Defining and Learning About Multilingual Linguistic and Professional Labor in the Writing Center Context: An Autoethnographic Tutor Perspective

Saurabh Anand
University of Georgia
saurabh.anand@uga.edu

Abstract

Utilizing three tutoring episodes as qualitative data, this article attempts to define and articulate multilingual labor in the context of the Southern US writing center while working with multilingual writers. Incorporating Betweener​ Autoethnography as a methodological lens and Descriptive/Self-affirmative framework, the author, a South Asian Rhetoric and Composition doctoral student from India and a multilingual speaker/writer, urges WC directors and peer tutors in the US how to consider fostering multilingual tutees’ writing development by intentionally critical creating moments where the languages of writers are received as assets, which often go unnoticed.

I am a South Asian Rhetoric and Composition doctoral student from India. Until my adolescence, I grew up in Delhi, India's national capital and one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities. In postcolonial India, multilingualism was inseparable from my literacy; I attended an English medium school and college and grew up speaking Hindi, English, and Punjabi at home and in non-academic spaces. Hence, switching between languages has been second nature to me. While earning my undergraduate degree in management, I learned two European languages: German and Hungarian. My language learning experiences as an adult were so intellectually stimulating that I later decided to pursue language teaching as a career. My literacies in India opened opportunities for me in language tutoring young adults and adolescents for academic and professional purposes. After tutoring in India for nearly half a decade, I moved to the US in 2018 on a non-immigrant student visa (F-1). In 2020, I graduated with an MA in English, specializing in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL/Applied Linguistics), from a Midwestern University.

While earning my master's degree, I was a graduate teaching assistant (of English Composition), and exposure to TESOL/Applied Linguistics helped me connect, reflect, and analyze my language learning and teaching experiences in India and the US from various theoretical and pedagogical points of view and how they translate into practice. Most of my students were either fellow international students (often multilingual) or second/third-generation immigrant writers in the US. While teaching, I also took an on-the-job composition teaching practicum. During the training sessions, I was formally introduced to the Writing Center (WC). (I say formally because I knew about WCs in informal and limited ways since there have been a handful of WCs in India or Asia.) In training sessions, I was introduced to WCs as one of the academic campus resources in US colleges and universities with whom I could partner to help my students write better than they were already. While partnering with the WC, I also found it  to be helpful for my own writing development. In many ways, it was the formal beginning of my interest in writing center studies. As a Rhetoric and Composition Studies doctoral student, I explore multilingualism, rhetoric studies, and writing center studies research tendencies through qualitative research lenses such as interviews, ethnography, narrative inquiry, and autoethnography.

This piece is an autoethnography exploration of my identities in the US writing center spaces. These include my experiences as a graduate student of writing center studies with a background in TESOL/Applied Linguistics, tutoring, learning diverse languages in India, and an urge to explore multilingual tutoring practices. My multilingual WC research interventions also percolated because between my master's and doctoral programs, I switched my US immigration status to permanent residency. I choose to mention such instances because my personal and professional trajectories influenced my tutoring in my writing center pedagogy.

I also intentionally choose to elaborate on my intellectual trajectories and development as an individual, student, language learner, language tutor, researcher, and scholar because many tutees I worked with often share those experiences with me. However, at the time of writing this article, most of my colleagues were white and monolingual at my WC, with essentially no personal experience of learning and practicing a language other than English in daily discourse or a scholarly background in language studies. They worked with multilingual tutees using their “traditional” and mainstream education experiences. Being curious and trained to personally and professionally negotiate with the tutoring environment nudged me to reflect on the communities-specific labor I have spent working with multilingual writers. I call this kind of specific labor my multilingual (linguistic and professional) labor throughout this piece. I have chosen this language because often, while operating in my WC space (tutoring and otherwise), I reflected on ways of learning, unlearning, relearning, or meshing my new or past literacies and how such experience helped me re-engineer my multilingual WC tutor identity, which continues to grow. 

