I’ve always been drawn to languages, and when I was in high school I wanted to eventually become an ESL instructor after college. I probably won’t end up pursuing this, but learning other languages still excites me. Now that I’m beginning my journey as a writing tutor, I know that I will most likely have a tutoring sessions with non-native English speakers. My thoughts then shift to questions when I think about this: will I be able to effectively tutor the student? How can I approach tutoring Centenary’s multilingual students?
During the week of April 4th, we read articles discussing multilingual writing and tutoring. For our “jigsaw reading,” I read Christian Brendel’s “Tutoring between Language with Comparative Multilingual Tutoring. For this post, I also read the Bobbi Olsen’s “Rethinking Our Work with Multilingual Writers: The Ethics and Responsibility of Language Teaching in the Writing Center,” and Carol Severino’s “Word Choice Errors in Chinese Students’ English Writing and How Online Writing Center Tutors Respond to Them.”
Several guest speakers from different academic departments came in to speak with us about writing across the curriculum. During one class, Professor Lesce, the ESL Coordinator, came in to speak with us about writing in Centenary’s ESL program, and how the Writing Collaboratory can more effectively assist these students. I found major connections between this discussion and the articles that we read that week.
Though Centenary is not an extremely diverse school, we have a number of international students. Carol Severino and Shih-Ni Prim’s article can relate to the experiences of some of these students. Severino and Prim discuss the problems that many second language writers face. Multilingual students who are still trying to master their command of the English language often struggle with word choice, making their writing less effective. Severino and Prim studied the writings of Chinese students in particular, and found that the types of errors that occur in these students’ writing have to do with using words in the wrong context, the presence of synforms (words that look/sound alike), the precision of the language used, idiomaticity, and register errors (in which oral and written styles of English are confused).
In his piece, Christian Brendel discussed the use of Comparative Multilingual Tutoring (CMT) while tutoring ESL/EFL students. He adapted CMT from a method described by A. Suresh Canagarajah, who proposed that, “Writers jump back and forth across languages in acquiring literacy.” According to Brendel, CMT “Follows the paradigm of shuttling laid out by Canagarajah, but from the perspective of the tutor,” and because of this, “a tutor can capitalize on the concepts a writer already knows from his or her native language and define how a concept is used in English.” No tutor is going to know everything about all of the languages present on campus, so CMT helps tutors capitalize on what they already know linguistically, whether it’s only English, or some knowledge of other languages.
The last reading, written by Bobbi Olsen, highlights the push for universities to become more inclusive spaces and the emergence of “a more multicultural and multilingual worldview.” Like Brendel, Olsen discusses the ethical ideas set forth by Canagarajah. These scholars push for the utilization of multilingual students’ knowledge of language in their writing, and the incorporation of this knowledge to help them in their tutoring sessions. Olsen writes that “communicative strategies” during tutorials can help multilingual students find ways in which their “home discourses and American academic discourses intersect and diverge from each other.” These methods provide a more ethical way to help non-native English speakers grasp the English language and academic discourse.
These articles helped address my previous questions: will I be able to effectively tutor the student? How can I approach tutoring Centenary’s multilingual students?
Each author discusses the challenges that tutors often face as they try to tutor across language barriers. However, it’s never impossible. By demonstrating patience and also understanding where the student may be having difficulties, it will be easier to address. By using the strategies the Brendel and Olsen describe, we can meet our tutees in the middle and collaborate on their writing.
