Tutoring Second Language Writers (14 page)
Read Tutoring Second Language Writers Online
Authors: Shanti Bruce
A member of the Spanish-language consultant team, Isabella, talked with me about her goals of becoming an accountant. She said, “I would like to learn more English and better my Spanish because nobody’s perfect in either language, and it’s important to learn both.” The CPA test is in English, and she also mentioned wanting to be able to communicate when traveling.
Isabella continued to talk, but Maria stopped translating for me. I wasn’t sure why, and then they both started giggling. Maria looked at me and said, “I can’t say it; she told me not to.” I didn’t know what was going on or whether they were planning to let me in on it, so I simply sat and waited. Then Isabella nodded, and Maria looked at me and further explained why they feel it is important to learn English. She said, “It’s a thing that we kind of hope to, um, sort of . . . get an American boyfriend from the States.” I said, “Oh, okay.” She continued, “Okay, to explain. We sort of, I don’t know, it’s a thing we do, like, a culture thing. Like, a girl would normally, her stereotype of ‘oh my god, that’s the guy I want,’ is like white, blonde hair, blue eyes. You ask any Puerto Rican girl, ‘a pale American with blue eyes.’” She explained, “It’s like what my mom says. She told me like, ‘You need to get a guy with, like, straight hair, so you can better your race.’”
The dichotomy that
Ebsworth and Ebsworth (2011)
point out kept coming up in my discussions with the students. On the one hand, Isabella told me it is important for her to learn English in order to be successful, but she already is a successful university student who was even hired as a consultant at the CCC. She says she needs English, but she works in a place that tutors English, and she speaks almost no English. Nikki and Edgar spoke of the resistance to English, and yet, according to Isabella and Maria, an American guy is the ideal boyfriend.
Language is an integral part of identity, of what it means to be human. Both the students who work at the CCC and those who come in for tutoring bring with them attitudes that reflect their home and school experiences. That is the story at all writing centers. In an effort to make all people feel comfortable in a writing center, all languages must be welcomed. In this volume, Frankie Condon and Bobbi Olson explain that writing center directors, tutors, and scholars can’t “fix” the world or our institutions. But we can move thoughtfully, experimentally, and with care to create and sustain spaces shaped by our shared concern for justice, for equality of access, and opportunity. Figuring out how to do that is, of course, the challenge.
Méndez, director of the CCC, also believes writing centers are in a unique position to work for positive change. She considers the tutoring session—the heart of writing center work—the place to open minds. “I believe that writing centers are not neutral,” she said, “I believe that 100 percent. I think that writing centers are places for people to change their attitude. How you do that is not by politics or imposing things. It is by questioning and allowing that person to get into the process of thinking their own thoughts about what is written there.” During a tutoring session, Méndez believes, a consultant should ask, “Why do you believe that?” She explained, “I’m not challenging that. I just want you to express it but in a clear way. ‘Why do you think that?’ Make that person think. So in that sense, change is going on. It’s a challenge. Your comfort area is being challenged, and I think that’s what has to happen.”
In addition to challenging writers to open their minds, Méndez offered five ways writing centers in the States can create spaces that welcome all students.
1. Present a multicultural scenario.
Méndez suggests placing phrases in different languages and posters representing different countries around the center. She said, “You might say, ‘Well, that’s a façade.’ And it is, but it’s important.” If the writing center has words and images that reflect students’ home cultures and languages, they are more likely to feel welcome. Méndez says some students see the center and think, “This is an environment that I don’t like; it is challenging to me; it is scary to me.” While it may seem simple, she believes “putting a phrase on the wall can help.” She said, “Make that person special because that person every day is made invisible. Make it visible by some things on the wall that say,
‘Hey, you are welcome. Your culture, your language is welcome here.’”
Special promotions and events can also be created to target specific populations. “If you want to target the Hispanic population,” for example, Méndez said, centers should “put a Spanish phrase on the information, and when Spanish speakers see that, they will feel good. It’s empathy.”