Inspired by racio-lingusitic WC tutor enactments and scholarly commentaries towards linguistic justice, I am often motivated to think about specific emotional relationships and opportunities I provided to my tutees. Such thoughts include using my language experiences and supporting and practicing multilingualism. Via this autoethnographic piece, I explain and discuss what multilingual labor looks like in the WC where I work. To do so, I will use my three WC tutoring episodes of working with multilingual tutees as qualitative data and demonstrate to readers my "scholarly personal narratives" (Nash 23), informed by the Descriptive/Self-affirmative framework (Chang). To thread my reflections on multilingual or multilingualism-oriented professional and personal identity markers, I use the “betweener” autoethnography as my interpretive and research methodology (Diversi and Moreira) to decolonize tutor knowledge production and conundrums of multilingual tutors in the US WC spaces. With those research intentions, I aim to focus on the research question: What does multilingual tutor labor look like in a US WC context from a multilingual tutor perspective with a background in TESOL?

Being mindful of autoethnography as a method and/or methodology is nascent in the WC field (Jackson and Grutsch-McKinney). I divided this piece into the following subsections to present a structure of pursuing transformative and ethical personal narrative-based research (Ellis). The subsections of this piece include: 1) the rationale behind choosing the Descriptive/self-affirmative framework; 2) why I decided to utilize autoethnography, specifically the betweener autoethnography for this piece; 3) three specific incidents showing “Multilingual Labor” as data; and 4) discussion and conclusion.

Conceptual Framework: Descriptive/Self-affirmative Framework

I adopted the Descriptive/Self-affirmative framework throughout this piece by centering on tutoring episodes. Chang described this framework approach as similar to writing a memoir. This approach is apt for my piece because of its literary memoir genre affordances. The affordances allow me to elaborate on my interactions with multilingual writers in detail. I also aim to argue to extend the scope of autoethnographic methodology beyond Anglicized conventions by including multilingual interactions within the US WC spaces. As a TESOL professional and multilingual tutor, I use my conversations and emotional responses in tutoring sessions. For example, I could comment on the current WC material and professional reality, which scholars pointed out often lacks perspectives from diverse identities, such as multilinguality (Cui). With the help of the tutoring stories that took place in my WC, I attempt to add to other tutor voices, like mine, arguing on behalf of our writers and us that multilingual writers require distinctive and dedicated tutor attitudes, which are different than working with “traditional” tutees (Tang) depending on the purposes and needs of learning a target language (for the purpose of this article, the target language would be English language, where English seems to be the medium of instruction unfortunately). These nonfictional narratives that I shared with my tutees nudge and build the case of tutors being sensitive if not speaking, reading, and operating across the language and needs of our multilingual writers. I hope the collective history I share with my tutees provides glimpses of my specific linguistic and TESOL-informed labor that intended to foster multilingual tutees’ writing development by intentionally creating educating moments for WC directors and peer tutors that often go unnoticed. 

Another important reason I chose the Descriptive/Self-affirmative framework is to further deepen conversations about labor in the WC context (Giaimo and Hashlamon). Through the narrative discussions as evidence, I intend to broaden the scope of labor within WC spaces by adding representations of multilingual tutors with an applied linguistics background. Such tutors utilize professional and lived experiences while interacting with multilingual writers. Though WC practitioners and scholars (Shiell) have begun employing multilingual tutors in WCs by duly valuing multilingual tutors' linguistic and cultural repertoires, my piece provides something unique. 

In this piece, I provide my transnational tutor perspectives, including engagements, negotiations, and discussions utilizing my multilingual tutors with TESOL backgrounds and labor while engaging in work at my WC. Readers will find that such performance led to my WC becoming a safe and culturally and linguistically enriched space. I did so by critically looking at and utilizing experiences of growing up multilingual and researching the affordances of multilingualism in WC spaces. From the qualitative research point of view, my descriptions of the self-narratives will provide readers with a peek at a cultural location (my WC) and how things, operations, and emotions prevail in a space ethnographically (Denzin).

Scholars (Reed-Danahay) also advocate for the Descriptive/Self-affirmative approach, an agent of a new source of scholarly knowledge or phenomenon that dissents the positivist views in a field. Hence, through this epistemology I engage in the process of noticing and framing other yet-to-be-recognized multilingual epistemologies in my WC. While doing so, I interact with the multiple identities I mentioned at the beginning of this piece to recognize and reflect on exploring various tutoring affordances and areas of improvement within WC practice. For example, in the WC field, a focus hasn’t been applied/targeted much on inviting multilingual tutors as a valid population with the vision of improving tutees’ writing development. In cases where this was the focus, WC TESOL-related scholarship has historically focused on tutee perspectives for the same purposes (Bruce and Rafoth; Harris and Silva; Myers). The Descriptive/Self-affirmative framework provided me a possible structure for incorporating my tutor's tact, work, and initiatives. To do this, I use my scholarly background (TESOL and Writing Center Studies), combined with my language experiences in the service of WC tutees who look like me, are multilingual, and/or people of color in the US, and vice-versa. I hope my WC experiences anoint and provide space for the voices of other multilingual tutors. 

