Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 21, No. 2 (2024)
What Makes Writing Center Experience Useful? Perceptions of Native, Non-native, and Generation 1.5 Writers
Grant Eckstein
Brigham Young University
grant_eckstein@byu.edu
Kate Matthews
Brigham Young University
hadfield.kate@gmail.com
Abstract
Within universities, writing centers are often seen as service providers that allow students to receive support and feedback on their writing. The usefulness of writing centers has been evaluated by things such as total number of visits and return visits, students’ trust and comfort in asking tutors questions, and tutors’ overall knowledge of writing concepts. But few researchers have shone light on students’ own perceptions of the usefulness of a writing center, especially perceptions between native English (NES), non-native English (NNES), and Generation 1.5 students. We did just that by sending a usefulness survey to 800 universities across the U.S. We analyzed the data from 463 student responses to these surveys using non-parametric statistics and found that NNES and Generation 1.5 students reported more difficulty making an appointment than NES writers. They also reported being slightly less likely to ask their tutor questions, trust their tutors, and return to the writing center, which is perhaps the most important outcome of usefulness. This information can help writing center administrators better anticipate multilingual writers’ needs and take steps to improve informational materials and the writing center experience for these writers which may increase their overall attendance.
University writing centers are often lively spots on campus humming with private tutoring episodes with diverse learners. Even when the university’s student body is highly homogeneous, tutors in one shift could be meeting with native English speakers (NES), non-native English speakers (NNES), and those identified as Generation 1.5—individuals who straddle the nuanced divide between native and non-native language proficiency. Writers within these three broad groups may approach the writing center with distinct needs, expectations, and apprehensions.
To illustrate such diversity, a tutor might hold a tutoring session with Maricel, a Spanish speaking Colombian who moved to the U.S. because of her husband’s engineering job. Since she had nursing experience in Colombia, she wanted to complete a nursing degree in the U.S. despite fears that her English was too weak. A university advisor told her that the writing center could check the grammar in her English essays. She spent three days laboring over her first writing assignment before scheduling an appointment with a tutor to get feedback on her language. That same day, a tutor might meet Jacques, an outgoing student with a Haitian accent. Little does the tutor know that Jacques was orphaned at the age of fifteen, that he was placed with an English-speaking foster family in the U.S., that his college application was initially denied because of his interrupted education in Haiti, or that, with the help of an English teacher, he appealed the admission decision and was ultimately admitted to the university. He navigates an intricate identity, academically competent yet often perceived as an L2 learner because of his accent. The tutor’s next session might be with Samantha, a second-year student from Colorado with high expectations for success. She interned with her town’s health department to increase public awareness about the dangers of cannabis use among minors as part of a concurrent enrollment program at her high school. Ultimately, she wants to become a pharmacist since both her parents work in the medical field. Despite her linguistic and educational advantages, Samantha struggles to organize her thoughts coherently in writing and signed up to get feedback on the first draft of an essay on a topic that she finds uninteresting.
These vignettes illustrate the diverse needs and self-perceptions converging within the writing center. Because writing centers in U.S. higher education were initially established as peer-run tutoring facilities (something of a “by-students, for-students” model) in the 1930s and 40s, they served the kinds of students enrolled on campuses at the time: middle-class white students who spoke English natively. Students like Samantha as described above. But, according to Neal Lerner, immigrant student populations at U.S. institutions increased sharply following World War II with another inflection point in the 1960s (188). International student enrollment in higher education really hasn’t abated. Most recently, the Open Doors Report estimated that just over one million undergraduate and graduate international students attended U.S. universities in the 2022-2023 school year, a 29% increase from ten years before. Many of these students are non-native English speakers (NNESs) who find their way to writing centers.
As student bodies diversify, a pertinent question arises of whether NNESs experience the writing center the same way as native English speakers (NESs) or even Generation 1.5 writers (Gen 1.5). We were interested in learning the extent to which writers with different English language backgrounds felt that the writing center was useful to them. Maricel may find the writing center very welcoming but perhaps unsupportive of her language needs. Jacques, so used to being academically excluded, may not know how to navigate the writing center system. Meanwhile, Samantha may feel that the writing center is perfectly honed to support her writing challenges. We wanted to get a sense of writers’ own perceptions in ways that were directly comparable between groups. In the study that follows, we analyze the data from 463 surveys that asked students across the nation about their experiences in the writing center. From this data, we observe that Gen 1.5 and NNES writers differ from NESs in how useful they find the writing center to be. By understanding these perceptions, writing center tutors and administrators can craft a more useful writing center experience, particularly for multilingual writers.
Background of University Writing Centers
Within a university setting, writing centers are often thought of as service providers that offer writing support and feedback to students. Different tutoring methods may be used across university writing centers, but the general expectation among students is that they can use the university’s writing center to better a particular paper and/or their own writing skills. And because writing center tutorials are often private, peer-like interactions, they contribute to a feeling that “students [can] drop in for help anonymously without fear of being graded or judged” (Dugger 30).
