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Show RESEARCH POSTERS ON THE HILL SPRING 2007 97 ESL Tutoring Protocols: Rethinking the Role of the Writing Center Glenn Newman and Daniel Emery University Writing Program Writing tutors face many challenges when responding to an unfamiliar piece of writing. Those challenges are multiplied when the student and tutor come from different cultures. Patterns of organization, strategies of composition, and linguistic structures that are appropriate to one language or culture can seem alien, confusing, or erroneous in another, compounding the frustrations of both writer and tutor. In many cases, the advice of ESL writing center scholarship has emphasized what not to do, making the avoidance of grammatical errors and lexical issues a politically preferable and pedagogically defensible position for writing centers. For the many ESL students who look to the writing center as their best chance for improving their text and their writing abilities, this position is ineffective as it fails the student's expectations for the text at hand, and it avoids direct instruction in areas such as grammar and punctuation, sentence structure, verb agreement-all skills that might help the student to become a more successful and independent writer. With the help and support of my advisor, Dr. Daniel Emery, I hope to expand the role of the writing center tutor for ESL students. Our project involves a multidisciplinary examination of writing pedagogies L2 students, including composition, applied linguistics, English for academic purposes, and second language acquisition. We hope that a rigorous classification of competing L2 pedagogies can displace the common binary of directive/nondirective feedback in order to suggest more effective strategies for working with L2 students. Once this classification has been established, writing center staffs can more effectively develop strategies modified from the classroom pedagogies of EAP and SLA These strategies include increasing academic vocabularies, grammar and punctuation instruction, and introduction to multidisciplinary writing genres, all geared towards preparing L2 learners for the rigorous writing expectations of university research. By rethinking the goals of the traditional university writing center for ESL students, we believe that we can enhance student's chances for academic success, and fulfill our missions to assist all student writers. Glenn Newman is supported by funding from The University of Utah, Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. |
