Tutoring Second Language Writers (9 page)

Once internalized, this deficit perspective may negatively impact a student’s conception of self as a writer and user of English, a student’s goals for writing and using English, and how the student perceives readers of their work. For instance, in my case study of an international L2 graduate student from South Korea in a communication science and disorders master’s program (
Cox 2010
), Min interpreted all supervisor feedback on her writing as comments on English-language issues. In my analysis of the comments, it was clear that her supervisors sometimes did comment on language issues but more often sought to share with Min discipline-specific discourse and style. While Min saw these comments as a response to her identity as an ESL student, they were, in fact, a response to her identity as a newcomer to the field. As I stated in my chapter on this study (
Cox 2010
), “Min’s interpretation of the feedback as commenting on her ability to write correctly in English further chip[ped] away at her confidence as an English language user and negatively affect[ed] her vision of herself as a novice professional” (89). The ways in which we interpret others’ constructions of our identities affect how we construct our own identities.

A deficit perspective may lead a tutor to use an approach to tutoring that Carol
Severino (1993)
has called the “assimilationist approach,” in which the tutor attempts to reshape the student’s writing so it matches that of an English L1 writer. This approach is sometimes rhetorically appropriate, such as when the student is engaged in high-stakes writing with inflexible standards, such as resume writing, but when the assimilationist approach is motivated not by the rhetorical situation but by an assumption that all differences in the student’s writing are deficits, this approach can be damaging. It sends the message that only native-like English is valued, and writing in native-like English is an unattainable goal for most L2 students without the help of an English L1 writer (
Silva, Leki, and Carson 1997
). Further, it implies that a written accent—indicated by such markers as missing or incorrect articles, pluralization, verb endings, and prepositions—should not remain on the page, though written accent can be seen as a display of identity. Consider, for instance, this statement, made by an undergraduate international student from
Bulgaria who was part of Terry Myers Zawacki and Anna Sophia Habib’s study of L2 students writing across the curriculum:

For this student, an assimilationist approach to tutoring does not “correct” a student’s writing but eradicates signs of the student’s identity and heritage.

Identifying a student as L2 can lead to more effective tutoring decisions as well as help tutors avoid problematic assumptions.

Let me start by sharing a story from my teaching, a story that has implications for tutoring. When I taught sections of first-year composition as a graduate student at the University of New Hampshire, I worked with a student I’ll call Steve. I remember thinking that this student was lazy, due to the number of errors in his writing and I was perplexed by his apparent sloppiness because he otherwise came across as a dedicated student: he was always polite, came to class on time and prepared, and met every deadline. Years later, after I graduated and attained my first faculty position, I came across his essays while unpacking. By this point, I had studied SLW and had more experience working with linguistically diverse students. I was floored when I realized that the errors I had noticed were actually L2 markers: missing verb endings, missing articles, incorrect prepositions. The student was likely a resident L2 student, one who was so fluent with spoken English that I missed the fact that he wrote with an accent. Had I known Steve was an L2 student, I would have been a more effective writing teacher for him, reading, responding to, and assessing his writing with more sensitivity.

Though I do not remember noticing anything about his cultural background in Steve’s writing, writers’ cultural backgrounds can also impact the ways in which they make rhetorical decisions—how they organize text, make an argument, and relate to readers (an area of research called
contrastive rhetoric
, a topic more fully explored by Valerie Balester, this volume). If a reader does not know a student is writing from a non-US rhetorical tradition, the text can appear haphazard and disorganized. In fact, it can be disorienting for US academic readers to read texts that don’t follow US academic rhetorical conventions. Knowing a student uses English as an L2 can help a reader suspend their
expectations and read the paper on the paper’s own terms, reading to understand the logic behind the organization rather than reading to impose US academic conventions (for more on this, see
Matsuda and Cox 2009
).

Understanding whether an L2 student is an international student or a resident student can also be helpful when making decisions about approaches to tutoring. International students often have strengths in understanding English grammar and are familiar with the language used to describe grammar. Further, they are typically not embarrassed by grammatical errors but see them as a natural part of language learning. International L2 students are often adept at comparing US educational culture with the educational systems of their home countries and may find conversations comparing how they learned to write in their L1 and in English in their home countries with US writing practices and instruction to be illuminating. However, international L2 students, particularly those who have not yet spent much time in an English-medium setting, typically haven’t yet developed an intuitive sense of the language. Therefore, approaches like asking the student to read the paper aloud will typically be ineffective and may even distract the student from their writing, as their focus will turn to pronunciation (
Matsuda and Cox 2009
, 47). The Socratic approach often used in writing centers, where tutors ask student writers open-ended questions about their writing, may also not be effective, as these questions typically rely on an intuitive sense of the language (see
Harris and Silva 1993
for alternative strategies).

Resident students’ strengths lie in their proficiency with spoken English. The many techniques tutors have for using talk to support writing are often effective for these students. Asking the student to read their writing aloud is also an effective technique for these students. Not only does this approach allow the student to draw on their intuitive sense of the language, it also allows the tutor to understand the ways in which the student is drawing on spoken English when writing. For instance, by hearing the writer’s spoken accent, a tutor may see that a word that appears as an odd choice or misspelling may in fact be a phonetic representation of another word. Resident students are also typically adept at thinking rhetorically, as they have had to negotiate many rhetorical situations in the United States to make it to college. Tutors can draw on this knowledge when focusing on higher-order concerns such as organization and rhetorical moves. Resident L2 writers may, though, be sensitive about errors in their writing, so the tutor may want to use care when addressing issues of grammar and usage, the same care that would be used with an English L1 student. For instance, rather than
assume the writer isn’t familiar with English grammar and usage, the tutor might ask questions that help the tutor see if the student has made a performance error or an error due to lack of knowledge. Further, resident L2 students may be offended if the tutor attempts to act as a cultural informant, an identity tutors may come to inhabit during sessions with L2 students (described further below). Some resident L2 students work hard to “pass” as US L1 students; any comment that implies they are seen as foreigners will likely be met with disgruntlement.