The Betweener Autoethnography

I relied on autoethnography as a broader research method in this piece. I used my "epiphanies" (Ellis et al. 275) to explore my WC micro circle as "a site of cultural inquiry within a cultural context" (Hughes et al. 210) and to provide readers with a sense of my everyday multilingual tutor engagements in my WC space. Within autoethnography, my decision to include the betweener autoethnography (Diversi and Moreira) for this WC-based study was intentional for two reasons. First, the autoethnography (methodological) type, like the recent trends and conversations within writing center studies, aims to express “resistance that historically marginalized and displaced scholars should use as a critical tool to destabilize Euro-American norms and transgress the national order of things” (Alhayek and Zeno 549). As a multilingual person, tutor, and immigrant, by adopting this qualitative methodology, I was able to "bring personal troubles to living history with the intent of disrupting essentializing representations and interpretations of lived experience" (Diversi and Moreira 582), because multilingual people (such as tutor, teachers, and others) have been intentionally painted to be part of a “dwindling minority” (Kirkpatrick 346), especially in the US educational context. As one who also comes from India, a postcolonial nation, I could not find a better method than the betweener autoethnography to center my dissent and build counter discussions on the themes/experiences from the conversations I had with multilingual tutees in my WC. With the help of the betweener autoethnography, I invite various WC stakeholders to reflect on my lived reflections, values, literacies, and ethics that further complicate and reshape how to tutor multilingual tutees and be sensitized towards racial-linguistic initiatives and practices in the WC.

Second, I selected this methodology because I wanted to break the colonial impetus and structures by decolonizing ethnographic practices (Diversi, Gannon) within WC research. Engaging with scholarship using the betweener autoethnography was my intentional step toward supporting the works and research of professionally, culturally, and linguistically inclusive writing pedagogues (Lee, Naydan) who argue that ignoring pro-multilingual epistemologies could be a result of “ignorance and isolation” (Rafoth 16). A common rhetoric between their works has urged more multilingual voices to share the explicit need for tasks, initiatives, and policy amendments in WC studies to make it a more critical place and improve its daily course of actions and mission (Hall). This piece is my attempt to nudge such social justice-oriented conversations based on memories and personal experiences of working as a tutor in my micro circle via the betweener autoethnography (Moreira and Diversi). With that background, I elaborate on my WC positionality and share tutoring episodes in the next section.

Introducing Myself, My Positionality, Site, and Tutoring Episodes

When thinking and writing this piece, I was often the only WC tutor of color, or one among a few, in my tutoring context. Yet, I saw many incoming tutees who were like me. For example, until I began writing this piece, I had at least 90 appointments in four semesters (with varied schedules). These appointments included multilingual tutees who spoke Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, or Vietnamese as their first/home language. Such interactions in my WC scenario nudged me to research how WCs could prepare their tutors to guide multilingual writers. The WC Studies field has realized this need with the ongoing increase of multilingual writers on American campuses and how to cater to them (Alvarez). However, I also learned that tutor and admin positions in the WC spaces have historically been either majorly white or white in their ideologies (Baker-Bell). Here, I repropose WCs as a space where multilingual tutors and administrators are valid and needful tutoring partners. Multilingual tutors and administrators have to be reaffirmed, acknowledged, and celebrated. Hence, I aim to connect with the broader WC community to reconfigure their understanding of tutor labor. This tutor community also includes multilingual tutors with TESOL backgrounds who are often trained and capable of working across languages and represent unique tutor labor aspects as a valid set of knowledge.

