or a foreign language. Using the word
additional
takes the pressure off distinguishing the status of English.

When I arrived at the airport in San Juan, I was immediately reminded of what it feels like to be a linguistic foreigner. Even for an English speaker familiar with Spanish, it is quite different being in a place where most everyone is a native speaker of Spanish, talking fast, using slang, and picking up on nonverbal cues that go right by someone new to the culture.

Jorge met me at the airport. An employee of UPRH, he had been sent to drive me fifty minutes southeast of San Juan to my hotel, Palmas de Lucía. Jorge spoke almost no English, and my Spanish was severely lacking. It was a struggle to communicate; even covering the basics was exhausting. I was the other person from the other place speaking another language. I guess this was a fitting way to begin my trip. After all, the CCC consultants repeatedly told me that in order to really be effective as an L2 tutor, I needed to “get into their shoes” and “try to understand what it is like for them on a human level first.”

During the drive, I was able to explain to Jorge that I was hungry and wanted “no
carne
, no
pollo
.” I am a vegetarian. When he understood
ensalada
, he threw up his hands, smiled widely, and exclaimed “Ponderosa!” Not usually a fan of Ponderosa cuisine, I was grateful for the successful communication, and when we arrived, I approached the salad bar with appreciation.

By the time I made it to the hotel, I was exhausted. While interacting with Jorge and people at the airport and restaurant, I had been reduced to two-word phrases, hand gestures, and a lot of apologies. I was experiencing what many students must feel all day long in the States and in our writing centers. I can express myself well and with nuance in English, but in Spanish, I was working with the basics, and they felt inadequate.

By the second day, I was doing much better with the speed at which people were speaking to me, and I continued to appreciate the challenges L2 students face in our institutions. I had read and heard many times how tiring it is to work so hard to communicate and exist in a new culture, and I was truly experiencing it. When I was an undergraduate student, I studied abroad in France. However, I was with a group of English-speaking students from the United States, so I always had someone to talk easily with. In Humacao, I was alone and needed help with just about everything. I was reminded of how many of our international students are professionals with degrees and careers in their own countries before they come to the States to study. How frustrating it must be for them to be reduced to “basic writing.” Being a linguistic foreigner is daunting, but it is also exciting because there is so much to learn. It is at once draining and illuminating.

The CCC had a wall of windows so passersby could easily see in, and the center was painted with bright colors. There was a comfortable seating area in the front, private tutoring rooms on one side, small tables in the
middle, and on the other side, an area was filled with computers students could use at any time. The only requirement was that they sign in so center usage could be tracked.

When they arrived at the center, the undergraduate and graduate student consultants all put on blue, collared polo shirts embroidered with the CCC logo. There were two tutoring teams, and depending on the assignment, students could sign up for sessions either in Spanish or English. Some of the consultants were bilingual, but not all. The consultants kept files on each student and recorded in them the date and details of every session.

While I was there, I observed a steady flow of people coming in and going out of the center. The students looked familiar to me in their blue jeans and Boston hats. There was the occasional returning student, and some just wanted to listen to their headphones.

The consultants got together every week at the same time to focus on some aspect of working in the CCC. I observed a staff meeting in which Maria, the senior consultant, used role-playing scripts she had gotten at an IWCA conference. She had translated them from English into Spanish so that all the consultants could use them together as a group. They sat in a circle in a small classroom on the ground floor of the
biblioteca
and went through each one. When they finished reading all the scripts, they further discussed the issues raised in the activity, and then they turned their focus to the other items on the meeting agenda, including scheduling and general center policies. They seemed to enjoy their time together.

Upon learning of the reason for my visit, several students and consultants were eager to share with me their opinions about language, culture, and the writing center. I appreciated their enthusiasm and listened to each of them as long as they wanted to talk. I also invited them to choose the pseudonyms I would use to accompany their quotes.

When it was time for lunch on the first day, Nikki and a couple of the consultants showed me the way to the cafeteria. Nikki told me she enjoys hanging out at the CCC and is friends with many of the students who work there. She especially wanted me to understand the role language plays in her family. She said, “My dad wants me to sound Merengue, and my mom wants me to be totally American like Frank Sinatra.” She explained her father’s desire indicated that he believes her choice of language will determine her true national identity: “My dad wanted
me to be more fluent in Spanish so that I could be pure Puerto Rican and just know a second language.” Nikki’s father rightly correlates language use with identity. Merengue is a Dominican rhythm, so it is possible Nikki’s father wants her to retain some family connection to the Dominican Republic while also integrating fully into Puerto Rican society. On the other hand, her mother may see English as opening the door for future migration to the United States. As
Spolsky (1999
, 181) explains, “Language is a central feature of human identity. When we hear someone speak, we immediately make guesses about gender, education level, age, profession, and place of origin. Beyond this individual matter, a language is a powerful symbol of national and ethnic identity.” For Nikki’s father, language use equates to membership in their culture.

Nikki continued, “Some people I know think that learning English means that they’re betraying their native language because the way they see it, we’re a colony of the United States, and if we subdue to learning the language, it means that we are forsaking our natural language, our native language. They don’t really see it as a benefit to learn another language.” Students who internalize this struggle no doubt find it harder to succeed in their study of English, and they likely bring these feelings with them when they enter the writing center. This adds an additional dimension to the familiar consultant challenge of trying to work with the reluctant writer.

