Tutoring Second Language Writers (10 page)

Written accent is one of the most fraught issues related to L2 writing and identity. Just as an L2 student is expected to speak with an accent, an L2 student writes with an accent, an accent that is made visible through such markers as missing or incorrect articles, verb endings, and prepositions. Editing this accent out of a student writer’s text in effect renders their identity as an L2 writer invisible. And yet leaving these markers in the text may leave the student vulnerable to criticism or a lower grade. What should the tutor do in this case?

In my own practice as a tutor, I work with the L2 student to make this decision. There are circumstances in which a written accent can be detrimental to the student. These circumstances include high-stakes writing tasks, such as applications, resumes, and grant proposals, as well as situations the student sees as high stakes. For instance, in a recent tutoring session, I questioned a student on the reasons she wanted my assistance in editing an assigned blog entry, which to me seemed like a low-stakes activity. She explained that while the teacher would not mark down the blog entry for grammar or syntax, she knew that her classmates, who would also be reading the blog entries, were critical and judgmental of L2 students.

However, there are contexts in which written accent would either not be seen as detrimental or would be seen as positive. When writers are working on low-stakes writing activities, such as reading responses, journal entries, and first drafts of essays and papers, tutors should not assume the student will be assessed based on grammar and syntax, as these kinds of activities focus on learning and thinking as the main objectives. Creative writing, including creative nonfiction, is often enhanced by the inclusion of written accent. Asking the student writer about the rhetorical context of the writing assignment and how it will be evaluated could help the student assess the importance of editing the piece for written accent.

There are also circumstances in which elimination of written accent in a student writer’s text may have detrimental effects for the student. If an instructor is accustomed to reading texts from the student that contain L2 markers, suddenly seeing writing from the same student without these markers may make the instructor suspicious of some type of academic dishonesty. Indeed, one theory for the reasons multilingual students are more often charged with plagiarism than L1 English students is that it is easier to detect “copied” passages in L2 writing: instructors often simply identify passages that does not contain written accent. Further, Carol
Severino (2009)
, in “Avoiding Appropriation,” warns writing center tutors not to mask the linguistic proficiency of a student writer: “Intermediate ESL students should not come across as advanced on a paper after a few trips to the writing center” (59). One reason Severino gives for this advice is that writing that too closely reads as writing by an English L1 student may cause a teacher to expect the student to be more familiar with US academic culture, pop culture, and/or history than the student actually is. Also, this masking of the student’s English proficiency also masks the student’s growth as an English user. Comparing past writing to present writing is one way students measure their growth as writers, in any language.

One approach tutors may use is to encourage student writers to see the presence of written accent in a positive light, as did the international student from Bulgaria included in
Zawacki and Habib’s (2010)
study (see above). This student feels pride in her ability to write in multiple languages and pride in her written accent’s reflection of her identity. This feeling of pride in L2 identity is one I believe writing centers should foster.
Leki (1992)
, in a book on L2 writers for faculty across the curriculum, encourages this same perspective.

I realize tutors are in the position of helping students meet rhetorical contexts the tutors themselves cannot control, rhetorical contexts often determined by faculty. But tutors may help L2 students resee those contexts. Research has shown that some faculty, especially those experienced with reading L2 texts, are able to read past indicators of written accent to focus on what the student is communicating through their writing (see, for example,
Vann, Meyer, and Lorenz 1984
;
Zawacki and Habib 2014
). Asking questions about how a particular instructor responded to and evaluated past writing can help both tutor and student determine the instructor’s sensitivity to written accent. Discussing differences in students’ writing as markers of “written accent” may also help the students resee their own writing.

In this chapter I have discussed steps tutors can take during sessions to learn about L2 student writers’ multiple identities, draw on L2 writers’ cultural, educational, rhetorical, and linguistic knowledge, and explore the rhetorical context of an assignment in terms of written accent. In this concluding section, I explore what a writing center can do to learn more about L2 clients and create a climate within the center that is, to use
Leki’s (1992)
words, “courageous enough truly to embrace its definition of [a pluralistic society]” (133).

Learn more about L2 writers.
There are a few approaches writing centers can use to learn more about L2 writers. They can hire more L2 tutors so the writing center can benefit from these students’ perspectives on multilingualism and L2 student identity. English L1 writing center tutors can make an effort to befriend more L2 students in their classes and on campus, to get to know L2 students more personally. The writing center can also maintain richer files on L2 student writers. These files may include information on the student’s linguistic and educational background as well as the student’s field of study, goals as a writer, and challenges as a writer, plus samples of the student’s writing and notes on the tutor’s observations during sessions. Writing centers that only identify L2 students by checking off
ESL
in a student’s file are limiting a tutor’s view of the student, focusing on the student’s identity as an L2 writer rather than their rich experiences with multiple languages, cultures, rhetorics, educational systems, and literacies.