Fortunately, my WC micro circle is a bit unique from its broader (American South) and specific (Georgia) locational rhetoric with a checkered history present in regard to racial and ethnic violence and oppression (Beckert; Hill and Beaver; Olson; Taylor), which often mask down multilingualism in the region. My WC director, who grew up in Upland US South and studied in different subregions of the Southern United States, has proven her commitment to contending anti-racist practices by "barricad[ing] whites from the United States' racial identity" (Bonilla-Silva 265). For example, during the initial days of my tutoring career at my current university, I also took her WC theory and pedagogy graduate course, where she trained us to find value in the stories we consumed and encouraged us to reflect, contextualize, and constructively critique the writing center studies research and practice. This training was crucial for me to center my previous personal and professional backgrounds to serve broader tutee populations, especially multilingual tutors. This piece is tangible evidence of how, through her mentorship in the course, I learned to present the WC as an inclusive, critical, and multilingual-welcoming place for multilingual writers in my micro circle. 

As a result, both during and post-tutoring, I attempted to interpret my tutoring experiences from the labor standpoints I adopted and connect those instances with current WC scholarship, which could be argued as being at the heart of autoethnography-based research in WC studies (Jackson and McKinney). I define "multilingual labor" as the distinctive labor multilingual WC tutors employ during writing consultations or broadly related to WC endeavors/initiatives that are different from monolingual tutor labor in the service of multilingual writers using combinations of either identity/-ies one wears or the language(s) one speaks. To show specific incidences of multilingual labor in my WC context, as data, I used anecdotes and reflections of being a TESOL professional and multilingual tutor employed in my WC catering to multilingual tutees (directly) and broader WC stakeholders (indirectly) as my descriptive narratives. I adapted my understanding of labor in the WC context from Geller and Denny (2013) as “work of directing a writing center day-to-day and the ways that work seemed to fill their time” (Geller and Denny 12-13) of the WC employees, for example—tutoring in my case. One of the implicit observations of my multilingual labor is that I switch between my identities as a foreign language writer in the English language, a former international student, a person of color/immigrant writer working in WC, and others. I want to reiterate that my tutoring instincts were often the results of the other spaces and intellectual experiences I grew up with and the spaces in which I have been operating. These include my history of growing up writing in more than three languages and speaking five languages, with scholarly interests in TESOL/Applied Linguistics, having grown up in a postcolonial country, and the experience of working as a language tutor, among others. Such identity foci immensely impacted and shaped my tutoring in layering ways that are mentioned in the episodes below.

Episode 1: When Multilingual Tutors and Tutees are Aware of Linguistic and Rhetorical Needs and Seek Support

As a habit, I began reading the tutee's profile five minutes before my noon appointment. I noticed the tutee, a multilingual international ESOL graduate student, was my former student: I taught them in an ESOL section of the preservice international teaching assistant preparatory course. Having one of my former students as a tutee made me smile. I enjoyed working with them and their entire cohort of freshly admitted international students. As an international, and later a student of color, graduate assistant, I have worn multiple hats (such as a researcher, course instructor, and tutor) to fund my studies, so when the audiences of each role overlap, it allows (and sometimes requires) me to swap roles. It prepares me to develop a certain kind of flexibility professionally. For example, this time, the dynamics between the tutee and me were different. In Muriel Harris's words, as a tutor, I now had to be "someone to help them [tutee] surmount the hurdles others [often teachers and other educational stakeholders] have set up for them..." (28). 

At precisely 12 PM, my tutee entered the WC. After exchanging pleasantries and our excitement to work together, my tutee mentioned that it was their first WC appointment and they needed help with their conference paper. Upon swapping basic information and looking at their conference paper, I sensed some inhibitions my tutee had. To clarify my doubt, knowing this tutee wouldn’t judge due to my previous instructional experience, I asked them: “What really could you use this meeting for?" I noticed the tutee had that uncomfortable smile on their face. It was the one I was familiar with as a multilingual writer, too. Later, they confided in me that they intentionally booked their writing appointment with me because of my TESOL background, as they knew I wouldn’t judge them due to our previous professional interactions. I became more alert. 

Upon further questioning, my tutee mentioned they had already given multiple reads to their paper and had it run by their friend from their home country. Still, they weren’t confident about their paper, as English wasn’t their first language. Though thrilled to have their abstract accepted to the conference, they were anxious about the writing quality of their whole paper because of its extensive length; they didn’t want to embarrass themselves in front of a professional audience. I wasn’t shocked by the situation I was caught in, but sad. This is a reality for many multilingual WC tutees. Often, in such scenarios, multilingual tutees might need a little push, communicated in a motivational tone. 