2. Provide tutoring areas with some privacy.
Being completely alone might not be the best idea, but having an area that is somewhat private can, according to Méndez, help students feel less self-conscious about needing help and about others hearing their pronunciation. She said, “When [students] come [to the CCC], they are ashamed when they don’t know [English] because they are supposed to know it. That’s why they can come in these private rooms so that nobody is around, so they can feel comfortable.” She added, “The consultants know not to laugh at you, but someone else might do it.”
3. Learn to pronounce the student’s name.
Méndez feels strongly that consultants should take the time to learn to say each student’s name. She said, “At least the first name. Okay? It’s important.” She insisted, “Don’t call me ‘
H
elena;’ call me ‘
E
lena.’ My name is important. At least know me by name. Know how to pronounce my name right. And what country I come from.” She said if consultants take the time to do this, students “will come back because they will feel that they are accepted and respected and honored.”
4. Develop sensitivity toward different content and beliefs.
Méndez reminds consultants that encountering different people might mean encountering different content. She stresses the fact that “we might not understand the content, but it is not wrong” because people from different cultures look at the world in different ways. She encourages tutors to be sensitive to difference. For example, “If a person is writing about how a woman should not go out because it will dishonor the family, which happens in some cultures, the consultant should be sensitive about that,” even if the consultant has a hard time understanding that cultural norm.
5. Participate in multicultural education.
When consultants are not busy in sessions, Méndez believes, they should use some of their time to learn about the places the students who visit the center call home. The writing center should be a place where everyone is learning. She said consultants should think, “I learn as a tutor, and I’m learning even more now because I am learning about cultures.” She believes tutors should “feel grateful for that learning” and even thank students at the end of sessions in which the tutors, too, learn something.
Méndez suggested writing centers include cultural sensitivity discussions in meetings and retreats. If each tutor learns about one country or culture and gives a presentation to the staff, Méndez asks, “What will happen?” She answers, “That tutor will be enriched, and the center will be a mecca for all students.” Centers can gather their own information about what languages and cultures are represented on campus, or they can find that information through an office on campus that keeps those records.
When I expressed how difficult many people find it to work with L2 writers, Méndez said tutors should feel confident in their abilities and remember writing center work constitutes a learning opportunity for everyone involved. She said tutors should know “that person came to ask for support because they know you can give it.” Tutors must have the confidence that they can do it. She said tutors should “mentalize it; put that uniform on. I’m the tool that he or she needs now, and I’m going to provide that, and I’m going to be learning because that person is going to give me something in exchange, and I’m going to be a richer person.” She said tutors who learn to pronounce students’ names and learn what country a person comes from are already “breaking down a lot of that intensity. There are two minds that have to be merged at some point,” she said, “so know [you’re] going to be supporting this person in this process” and “be thankful to have that opportunity.”
Issues with Spanish and English are not confined to Puerto Rico. In the States, there are groups of people who fear the increasing numbers of Spanish speakers. While some people in both places are uneasy with shifts in demographics and languages used, others believe there is
another way to look at these changes. Rather than losing identity, Aníbal Muñoz Claudio, English Professor at UPRH said, embracing multiple languages allows one to expand and enrich an identity. In fact, “Modern studies of identity,” according to
Spolsky (2010
, 176), “stress that it is quite normal for an individual to share in several identities each associated with a different level of social organization and to switch between them in changing situations.”
To illustrate this dilemma, Muñoz shared with me a conversation he had recently had with a colleague at UPRH. The colleague was critical of Muñoz’s teaching of English. He said to Muñoz, “The more English that our students speak, the more identity they will lose.” Muñoz said he disagreed and told his colleague, “If you learn another language, the more identity you gain.” He then presented an analogy. He asked his colleague, “If you learn French or Italian or Portuguese, will that make you less Puerto Rican or more Puerto Rican?” His colleague answered, “Well, no. That’s not the case.” Muñoz said, “You see that? A Brazilian, a Chinese, and an Egyptian will be just pleased by learning English because they don’t have any political attachments, any political ideologies, or any political mindsets involved in that equation.” He said, “Many students believe that by learning English, they are relinquishing their Spanish, Puerto Rican identity,” and to change that, he said, “we need to make English part of our culture. We need to invite the English language into our culture.” He remarked as well on the fears that exist in the States. He said, “They take Spanish as a foreign language as well. Instead, bring it into your culture, invite in Spanish to belong.” He spoke of Europe and how many people speak multiple languages there without feeling threatened. He said that to get past the barriers we have all created, people in the States need to embrace Spanish, and Puerto Ricans need to embrace English. He said if we can think of the languages as belonging to us, it would become a process of “gaining, not losing identity.” He acknowledged the difficulty of this proposition but stressed that the more people who can see learning another language as “a linguistic phenomenon, not as a political phenomenon, then the more open minded we can be to eliminate that barrier.”
