Tutoring Second Language Writers (32 page)

Oddly enough being an ‘outsider’ puts me in a strong position to work with students beginning to write in their disciplines. I can’t be sure why this alliance—two people who are both ‘outsiders’ in the discipline in question—works. In fact, some students ask me directly, “If neither of us is an expert in this kind of communication, then how can you possibly help me?” There is probably more than one reason. Perhaps it is because I am not absorbed in the technical content that I can look more objectively at the organization of the writing. Or perhaps it is that I am a fresh and responsive reader—a scarce resource for a beginning disciplinary writer. Perhaps it is just precisely that I am
not
a disciplinary professor who has to give a grade that frees the writer to look critically at the text she has produced. Or perhaps it is that my responses and suggestions prompt the student writer to reflect at several levels and then to move toward revision.

Despite my confidence in what I bring to my work with a developing disciplinary writer, I am always clear about the limits of my expertise. For example, I might say, “We both know I am not an engineer (or scientist or architect or . . .), and even though I have worked with many writers in that discipline, I cannot assess your technical knowledge. So I want to emphasize that you should get feedback from your professor or teaching assistant or project advisor. What I do know about is how this kind of writing comes together, and I think that by looking at your writing together, we can make it stronger.” Based on that clarity about expectations, the writer and I begin to work. What I have observed is that usually the writer emerges from that contact with a stronger assessment of the document (or presentation) under construction and then is able to engage in more productive discussions with her professors and peers. Over time, most student writers go on to become ‘insiders’ in their disciplines, and competent writers, too. For my part, I continue as a writing teacher who is increasingly knowledgeable (but never fully expert) about communication in another discipline.

Much of my work with disciplinary writers has been with students learning to write and to present in their second or other language (L2), and in this chapter, I focus on some of the challenges many of them experience. The transition into disciplinary writing and communication is not easy for any student, but there are particular challenges for L2 writers.
Each L2 writer must not only manage the task of learning to write in a discipline, but she must also continue to strengthen second language skills while simultaneously encountering and negotiating new national, local, institutional, and disciplinary cultures.

In addition, just as we acknowledge the added challenges to L2 disciplinary writers, we must reflect on the heightened challenges to their tutors.
Diversity
—a buzzword in our globalized world—is usually constructed as a benign characteristic that is attractive and a bit exotic. However, in reality, those of us who work with culturally and linguistically diverse students know there are two sides to the notion of diversity. On the positive side, learning about new cultures can be rewarding. However, it is also true that at times, cultural and linguistic diversity can be correlated with awkward communication, implicit and incorrect assumptions, confusion about objectives, and some degree of discomfort in our exchanges with students. Moreover, tutors may be L2 writers themselves. Their backgrounds may contribute a welcome sensitivity to their engagement with L2 students, but L2 tutors also may feel a slight sense of uncertainty when tutoring other L2 writers. When we add disciplinary diversity to this mix, our discomfort may escalate to anxiety or even to fear.

“What is there to be afraid of?” one might ask. Often, in this situation, I think we experience a basic human aversion to looking foolish because we are not experts in that field. The fact is—we don’t know. We don’t even know what it is we don’t know. Although as tutors we may accumulate some knowledge about that discipline over time, for the most part, in that territory, we are strangers. As such, we feel—like many strangers in an unfamiliar place—some degree of being awkward, lost, vulnerable, and out of control. One thing feels certain; as we work with the student writer, we may be on the brink of revealing our lack of knowledge in some yet undetermined but potentially embarrassing way. That suspicion doesn’t feel so good.

Anxiety can lead us to some unproductive behavior with the writer. Perhaps we avoid the very issue that needs to be addressed. Perhaps we seize on grammar or punctuation errors because we feel knowledgeable in those areas. Perhaps we minimize the issues before us because that reduction helps us feel more comfortable. Or our anxiety prompts us to take control of the tutoring so what ought to be collegial and collaborative becomes autocratic and potentially misdirected.

Over the years, I have learned several ways to work with those uncomfortable feelings. First, the very awareness of the anxiety is instructive. When I feel that discomfort, I know I need to check in on several levels.
Am I expecting myself to be a disciplinary expert? What does the student expect? Do I feel out of control of this writing conference? Is this a time to remember my disciplinary boundaries? Is it a time to remind the student of the limits of my disciplinary expertise?