Our WC session became more intense when they mentioned they saw me as their role model. Explaining it further, they mentioned that since I (as a multilingual English/foreign speaker from India) had taught them before, had presented at conferences, and taught English composition, they assumed I had a better grasp of writing in English. I felt ambivalent. On the one hand, I was happy my tutee chose me over my domestic WC counterparts because they are often not equipped enough professionally to cater to the needs of ESOL writers/tutees (Rafoth), and I could use my TESOL background to guide them. However, I also felt anxious about my tutee's "perceived capability for...performing actions at designated level" (Schunk and DiBenedetoo 515) for me. Their assumption of me being a writing expert wasn’t true, but then I realized that this assumption has a greater meaning than may appear. 

This interaction with my tutee prompted me to think about the WC field from multiple directions. 

I was happy that my student self-identified their writing mentorship needs as an ESOL writer. However, this situation became that 'occasion' for me, which Denny (2018) described as "critical yet...rarely have language or occasion to speak into and interrogate them" (Denny 120) because in my WC, tutors were not there to represent multilingual identity (Phillips). In my liminal space, I felt the nudge to express my tiredness of taking the major onus of working with tutees who look like me, speak like me, and/or are ESOL speakers (Severino and Illana-Mahiques). I recalled the underlying and normative assumption that monolingual tutors are the believed norm for the WC spaces. They are assumed to be the ideal tutor population who could serve all tutor clientele, including ESOL writers, despite the tutee’s specific language needs. This ignorance within the field makes multilingual tutors the victims of a larger writing center cultural discourse where multilingual labor goes unacknowledged despite writers’ need for it. 

Episode 2: “I did not know I mustn’t speak English only”

It was one of those days when I didn’t have any scheduled appointments. As our WC director requested for all unscheduled tutors to do in the past, I was at the welcome desk using this time to respond to WC email queries, another part of my assistantship. At the tenth minute of the hour, a tutee requested a drop-in appointment. Since other tutors weren’t available, we began working as I put emails on hold. The tutee apologized to me while they watched me wrapping up the email I was then drafting, but they were also grateful. I told them, "It's okay! How may I help you?" with a smile. They mentioned they were applying for an undergraduate research assistant (RA) position and added that this RA would be essential for them, since it allowed working remotely. Since my tutee lived forty minutes away from the university town with their elderly immigrant grandparents from India, this position would      allow them to minimize travel frequency. 

As an immigrant student living away from my parents for over five years, I understood the opportunities this RA position could offer to my tutee. With the best intentions, I began assisting my tutee in discussing the RA application. When I asked them to tell me about it and what makes them a competitive applicant, they started elaborating on what they'd do if they got this assistantship and the skills they had to do the required tasks effectively and efficiently. Taking their responses as a great starting point, I asked them a few follow-up questions: Why should you get this RA over others? What unique experiences could you bring if you get this RA? As they meant to respond to my follow-up questions, my tutee again began centering their answers on the skills the call for RAs suggested. Finding my tutee struggling, I rephrased my questions. They responded affirmatively when I offered them a few moments to collect their thoughts and perhaps make a list. As they began working by themselves, I noticed them murmuring in (one of) my mother tongues, Hindi. 

I asked myself: “Why did I not trust my gut feeling that my tutor could be an Indian American who was a speaker of Hindi?” Later, I thanked myself for not trusting my initial gut feeling because not all Indian Americans are multilingual or necessarily Hindi speakers. Gujarati, Tamil, Punjabi, Kannada, and their dialects are other majorly spoken languages in the US, too. In my English composition classrooms, I often found that many Indian American undergraduate students informed me of mother tongues/first languages other than Hindi. I did not want to assume my tutee was a Hindi speaker and internalize language biases as a Hindi speaker. Such negotiations are unique to people belonging to multilingual societies, histories, and language traditions. 

