Multilingual Writers and Writing Centers

by Ben Rafoth

Multilingual writers―often graduate students with more content knowledge and broader cultural experience than a monolingual tutor―unbalance the typical tutor/client relationship and pose a unique challenge for the writing center. Multilingual Writers and Writing Centers explores how directors and tutors can better prepare for the growing number of one-to-one conferences with these multilingual writers they will increasingly encounter in the future. This much-needed addition of second language acquisition (SLA) research and teaching to the literature of writing center pedagogy draws from SLA literature; a body of interviews Rafoth conducted with writing center directors, students, and tutors; and his own decades of experience. Well-grounded in daily writing center practice, the author identifies which concepts and practices directors can borrow from the field of SLA to help tutors respond to the needs of multilingual writers, what directors need to know about these concepts and practices, and how tutoring might change in response to changes in student populations.

Multilingual Writers and Writing Centers is a call to invigorate the preparation of tutors and directors for the negotiation of the complexities of multilingual and multicultural communication. 

167 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2014

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here are my scattered notes:

uel, who could explain things in Spanish, with his NNES tutee (21) Paulina, who only began to think in English after becomeing a WC tutor (41)
“Multilingual writers may also want native-speaking turos in the hope the tutoes will remove from the student’s writing any trace of accent so their papers scan for the kind of native-like idiomaticity many learners desire” (43) “Advanced multilingual writers whose meaing is clear and who are working on achiving idiomaticity in their writing can benefit from a native speaker’s intuitions and corrections” (46---whaaa?) Try to identify why they’re asking for a native speaker and then detirmine if that is, in fact, the best fit for them (48)
“Tutors who are themselves multilingual or leanding another langauge, or who have suffificent experience with non-English-speaking cultures, should be among the top candidates for hiring” (123)
Still focuses on “tutor to serve as both translator and model” (78)
Doesn’t really distinquish the NNES tutors out. Good quote by NNES tutor Amionne Jean, who grew up with haitian creole “Being bilinguial has definiely played a role in understandint the students I’ve tutored, especially those who speak English as asecond language...Even though I’ve never had a prblem writing in English, I can see how difficult it can be to think in another language...Even those the ESL stuents taht I’ve worked with thus far did not speak Creole, I find that I can still relate to them… So far, ESL students seem to be the ones that regularly schedule essions with me” (97)

Importance of stems and their variants for vocabulary building: 75
Students, and teachers, getting caught in the details (86-89)

Further reading:
Dana Ferris (2009) Teaching College Writing to Diverse Student Populations distinquishes International, Late-arriving (after age 10 and/or been here fewer than 8 years) ad early arriving ELL students
Matsuda and Matsude 2010 “World Englishes and the teaching of writing”

[Mills College Library]

808.04207 R139 2015