Second, I remember that anxiety often surfaces when the scope of the work is too broad and I am trying to address too many issues at once: language, writing, grammar, critical thinking, or structure. Is this a time to refocus the conference on shared objectives?

Also, the anxiety reminds me that I am human and that if I am feeling a bit tense, the student writer is feeling even more so. At times, just being able to say to a student, “This really is confusing to me!” or “I am not sure what to make of this section” allows the writer to take a deep breath and admit she feels somewhat the same way. Then, together, we prioritize what can be done with this piece of writing in this particular session. Always, I remind myself that—and experienced tutors will echo this insight—the next cue is there on the written page. When in doubt, I look at the writing, and in that writing, I see something about what the writer is able to accomplish with the text. That reality—however small—puts firm ground under my feet and allows me to move forward.

The remainder of this chapter focuses on L2 writers and some of the work they must do as they become disciplinary writers. (The term
L2
may seem simplistic since many L2 writers are linguistically diverse, but it is used here for efficiency. See Michelle Cox, this volume, for a full discussion.) To begin, I describe the common challenges faced by both native English-speaking writers and L2 writers. Then, after focusing more closely on L2 writers, I offer three vignettes in which I illustrate ways tutors can work effectively with L2 disciplinary writers.

Most university students develop along a continuum as individuals, as members of their academic and professional communities, and as critical thinkers. Their writing shows their progress along that continuum (
Poe, Lerner, and Craig 2010
). Although their development is individual and unpredictable, we generally observe an evolution that is the result of their growing expertise in what Anne Beaufort describes as knowledge domains (
Beaufort 2004
). For example, competent academic writers gradually develop knowledge about subject matter (courses she has taken) and familiarity in genre knowledge (the common intellectual activities and the formats to which she has been introduced). She also
gains expertise in rhetorical knowledge (how those genres can be used for the construction of knowledge and of argument in varying situations) and some competency in writing-process knowledge (how to create and refine a piece of writing). However, until she has begun to write and to present within her discipline, she probably has little discourse-community knowledge—that is to say, awareness and competency in those values, attitudes, activities, and ways of constructing knowledge often implicit and deeply situated within a discipline (
Lave and Wenger 1991
).

This progression through writing development is never linear. In fact, developing writers often re-learn and refine skills as they practice with new genres, areas of subject matter, and rhetorical strategies. This development is complicated by the increasingly complex content about which they write, and this is especially true as a writer enters her disciplinary community. There, she must begin again on another developmental continuum. She carries with her what she has learned about genre, about rhetoric, about specific subject-matter areas, and about the writing process, but even these domains of knowledge may have to be refined or redefined in significant ways. In a sense, she must immerse herself in a new disciplinary culture of knowledge, thought, and behavior. She must learn a great deal of complex subject matter rapidly. She is introduced to disciplinary standards for thinking about and constructing knowledge. In conversations with peers and mentors, she experiments with new genres that capture the activities of the community. She learns the conventions of her new peers, modeling the style and tone of their communications. Her membership —her ‘insider’ status—is assessed by her progress in negotiating these professional networks and mastering the expected forms of communication with all their subtleties. As she progresses further in her discipline, her writing abilities continue to be taxed by increasingly complex tasks, so even an advanced writer at the undergraduate level finds herself faced with new demands on those previously adequate abilities.

The developmental continuum and the apprenticeship in the discipline are similar for both native English speakers and L2 students as they manage the transition into their disciplinary communities (
Stoller et al. 2005
). However, linguistic diversity is a factor in this process for L2 writers. First, all but the most advanced L2 writers continue to acquire and refine their second or other language in subtle and complex ways. Second, they are also learning to write
in
that new language, a very different cognitive activity. (
Harris and Silva 1993
;
Kroll 1990
;
Silva 1993
;
Williams 2002
). These two distinctly separate processes are not in opposition. In fact, they are reciprocal. For example, the abilities to use correct
syntax and extensive vocabulary are essential for advanced writing, but those abilities alone do not produce meaningful writing (
Canagarajah 2002
). Alternately, iteration and reflection cannot produce depth, clarity, coherence, and effective rhetorical strategies if an L2 writer does not have enough vocabulary or lacks sufficient control over grammar. An L2 writer must juggle both processes—the rule-based, additive process of language acquisition AND the iterative and reflective process of writing—if she is going to build strength in each.