But that is a half-picture. I also recalled an incident discussed in the WC theory and pedagogy graduate course related to a course peer from India. My peer worked with a tutee analyzing an interview transcribed in Hindi. My peer’s tutee assumed that their tutor (my peer) could read/write in Hindi because they had a Hindi-language-sounding name. That wasn’t true in my peer’s case. They were a Bengali speaker who wasn’t much exposed to Hindi. This incident with my peer taught me always to ensure I don’t adopt linguistic biases and stereotypes just by assuming my tutees' looks and cultural background. Therefore, when I heard my tutee speaking in Hindi, I was sure I could help them with their RA application with more nuance. Following is a closer version of the interaction between my tutee and me in Hindi:

Tutor: अगर तुम चाहो तो हम हिंदी में भी बात कर सकते है I

If you want, we can talk in Hindi too.

Tutee: अच्छा! हम हिंदी में भी बात कर सकते है? ये अच्छा होगा | मुझे लगा यहाँ बस इंग्लिश में बात करनी होती है | हिंदी में सही से बता पाउँगा। दो-तीन मिनट दो I 

[In shock with a smile]: Really! Can we talk in Hindi as well? That would be good. I thought I just had to talk in English in here. I will be able to explain better in Hindi. Give me 2-3 minutes.

We continued the rest of our conversation in Hindi, English, and, in fact, Hinglish (Hindi + English, see Bhatia). I realized that my tutor comfortably and more clearly explained their ideas and their unique positionality for the RA, and even asked follow-up questions with confidence later in the session. But their question: अच्छा! हम हिंदी में भी बात कर सकते है?/ Can we talk in Hindi as well? stayed with me, as it seemed to be a comment for our WC field. This led me to think about the many subsequent questions which are unique to someone who speaks multiple languages and/or someone with a TESOL within the writing center context. Thinking about one of those questions includes the following conundrum/questions:

Yes, writing centers are recognized campuses/support systems for ESOL students (Bruce and Rafoth) and teachers who teach them (Ferris et al.), but how often have WCs thought about employing multilingual tutors or someone who writes in multiple languages like their second language tutees, who are a considerable population that WCs serve every day?

Have we, as the WC field, thought enough about employing multilingual writing tutors who would be better positioned to switch or mesh multiple languages intuitively to help the intellectual or writing goals of our multilingual writers to create "the ideal learning environment for students [WC tutees] whose first or strongest language is not English: one-on-one, context, rich, highly focused," (Leki 1) as Leki suggested for writing scenarios from which tutee would immensely benefit?

I know some writing scholars have been recently researching writing consultations across languages and geographical locations (Ayash). However, we need more critical WC scholars who utilize their liminal positionalities as tutors or other WC stakeholders as assets. As writing center scholars, have we considered making intentional spaces for writing consultations in languages other than English to mark down the colonial educational legacies by which our writing center pedagogy is informed?

Would centering WC pedagogy on the diverse linguistic and cultural communities our multilingual tutees come from be a step to support their writing?

Episode 3: Scaffolding Writing Mentorship Trajectories Using Tutees' Languages  

This time, upon reading the tutee form before my tutee arrived, I could tell they were anxious and stressed about the writing project, which was a statement of interest (SOI) to apply for a specialization in their business degree. They mentioned securing admission in the desired specialization was more than an academic goal because they wanted to learn to open a product line to support their immigrant family business. I felt a little comforted, since I graduated from a business school with my undergraduate degree. When the tutee showed up for the WC consultation, though multilingual, I realized we did not share any language other than English. In the later part of the consultation, they also mentioned that since they managed their time earning a business degree and worked for their family’s (seasonal) business, they couldn’t give their SOI as much attention as they would like to. They were nervous, but when they saw my tutor profile mention my business background, they hoped to specifically work with me so that they didn’t have to explain content; they didn’t have much confidence in their English language skills, either. But when I told them I earned my degree from India and upon chatting further, we both realized that our educational experiences were quite different. Therefore, I requested them to give me background information about their program until then and how such experiences are aligned with contributing to their family business. Inadvertently, they became more nervous. Honestly, I was too. I had helped tutees from the fields I knew something or nothing about. However, this tutoring scenario was different, since our educational experiences with earning a business degree differed because of the location of the study and programmatic conventions (I got direct admission to my desired specialization). Additionally, the tutee wasn’t confident in English, our connecting language.