A problem related to all the terms I described above is the danger of using the term as the sole identifier of the student. Doing so elides the many strengths and areas of knowledge the student has as a member of a discipline, a college student, a writer in many languages, and a rhetorician, strengths and areas of knowledge that may be used as resources during tutoring. Identifying a student with only one term may also prevent the tutor from finding common ground with the student, an important part of creating a productive tutor-student relationship. Tutors often tell me about their anxieties related to working with L2 student writers. They fear that the tutoring approaches they have found effective with English L1 students will not work with L2 students. While it is true that tutors need to adjust their approach for each student they meet, the differences in tutoring L2 students may not be as extreme as these tutors fear if they recognize that these students are not just L2 students; they are also students trying to develop an effective writing process, express themselves in ways seen as effective in different disciplines, negotiate often opaque assignment descriptions, find out how readers will respond to a draft, and learn how to use past writing experiences when facing new ones—the same challenges all student writers face. If tutors identify L2 students by their multiple experiences as students and writers as much as they identify them by their linguistic backgrounds, anxieties will ease.

Not only the identities constructed by and for L2 students matter during tutoring sessions; the identities of the tutors matter as well. In writing center literature on tutoring L2 writers, a number of these identities have been written about, including cultural informant, rhetorical informant, and linguistic informant (see, for instance,
Harris and Silva 1993
). These identities may be ones tutors choose to take on in response to their own construction of the L2 student’s identity or may be ones an L2 student expects of the tutor. In this section, I discuss these three tutor identities and their implications for tutoring L2 writers.

Cultural informant:
Tutors take on the identity of cultural informant when they inform a student writer about US culture, US academic culture, or the culture of a specific discipline (
Blau and Hall 2002
; see also Balester, this volume). They may take on this role when they perceive that lack of cultural knowledge is preventing the L2 student from writing effectively or when they seek to promote cross-cultural understanding.

Rhetorical informant:
Tutors take on the identity of rhetorical informant when they inform a student writer about the rhetorical situation of a writing task, which includes the roles, characteristics, and relationships among reader(s), context, genre, and the writer. Tutors may adopt this role when they perceive the L2 student to be unfamiliar with US academic culture or writing conventions.

Linguistic informant:
Tutors take on the role of linguistic informant when they describe English grammar, usage, and vocabulary to the student writer. Tutors may adopt this role when they perceive that the cause of errors in the student’s writing is a lack of knowledge about English structure and vocabulary.

As discussed by
Harris and Silva (1993)
, these roles, which tutors may take on during any session, may be more prevalent in sessions with L2 writers. Indeed, all writers need an understanding of the cultural, rhetorical, and linguistic contexts in which they are writing in order to write effectively. Further, as shown in studies by
Leki (1995
,
1999
,
2007
) on students writing across the curriculum and by Joy Reid and Barbara Kroll on their analyses of US college writing assignments, many assignments assume knowledge of US history, popular culture, and politics (
Reid and Kroll 1995
). In addition, many college writing assignments implicitly require knowledge of US writing culture, including ways in which writing is taught in the United States and rhetorical patterns preferred by US academic readers. For instance, how many times have college students heard professors tell them to “forget the five-paragraph essay learned in high school”? How many college professors simply expect students to use thesis-driven, deductive, and heavily cited arguments without making these expectations clear? Tutors who take on the roles of cultural, rhetorical, and linguistic informants and share their insider’s perspective may be providing important information to L2 students, information that helps level the playing field for these students.

However, tutors must take care to be sure these roles are desired by the student writer. To ensure that the tutor’s assumptions about a student writer’s linguistic identity aren’t getting in the way, the tutor may ask the student writer questions about the decisions they have made as a writer. For instance, if the tutor notices the student has written an
argument organized inductively with the thesis implied towards the end of the essay, the tutor could stop and ask the student why they made this choice. If the students says, “This is the way arguments are written in my country,” the tutor can proceed to take on the role of a rhetorical informant and discuss thesis-driven deductive arguments.

Further, the roles of cultural, rhetorical, and linguistic informants do not need to be reserved for the tutor. Indeed, the tutor can also encourage L2 student writers to take on these identities during a session. L2 students, who have traversed multiple cultural, educational, rhetorical, and linguistic landscapes, can often compare cultures, educational systems, rhetorical preferences, and language systems. These comparisons can help these students become more aware of differences across these areas and more aware of the reasons behind their own decisions as writers. Tutors may also help L2 students draw on these areas of knowledge to negotiate US-centric writing assignments, a move
Leki (1995)
observed. She noticed that L2 students, in order to succeed, often “rewrit[e] the terms” to make an assignment more manageable by drawing on knowledge of their home country or culture (243). For instance, an assignment that asks for a rhetorical analysis of a commercial may be “rewritten” to focus on a commercial in the student’s L1, or may focus on a US commercial in English but be explicitly analyzed using the perspective of a person from the student’s home country. Such a stance would empower L2 students, allowing them to draw on knowledge other students in the class may not have. Encouraging L2 students to draw on these areas of knowledge can help them become more confident students and more independent writers. Further, these approaches to tutoring shift the tutor’s identity from informant to collaborator—a role that shifts the dynamic of the session from the unilateral provision of knowledge from the tutor to the tutee to the bilateral exchange of ideas and knowledge.