Common Ground

Tutoring ESL students can often feel

like taking on a lot more parts of a paper than you're used to!

As a tutor for the English as a Second Language program here on campus I see biweekly the struggles and accomplishments of people trying to learn the nuances of our fickle and often illusive English language. The article Creating a Common Ground with ESL Writers by Mosher, Granroth, and Hicks discusses the differences that may appear in an ESL consultation in contrast to a normal consultation. What we, as consultants, are trying to impart to the writer (an adept understanding and wielding of the American rhetorical style) is oftentimes a goal while noble and lofty, is far from being reached in a single consultation. The tendency to get frustrated, ignore the issue, or not try quite so hard to really help the writer are all temptations and downfalls of a successful ESL consultation. 

To avoid a futile-feeling situation the authors of Creating a Common Ground with ESL Writers site the author Judith Powers and endorsing her assertion that to approach the consultation exactly like a non-ESL consult expecting the same results as before can be a spirit-killer to both the consultant and the writer.

While I agree that ESL consultations should be approached differently this article places much emphasis on requiring the writer to do most of the talking, an approach that I feel may not be effective. Many ESL students are shy in a new country and school filled with bubbly, loud, type A people. Perhaps also afraid of misusing the tricky and colloquial English language that we often spout a mile a minute around here on campus I think oftentimes a consultant will have difficulty even coaxing out a lengthy response from the student. Prompting the student with very specific questions might be a better route.

This article offers up some good information on ESL consultations, and consultations in general. Though it does stress the rhetorical textual differences between American and other cultures it doesn’t recognize so much that rhetorical styles in spoken communication are also very different too, and this is probably the cause of different written styles too- afterall oral compostition came far before humans ever wrote anything down. It is only natural that the written composition should mimic the spoken style.

A very helpful acronym (however creepy) that Mosher, Granroth, and Hicks supply in their article is WATCH. I find following the format of this process to be helpful in any consultation, especially if one is nervous about getting disorganized and talking circles around a paper.

W-Talk about the WRITER.

Use “small talk” to find out where the student is from, how long s/he has been in the U.S., how s/he likes it, the extent of his/her first language writing experience, and opportunities to use English outside of the classroom (Fox 111).

A-Talk about the AUDIENCE/ASSIGNMENT. Ask for a description of the assignment. Help interpret the professor’s comments and discuss his/her probable expectations. Check for understand- ing of the subject and reading comprehension in English.

T-Talk about the writer’s TEXT. Ask the student to explain his/her purpose or the focus of the paper. Ask where s/he has informed the reader of his/her purpose. Confirm whether your interpretation of the text matches his/her intent in terms of voice as well as content.

C-A few COMMUNICATION CAVEATS. Be more direct than when working with native speakers, but don’t silence the non-native speaker by dominating talk time and not genuinely listening. Do not always expect explicit verbal disagreement. Pay careful attention to non- verbal cues as well. Also, be aware that a student’s pause time may be longer than yours. If are not aware of this, you may have a tendency to silence and/

or interrupt a student without realizing it.

H-Remember, HELPING the writer is your primary purpose. Being WATCHful will help to establish the trust, respect, and empathy necessary for any “helping relationship” (Taylor 27). Creating a common ground by being WATCHful fosters better interpersonal relationships which, in turn, lower anxiety and increase productivity for both the ESL writer and the consultant.

Distracted-

Keep that Focus!

Wait, what were you saying? Distractions- the world is full 'em, and sometimes they make us feel like we're fighting tooth and nail to accomplish even the simplest of tasks. Writing is no exception when it comes to distractions and it is easy to find oneself interrupted in the process of writing a paper. There's a reason that "How to Write a College Paper" jokingly lists 36 distractions that might befall a college student before they actually start writing. (and this list isn't far from the truth I've found!) Distractions are no doubt the reason students bring long, long papers into consultations rather than sending them via email in advance, and the reason some consultations go awry.