I had two challenges before me: 1) minimizing my tutee’s communicative anxiety in English and 2) encouraging them to explain the disciplinary content; both intended to help my tutee put together a competitive SOI. At this moment, I could only resort to my English composition teaching experience, where I taught multilingual writers. I often had students who did not share my first language or other languages, just English. In such scenarios, I often used my students' current literacy skills to build further literacy skills to have them practice the target language to meet their goals. Adapting the same idea, I asked my tutee if they would like to use their home/first language (or languages) to jot down things they thought would be crucial for the SOI application. This could also include their brainstorming ideas; later, they could translate them into English for us to further discuss. The student’s reaction, in return, was precious. I saw my tutee instantly feeling hopeful; I saw a smile on their face. They then asked for five minutes to do what I requested. I gladly allowed them, and we were able to put together a draft of the application. I must mention the technique I employed was an instant tutor instinct, but also inspired by Durba Chattaraj’s 2019 essay, in which she shares her tutoring experience with multilingual tutees in India, a multilingual, yet largely English language, educational society, especially at the higher education level. However, through my connections, I also know pedagogues operating in other US WCs have been disincentivized to similar tutoring strategies, as such practices are usually thought of outside the American higher education scenarios. These language ideologies delegitimize the need to incorporate languages or/and other literacies of multilingual writers in the service of their writing goals in the target language. 

So far, the multilingual-WC research has, unfortunately, overly focused on legitimizing the need to create support for ESOL tutees (Zhao). However, this felt need has a problematic premise because it centers on and celebrates the assumption that US academia is only an English-centric academic society. Hence, training monolingual/domestic US English-speaking tutors in different languages to work with speakers of those hadn’t happened until recently (Lape). Scenarios 2 & 3 are positive yet unfortunate examples of how we, WC scholars in the US, have minimized our own potential to be more inclusive and linguistically democratic toward the tutees of other languages to the extent that our tutees drop in at their centers assuming they are not allowed to use any other language but English as they work toward their writing goals. 

In the above three episodes, readers will find explicit instances where when I, as a multilingual tutor, provided my multilingual tutee agency to incorporate all the ways they could communicate, students became agents of new ideas informed by tapping into their multicultural legacies and backgrounds. I hope these scenarios provide strong examples of my tutor labor advocating for second language literacy and language empowerment among writers and that these instances mirror what Garcia calls a tutor to be: "decolonial agents" (Garcia) in their specific tutor scenario.

Discussion and Conclusion

This piece, informed by the Descriptive/Self-affirmative framework and the betweener autoethnography methodology, centers on accounts of contributing my distinctive labor sourced from my TESOL knowledge, being multilingual, and other identities manifested in my WC performance. In Scenario 1, I showcase language production trauma within the realism of racio-lingusitics and the WC, especially among ESOL writers. Multilingual writers and/or tutees often feel inferior for their multilingual abilities. However, having adequate multilingual tutors in WC spaces could help multilingual writers embrace writing across languages with adequate guidance. 

In Scenario 2, I exhibit how multilingual tutors can engage multilingual writers in distinctive endeavors by making them feel legitimate in their histories and literacies. One way to do so is by motivating multilingual writers to communicate ideas in languages comfortable to both. Such initiatives can be especially useful when both share home/first language(s) other than English.

In Scenario 3, I demonstrate how inclusive and culturally relevant WC research and practices can come together. For example, multilingualism-informed tutor aptitude provides dedicated occasions for multilingual writers to showcase their multilingual, multicultural, and multidisciplinary identities during consultations. In my case, I did so during idea generation by motivating them to use their linguistic repertoires, despite us being ESOLs and having no common language other than English.

One common multilingual tutor ideology in all the above scenarios is to imagine and present the WC as an inclusive space: a place, through its tutor force, that believes in strength-based tutoring techniques while working with multilingual tutees. My multilingual labor was informed by my willingness to engage in and deploy multiple literacies, languages, cultures, and contexts while I tutored in my WC. I hope, through my stories, that my monolingual WC colleagues feel encouraged to continue finding value in creating inclusive tutoring scaffolds and support by thinking of personalized and context-specific ways to help multilingual writers. Doing so will help multilingual writers set their academic trajectories for themselves.

Works Cited

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Appendix

English version of my interaction with my tutee in Episode 2

Tutor: If you want, we can talk in Hindi too.

Tutee: [in shock with a smile]: Really! Can we talk in Hindi as well? That would be good. I thought I just had to talk in English in here. I will be able to explain better in Hindi. Give me 2-3 minutes.