Moreover, this challenge becomes more complicated when an L2 writer begins to communicate in her disciplinary community. Perhaps she has been a successful writer in L2 when essays were shorter, vocabulary more general, and rhetorical strategies less complex. But now—writing in her discipline—the complex technical material may strain her ability to read, to listen, and to comprehend in L2. Moreover, in the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), she must absorb and produce language not only in textual form but also through equations and technical graphics.

Acquiring and using a disciplinary vocabulary may be more difficult for her since she may lack the intuition about words and pronunciation that many native English speakers have. She must master the rhetorical habits that embody the ways in which professionals in that community think about and construct new knowledge (
Johns 1990
). Moreover, the L2 writer must grasp not only the larger features of a new genre but also the nuances within those features, the ways in which sources are used and cited, and the style and tone of writing (
Lillis and Curry 2010
).

Even as L2 writers face language challenges in their discipline, many of them encounter cultural challenges. The most obvious cultural difference is that an L2 writer often is influenced by a different ethnic or national culture that in turn has shaped the educational culture, curriculum, and pedagogy in which she has been prepared. Thus, in the new cultural context, an L2 writer may find that the language abilities that worked well in hierarchical, lecture-based classrooms may not work as well in a team-based or open-ended, problem-based course—pedagogy currently popular in US universities. Verbal abilities and listening comprehension may be taxed by the rapid and unstructured classroom interaction often common in US universities and by group work with peers (
Reid and Kroll 1995
;
Zamel 2004
).

In addition, the L2 writer now plunges into a disciplinary culture in which she needs new cognitive skills in order to advance. Her native English-speaking peers encounter this new culture, too. Yet native
speakers approach these disciplinary communication tasks with deep, implicit cultural knowledge that allows them a certain intuition about how to approach tasks and negotiate their way in their new community (see Balester, this issue, for a discussion of the cultural construction of critical thinking.) Also, native speakers have a lifetime of experience in the language in which they are writing or speaking: syntax, mechanics, and an extensive general vocabulary onto which they begin to layer disciplinary language. Moreover, native speakers already may share disciplinary expectations about use of sources, rhetoric, and graphics, and they may be quicker to conform to style and tone. In addition, native speakers do not have to think critically about these tasks in another language. The L2 writer, on the other hand, may share only a few or perhaps none of these advantages, thus facing a more complex set of challenges than does a native speaker of English (
Harris and Silva 1993
;
Matsuda 1999
,
2001
;
Reid and Kroll 1995
;
Silva 1993
;
Zamel and Spack 2004
)

The natural question then is how can a tutor is who not an expert in language acquisition or a member of a disciplinary community work with an L2 writer who presents a range of linguistic and cultural issues? As a population, their single common characteristic is heterogeneity, and thus there is nothing as simple as a one-size-fits-all approach. With each L2 writer, we find ourselves somewhere on a spectrum that ranges from sentence-level problems to the more advanced issues of organization of information (at times, information that is highly technical) and the crafting of rhetorical strategies. Perhaps our best initial strategy is to feel confident in our areas of expertise. For example, we have deep knowledge about the mechanics of language and the writing process. And we also understand language can be shaped in order to persuade, to inform, to argue, or to analyze. And second, it is wise for us to clearly communicate the boundary of that knowledge and to encourage students to seek feedback from disciplinary mentors (
Mackiewicz 2004
).

Experienced tutors know our work is easier when a writer comes to the conference with a specific question about the writing. Although we may think there are more important issues to address, the writer’s question points to the writer’s greater concern, and thus we pay attention. But often sessions begin when the writer has no specific question but only a wordless, exhausted hope that we can help. When tutoring sessions begin in that way, the disciplinary text produced by an unskilled L2 writer can seem impenetrable. Yet over the years, I have developed a list of questions, one or more of which usually helps me find a way into the text.

Exceptions and additions to this list apply in various disciplines, but it is safe to say that advanced (and developing) writers in all disciplines must learn to manage these tasks.