In his work to change the minds of people who distrust learning English, Muñoz distributed a questionnaire to professors and students at his university in order to learn more about what they believe to be an authentic part of their culture. He said, “You usually cherish and you usually work with the things that belong to you. Right now, I think 90% of our population would say, ‘No, English does not belong
to me.’” The responses to the questionnaire confirmed what Muñoz had suspected: “A great majority did not consider English to be part of their culture.” Interestingly, though, he said, “They do consider Thanksgiving and Christmas and Santa Claus and St. Valentine’s and many other cultural elements. They do accept computers and shopping malls and Macy’s and Sears, so it’s very interesting to see that you have all those cultural elements embedded in our culture here, but not yet the language.”
The situations in Puerto Rico and the States share some commonalities. In one, people are resisting the English language, while in the other, people are resisting the Spanish language. Each is trying to protect culture and identity and ward off what is perceived as a threat to an established way of life. Perhaps this is where the writing center can come in. The writing center could become the place where we dissuade fears of difference, particularly with language, and we can take that experience with us into our homes and classrooms and interactions with others. If we do as Méndez and Muñoz do in Puerto Rico, and Kevin Dvorak and Glenn Hutchinson and Paula Gillespie do in this volume—if we bring multiple languages into the center and believe they belong to all of us as a broadening of our identities, then perhaps we can all become more comfortable with the comingling of languages and seize the opportunity to gain rather than lose identity.
1. Méndez offered five suggestions for writing centers in the States. Consider each of her suggestions. How might they work in your center? Which ones would you like to try out? Do any of them concern you? What would you add to her list?
2. Professor Muñoz believes that learning any additional language, including English, adds to a person’s identity. His colleague believes that learning English is different from learning other languages and that the learning of English can result in the loss of identity. Imagine you are standing with Professor Muñoz and his colleague, and they invite you into their conversation. What would you contribute to their discussion?
3. Have you experienced resistance to language and cultural change? Was this experience in an academic setting? How might you respond to people who do not think writing centers in the United States should move toward embracing multiple languages?
The following readings are included on the PBS website to accompany the
Do You Speak American
documentary by Robert MacNeil. In the series, MacNeil travels around the United States and learns about the varieties of English spoken by people in different regions of the country.
Baron
,
Dennis
.
2005
. “Language Change: Language and Society.” PBS.org.
http://www .pbs.org/speak/ahead/change/society/
.
Dennis Baron writes about language change and identity, and he also recounts the ways in which the United States has handled the controversial introduction of different languages into the educational system. After reading about Puerto Rico’s issues with languages in schools, it is interesting to read about the United States’ experiences.
Rohde
,
David.
2003
. “Global American: Global English.” PBS.org.
http://www.pbs.org /speak/ahead/globalamerican/global/
.
David Rohde explores the way the English language is spreading throughout the world. When English spreads, it both changes the languages it comes into contact with and is itself changed. This article provides insight into why Professor Muñoz’s colleague fears the introduction of English into Puerto Rican culture.
Wolfram
,
Walt.
2005
. “Language Change: The Truth about Change.” PBS.org.
http://www.pbs.org/speak/ahead/change/change/
.
Walt Wolfram explores the connections between social groups and language change, explaining that some people resist change in an effort to maintain status and identity with certain groups. It may be helpful to consider this article alongside the stories from Nikki and Edgar.