“They mind learning English,” Nikki said, “because it is kind of like forced on us to learn English, and it really kind of pisses them off. It’s like, ‘Why do we have to learn it?’ I know a lot of people who resist it.”
Ebsworth and Ebsworth (2011)
make clear that “acquiring English in Puerto Rico is much more than learning another language. For the Puerto Rican learner, it involves not only acknowledging the power of English in local and global terms, but also confronting the complex psychological and social stresses and pressures that its history and associations entail” (96). Nikki said, “They don’t mind learning French; they don’t mind learning Italian; they don’t mind learning any other language.” She said students ask, “‘Why can’t we choose to learn it?’” and according to her, not having a choice causes resistance. Méndez agreed that this lack of choice leads to even more resistance.

Nikki wanted to tell me more about how Spanish and English work for her. She said, “I do speak both languages, but I have no clue which is my first language cause usually you know in your head, like, if you think in English, then that’s your first native language, but I literally think with both. Like, I start a sentence in one language, and then all of a sudden, it just goes right to another, and I just say it in two languages at the same time.”
Nikki illuminates the problems that Cox points out when writing center and second language writing scholars try to categorize people by the number of languages they speak, or classify them according to whether or not they are native or nonnative speakers of a language. In Nikki’s case, she is fully bilingual and does not think of her languages in terms of native or nonnative.

The university participated in a bilingual initiative program. As a member of that program, Edgar came from the United States to study in Humacao. He told me about how language has affected his identity both in the States and in Puerto Rico. He said, “I was raised in the States, so I came over here just to learn Spanish because over there, I would be hassled a lot for not knowing Spanish by friends, family, church members, and everything. They all speak pretty fluent.” He continued, “I wouldn’t hang out with anybody that was from my culture, actually, because they were too arrogant to speak to me because I’m supposed to be Puerto Rican, and I don’t know any Spanish. They thought I was like, false. Like they thought I was lying whenever I said, ‘I’m Puerto Rican.’ ‘Oh? Well, speak to me in Spanish then.’ And, I’m like, ‘No. Why?’ Because I could understand it completely, but it’s just whenever I had to speak it, it wouldn’t come out. Apparently, you can’t be Puerto Rican if you don’t speak Spanish. You need it to be accepted.”

Edgar’s experience in the States was similar to what he experienced when he began living in Puerto Rico. He said, “Whenever you speak [English] to [people here] in the everyday, they don’t like it because they feel like, ‘You’re in my country, so please speak to me in my language.’” What Edgar describes matches
Pousada’s (2000)
findings that “island-raised Puerto Ricans often mocked the speech and cultural values of US-raised Puerto Ricans” (116). When speaking English, Edgar could not fit in comfortably with the Puerto Ricans he encountered in the States or in Puerto Rico. Many saw him as different and did not accept him as a part of their culture because of his language use. In order to change this,
Pousada (2000
, 117) suggests competent bilinguals need “to demonstrate how one does not stop being Puerto Rican if one learns English.” With this shift, people like Edgar would not feel shunned.

Similar to Edgar, Nikki spoke of encountering people who didn’t appreciate being spoken to in English. She said, “I know a lot of people who are like, ‘Speak to me in Spanish!’ I’m like, ‘If you understand me, what’s
the problem? I’m not forcing you to speak English.’” Nikki also experienced what Torruellas found when observing school students. “In high school,” Nikki said, “some kids would taunt me. They would call me the
gringita
: the American girl.” Nikki concluded, “I was just like, whatever.” Speaking English was cause for bullying, and being called an American was a putdown.

Though there is a great deal of pushback against the learning of English, students and tutors repeatedly mentioned to me the importance of English.
Ebsworth and Ebsworth (2011
, 99) point out this “dichotomy in Puerto Rico,” where “many individuals state the belief that learning English is important. Yet, they also respond to social and psychological forces that act against its acquisition.” In other words, they say it is important to learn English, but they resist actually learning and using the language.

With the goal of becoming a computer programmer, Alexander often comes to the CCC for tutoring in English. He said, “The whole world speaks English, and studying it helped me a lot in opening my opportunities of jobs.” While looking ahead to how English will be important in the future, Alexander knows it is also important to him now. He explained, “I study math, and almost all book is in English, so I need to find a tutor or a Spanish version of the book.” While some textbooks are in Spanish, he said, “the versions in English are more advanced. Sometimes, you have a book in English the seventh edition, and in Spanish, they going from the five edition.” When dealing with computers, currency is important. He continued, “The writers of those books know the books will be used in the whole world, so they have to write in English.”

Méndez added, “If you get any book in science, it is going to be in English. When [students] open the book, what are they going to face? They aren’t going to be using their own language to understand it because the books are in English.” Méndez believes the students are being denied access to the information they need. She said, “I think it’s horrible that the textbooks aren’t translated. [Students] have to go through too many hurdles to get the knowledge. If the texts would be in Spanish, they would learn it. In Spain and in Latin America, they teach sciences in Spanish, so why they are not in Puerto Rico?” She mentioned some restrictions on doing business with countries besides the United States and believes those restrictions add to the lack of available materials in Spanish.

English-language consultants Juliana and Daniel also stressed the importance of English when it comes to textbooks. Juliana remarked on “the attitude” she finds in many students. She said, “Some people just say, ‘I don’t need English. I’m in Puerto Rico. I don’t need English.’ But, they do,” she insisted, “they really do.” Daniel added, “Basically, if you’re going to study here, you need English. At the university, only a few books are in Spanish, and they aren’t the original. They’ve been translated.”