We've seen how distractions have undermined the effectiveness of the consultation in many of the readings. Steve Sherwood for example in his "Apprenticed to Failure: Learning from the Students We Can't Help" noted that distractions might have been what doomed his consultations with the learning disabled Byron. He said, "But as I commented about particular aspects of his paper, Byron frequently stopped the tape, rewound it, and replayed my earlier remarks. These unpredictable interruptions were unnerving and derailed my train of thought. I would leave out points I'd intended to mention and lose touch with insights I'd had about his essays"(Sherwood, 1). Similarly he later quotes an excellent tutor who'd felt she had failed during a consultation recalling, "We got interrupted a few times by people needing help with their computers, so by the time we finally got to the end, I didn't even remember the beginning of the paper. Then he asked me if I had learned something from his paper. I just went blank. I couldn't even think of the last sentence I had read. It made me feel really bad, and like I hadn't been paying attention or didn't care. I just felt like I handled the whole tutorial wrong, and I could tell he was really disappointed"(Sherwood, 54). In fact I've seen this effect first-hand in a consultation that shadowed just this week. We were stuck in the waiting room because another consultation was taking place in the writing center room. As the consultant read the paper at least a handful of people stopped through the hallway and many tried to stop and chat with the consultant. Clearly distractions are something we need to pay better attention to (no irony intended!) since both of the former distracted consultations crop up in an article that so plainly deals with writing consultations that have been claimed as failures. 

The areas of the brain (prefrontal) that are necessary to resist distractions are exactly the same areas that are needed keeping information in mind. It looks like a direct competition. 

Amani, the consultant I shadow, dealt with these distractions in the only and best way possible: she acknowledged the people that came through but let them go like obstructive thoughts, focusing on what mattered at the moment- the student's paper. Not suprisingly her consultation was a success, and both she and the student left the consultation confident that good and helpful things had been accomplished. 


In yoga during Savasana (final relaxation) one is told to acknowledge thoughts, and let them pass on by like clouds. I believe this is the best way to treat distractions. Like yoga, focus takes practice but hopefully fall of next year my mind will be ready to power through consultations of any difficulty or length confidently, calmly and focused. 

"How to Write a College Paper"  http://asil.logicalinsanity.ca/300college%20paper.html 

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I’ve added a new chapter to my repertoire of literary adventures - copy editing for The Collegian our campus newspaper.  Unfortunately this kind of editing goes against many of the principles we’ve learned during the Writing Consultant class. Though I’m trying hard and putting a lot of hours in to be honest right now I don’t think I’m very good at it! To begin with we are asked never to edit for content, it is an entirely grammatical endeavor.  Though I am interested in eventually writing articles, to be candid I’ve never been a grammar Nazi or even very concerned with grammar. This new position, hopefully will be a stepping-stone to a more interesting position, but in the meantime I’ll have to learn to be a rockstar at editing. To do so might mean I’ll have to crack open the Diane Hacker books that have been sitting on my shelf and gathering dust since freshman year of high school .

One article we’ve read entitled Grammar in the Writing Center: Opportunities for Discovery and Change makes the statement that, “The teaching of formal grammar has negligible or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in composition, even a harmful effect on improvement in writing”( Glover & Stay). This assertion is a little frightening to me as a copy editor. I think perhaps that the context of the Writing Center is important to consider alongside this quotation. My role at the newspaper is to produce the most polished and professional paper in my power. Unlike in the writing center I am working not towards the individual growth of each writer, but towards a finished product.  But we’re all college students, learning from one another aren’t we? Glover and Stay suggest in their article that appropriate editing on all levels of a piece can make all the difference in helping the author become a better thinker and writer. One article that I’ve encountered which was particularly hard for me edit was also difficult to digest as a reader. I understand that opinion pieces can and should be causal, but this one while entertaining was hard to follow. Why shouldn’t editors help at least with more superficial aspects of  content such as organization? I think that The Collegian should hold its editors to the high professional convention used in the real world, but should also be flexible and allow them to engage in the pieces more wholeheartedly, creating a dialogue between editors and writers to produce the best possible paper.