Gather data on the institution’s population of L2 students.
Gathering existing data from multiple offices can help create a picture of the L2 students on campus. All institutions maintain data on international students that include their countries of origin and their majors. Some institutions share this information through their websites while others only provide the barest of data (such as the percentage of overall international students). In these cases, the writing center director may need to request the data from the institution’s office of institutional research. Few institutions collect data on residential L2 students, as this data cannot be gathered during the admissions process due to the risk of discrimination. Some first-year writing programs gather this information, so it is worth contacting the writing program administrator. You might also contact the campus diversity office and ESL office or program, if there is one, to find out whether they collect information on L2 students.

Conduct a needs assessment to learn more about how students and faculty perceive the needs of the institution’s L2 students.
This needs assessment may include surveys of both L2 students and faculty to learn more about L2 students’ language and literacy strengths and needs, perspectives on campus-climate issues, and perspectives on the kinds of support from which L2 students would most benefit (see the appendix for a survey I developed, a needs assessment of international graduate students at Dartmouth College; while this survey was not designed for use by a writing center, the types of questions asked may serve as useful models). Conducting a needs assessment that explores the ways in which L2 students use languages in different rhetorical and literacy contexts could provide rich profiles of the students as language users.

Explore the ways in which the writing center identifies and represents L2 writers.
What terms are used to identify these students during staff meetings? How are L2 writers represented in tutoring materials and on the writing center website? What information is gathered in the intake form and a student writer’s file, and how would this information construct a student’s identity? Transcripts of sessions can also be great sources of information. Analyses of transcripts could explore how an L2 student constructs their own identity as a language user and writer, how an L2 student constructs the tutor’s identity, assumptions made by the tutor about the L2 student, identities the tutor and student writer adopted in relation to each other, tutoring practices the tutor chose when working with L2 students, and how the L2 students reacted to these practices.

Use the data you collect to develop a writing center philosophy on L2 writers.
Conversations on this philosophy might address the following questions: What terms will the writing center use to identify L2 writers? What identities will tutors take in relation to L2 student writers? What position does the writing center take in relation to written accent? How do L2 writers fit into the writing center’s overall mission? How does the writing center want to be identified by L2 students? What vision of L2 writing and writers does the writing center want to endorse to the larger campus community? What role does the writing center want to play in larger campus conversations about linguistic and cultural diversity?

Answers to these questions can help a writing center come to a clearer philosophy regarding L2 students, a philosophy that can then inform practice, enhance L2 students’ perceptions of the writing center, and allow the writing center to become a campus leader in endorsing an inclusive and progressive vision of L2 writing and writers.

Cox
,
Michelle
,
Jay
Jordan
,
Christina
Ortmeier-Hooper
, and
Gwen
Gray Schwartz
.
2010
.
Introduction to
Reinventing Identities in Second Language Writing
, edited
Michelle
Cox
,
Jay
Jordan
,
Christina
Ortmeier-Hooper
, and Gwen Gray Schwartz,
xv
–
xxviii
.
Urbana, IL
:
National Council of Teachers of English
.

This introduction provides a succinct overview about the ways in which identity has been theorized and researched in composition studies and in second language writing studies.

Chiang
,
Yuet-Sim
, and
Mary
Schmida
.
1999
. “
Language Identity and Language Ownership: Linguistic Conflicts of First-Year University Writing Students
.” In
Generation 1.5 Meets College Composition: Issues in the Teaching of Writing to U.S.-Educated Learners of ESL
, edited
Linda
Harklau
,
Kay M.
Losey
, and
Mary
Siegal
,
81
–
96
.
Mahwah, NJ
:
Erlbaum
.

In a landmark collection that shifted attention in the field of SLW studies from international L2 students to permanent resident L2 students, Yuet-Sim Chiang and Mary Schmida explore the ways in which L2 students in first-year composition courses self-identify as ESL. As they discovered, students describe themselves as ESL to not only refer to proficiency in a language other than English but also to refer to cultural heritage, and sometimes they have little to no proficiency with what they see as their first language. This article raises important questions about what it means, to students, to “be ESL.”

Ortmeier-Hooper
,
Christina
.
2008
. “
English May Be My Second Language, but I’m Not ‘ESL.’
”
College Composition and Communication
59
(
3
):
389
–
419
.

Adding to the conversation about what it means, to students, to “be ESL,” Christina Ortmeier-Hooper follows three L2 students enrolled in mainstream sections of first-year composition and analyzes the ways in which these students perform their linguistic identities in their writing and negotiate their classroom identities as ESL—sometimes intentionally constructing their identities as ESL and other times resisting the ways in which the instructor or writing program position them as ESL.

Reid
,
Joy
.
(1998)
2006
.
“‘Eye’ Learners and ‘Ear’ Learners: Identifying the Needs of International Students and US Resident Writers.”
In
Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook
, edited by
Paul Kei
Matsuda
,
Michelle
Cox
,
Jay
Jordan
, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper,
76
–
89
.
Boston
:
Bedford/St. Martin’s
.

While the two above articles explore identity construction in relation to L2 students, this article points to the reason it’s important for tutors to learn about student writers’ linguistic and education histories; research has shown that the differences in the ways in which international L2 students and permanent resident L2 students have learned English have real implications for the ways they write in English in college.