Tutoring Second Language Writers (19 page)

Tutors discover for themselves their own strengths and weaknesses in these complex situations. For example, watch Juan’s video, a session with a multilingual student writing an essay about Habitat for Humanity. The transcript below is an excerpt of a moment in which the tutor helps the writer edit the essay; however, the tutor makes all the changes.

We pointed out the positive moments in the session as Juan helped the student find clarity with her ideas. However, when Juan watched his video, he also realized, “It was mainly me who ran the session” and noted there are times when he could be “less directive” and encourage the student to revise. For example, he noticed after watching the video that he was the one holding the pen and making all the changes on her essay.

Using Adobe Connect, you can review the above clip of a recorded online tutoring session in which the writer, Viviana, shares her screen with one of our tutors, Somaily, and they discuss the document through the computer’s microphone. Somaily begins with positive feedback, discussing the memo’s content, and then the session focuses on sentence clarity and questions about grammar. Viviana’s first language is Spanish (her word processor commands are in Spanish as she composes the essay in English). Somaily, who is also fluent in both English and Spanish, comments to her, “You wrote it thinking in Spanish” (17:50 mark) and
points out the need to reverse the words in English. She discusses the difference between
people is
and
people are
, and there is a lengthy discussion about the difference between
people
versus
family
and verb agreement (24:45 mark). Somaily points out that Viviana adds needed words when she reads the text aloud around the 37:52 mark and then assists her in adding these missing words to her document.

Somaily’s video shows the complexities of being directive or nondirective. Although Somaily worried that she was doing more editing than guiding, we highlighted that she was helping Viviana to be a close reader of her text and to make some necessary changes. Although this online session does not address every grammatical issue that requires attention, including the usage of commas, Somaily helps Viviana identify and clarify her meaning.

In “Looking at the Whole Text” (
Staben and Dempsey Nordhaus 2009
), the authors make a useful distinction between directive and direct tutoring. Directive tutoring says, in effect, “I’ll decide how you should write this.” Direct tutoring explains concepts the writer needs to know or ask about. Most of all, we want our suggestions to be direct and clear for students. One of our tutors, Laura, stresses the importance of being “much clearer in verbalizing[her] thoughts” when working with multilingual students. She says, “Sometimes I am guilty of being too vague in my feedback . . . .” However, Somaily adds, “I also think that it can become easy to focus on sentence-level errors instead of higher order concerns . . . [we] should avoid falling into that trap.” The Digital Video Project can give us a chance to continue a dialogue about this complex issue.

Tutors sometimes use more than one language in a session. Watch this clip of one of our tutors, Jeanette, working with a graduate student, Jimmy, and using more than one language to help him compose. The session focuses on Jimmy’s research project about mentoring. Jeanette reads sections of his essay aloud as they discuss it.

Transcript:

When Jimmy searches for the right word, Jeanette advises him, “
Si no te viene en ingles, piensa en español
[If it doesn’t come to you in English, then think in Spanish].” So he switches to Spanish and then back to English before writing how the “variables manifest themselves.” Then the remainder of the session includes more Spanish as Jeanette asks, “
¿Que significa, por ejemplo
. . . absenteeism and employee turnover?” Jeanette tells him that he needs to discuss these terms more, and Jimmy makes a plan of action for revision (“
trabajar en esto
”). As Jeanette and Jimmy discuss his next appointment, they discuss “
este
paper” and “
el
meeting” for the staff every
miercoles
(Wednesday) at 1p.m.

Our other tutors comment that many of their sessions involve more than one language. Sometimes, as Katie notes, switching from one language to another can “help them bridge the gap” between their first language and English. Somaily explains, “This makes the students feel more comfortable and it helps me understand their intended meaning.” Another tutor, Nazneen, who speaks Hindi, explains her use of more than one language.

In Martha’s session, she helps Ashley compose a movie review in Spanish. Both students are bilingual, but Martha has more experience writing in Spanish. Martha and Ashley discuss the composing process mostly in English and focus on the use of transitions. Ashley reads her paper aloud, and Martha reflects in her session notes.

The video project reinforces our valuing of our multilingual tutors. As the above examples indicate, our writing center is multilingual and diverse. In addition to our students being second language learners, most of our writing center staff speaks more than one language, and at least one-third were born in another country. We have found that our multilingual tutors not only perform at an extremely high level but also add value to our ongoing tutor education in our staff meetings as they contribute insights unique to them as language learners. Their role as learners gives them a peer status native speakers as well as multilingual students value. We sometimes hear of requests for specific kinds of tutors but not for native speakers of English; the most frequent request is for a tutor who speaks Spanish.

And according to the last US Census, over the past thirty years, the number of people speaking a language other than English in the home has increased by 140 percent. Although this linguistic diversity is often framed as a problem or challenge for the writing classroom, more teachers are recognizing the opportunities possible for writing instruction and the necessity for multilingual instruction. For example, studies show that knowing more than one language can help strengthen the mind’s ability to think and solve puzzles (
Martin-Rhee and Bialystok 2008
;
Kovacs and Mehler 2009
). In addition,
Horner, NeCamp, and Donahue (2011)
point out the limits to monolingual research in composition studies and argue for an increase in multilingual scholarship.

Our videos, then, show the benefits of a multilingual staff; however, we have taken steps to recruit a diverse staff, diverse not only in second language ability, but diverse in majors. We did not want our tutor preparation course to seem forbidding since it often takes time for some of our most promising students to see themselves as tutors. So our undergraduate students often sign up for The Processes of Writing without realizing the primary aim of the course is to prepare them to be tutors in the writing center. Fliers and other sources of information advertise the course and explain that successful students can apply to become tutors in our writing center at the end of the semester. However, the course also satisfies students’ need for a writing requirement, and sometimes half of the enrolled students begin the semester never thinking of themselves as tutors. We had thought that eventually, when the course had plenty of applicants, we might make it by consent of instructor, but we are glad the ambiguity of its title allows us to attract and recruit students who take it to improve their writing but subsequently come to understand their potential as writing tutors.

For example, Diego moved to Miami when he was about ten from Colombia. He takes great pride in his “correct” use of Spanish but worries that writers would be concerned about his accent. He said, at the end of the course,

It came as a surprise when Diego changed his mind suddenly. He went on to become one of our best tutors and a great contributor to our center.

Nancy Grimm has set the bar high for recruiting and retaining a diverse tutoring staff. Her university, she writes, is 95 percent white, but she and her staff have succeeded in creating a center that employs underrepresented students at between 30 and 40 percent (
Grimm 2011
). She has done this in part by encouraging students who use the center to apply to become coaches there. Grimm makes diversity a “core value” in her center; multiliteracy can be part of that commitment to diversity, as it is in Grimm’s center; in our experience, multilingual students make great tutors!