Christina Savarese speculates that students see the writing center as a useful resource for improving grades since she found in her dissertation work that community college students with low first-year writing scores, or those who had taken remedial writing classes, were significantly more likely to use the writing center than others (65). Similarly, Jacelyn Wells reports that the usefulness of a writing center for students in her study was based on how much their grades improved. Several writers revealed that they saw an increase in their grades after visiting the writing center, which increased their motivation to return (8). The writers also explained that because they had found a tutor that matched what they were looking for, they were more likely to return (18). The implication appears to be that from a student’s perspective, usefulness and success in writing centers come from tutor matches and result in good grades.
Beyond grades and tutor fit, the success and usefulness of a writing center from a writing center administrator perspective may also be determined by things like how often writers use the center, how well the tutors within the center are trained on writing and teaching methods, how much writers understand and improve their writing skills, how much writers trust the tutor’s feedback, and how comfortable writers are in asking questions during their tutor session. To this last point, Jacobs and Karliner conducted an early investigation of speech roles in individual writing conferences. They suggested that the relative amount of negotiation in a conference impacts the quality of a student’s writing (503). Although this finding derived from teacher-student conferences, it aligns with the common writing center theories of collaborative learning and Zone of Proximal Development, which Rebecca Babcock explicates in her review of writing center theory and research. Recent writing center reports have similarly shown the value of fostering negotiation and encouraging writer control in writing center interactions (e.g., Carter; DeMott; Eleftheriou; Yu). Thus, the success of a writing center may be based on writers viewing themselves as co-contributors to the conversation and not on traditional teacher-student asymmetric power relations.
Repeat visits have also been shown to correlate with perceptions of student satisfaction and usefulness of a writing center over the years. According to early survey research on the topic of successes conducted by Cynthia Linville, “only students who find…tutoring helpful continue to attend sessions” (31). In her analysis of tutorial success, Terese Thonus insinuates that, for good or bad, students who return to the writing center do so to get more of what they first experienced (“Success”). Presumably, a student who finds the writing center satisfying is more likely to return and by extension develop or improve as a writer. Underscoring this critical issue, Isabelle Thompson et al. later observes that writers “expect to feel comfortable during conferences” (96).
Overall, existing writing center literature associates writing center usefulness to factors like writers’ grade improvement, return visits, levels of interaction or negotiation, and satisfaction with or level of comfort in the center (Ginting and Barella; Thonus, “Success;” Linville; Moser and Raphan; Salem). However, these observations have largely been drawn from interactions with native English speakers or in contexts where writer language backgrounds are not well reported. This can be problematic because, as Lori Salem states, “the choice to use the writing center is raced, classed, gendered and shaped by linguistic hierarchies” (8), indicating a reality that certain groups, including NNESs and Gen 1.5 students, are disproportionately more likely to seek writing center help. For this reason, it is important to understand the unique perceptions of NNES writers of the writing center in contrast to their NES peers. In doing so, writing center directors can better anticipate NNESs’ needs and expectations and ensure that the writing center becomes or remains a space available for writers regardless of their English language backgrounds.
Of course, previous work has been done to examine the perceptions of NNESs in writing centers generally, and unfortunately, the news is grim. In one of the earliest NNES perception studies published, Jean Kiedaisch and Sue Dinitz report greater levels of dissatisfaction among NNES writers than NES writers. Cynthia Linville as well as Janet Moser and Deborah Raphan found higher attrition rates of NNES writers from the center. Some NNES writers stop attending tutorials because of pressures or cultural expectations which make the experience unsatisfying. For instance, Shanti Bruce in “Listening to and Learning from ESL Writers” describes a Korean student who stopped attending writing tutorials because she expected her tutor to be older than her and to have extensive writing experience and was frustrated when this was not the case (221). Bruce also wrote of a Saudi Arabian student who stopped attending the writing center because he worried that his peers would view him as weak or unskilled for attending (218).
To further illuminate NNES perceptions and potential mismatches, several writing center researchers have suggested that multilingual writers expect their writing center tutors to be authoritative or teacher-like figures (Eleftheriou; Moussu; Thonus, “How to Communicate”; “Differences”; Schiera). Others have indicated that because of cultural norms, NNES writers sometimes feel uncomfortable asking questions or answering questions given by their tutors, including questions that would help clarify a suggestion or a directive (Leki; Patrick). Some NNES writers feel uncomfortable asking questions due to their unfamiliarity with the social structure of such interactions, their limited linguistic ability to quickly formulate questions, or their general cultural reticence to challenge or interrupt a tutor (Thonus, “Differences”). NNES writers may struggle to get what they want from a tutorial when tutors privilege their own agenda or policies espoused by the writing center over that of the writer, such as dismissing a writer’s request for lower order vocabulary or grammar support in favor of unsolicited help on higher order concerns, as was the case with a NNES student that Grant Eckstein details (“Specialist”). Other cultural mismatches can be found in things like different understandings of teacher-student talk, direct and indirect communication styles, culturally different experiences with praise and criticism, and divergent understandings of plagiarism. Culture conflicts like these may translate to negative impressions of the center and a reluctance to return (Patrick; Winder, et al.).
Levels of dissatisfaction and attrition from the center may be further explained by the fact that despite the increasing presence of NNESs in writing centers, tutors repeatedly expressed uncertainty and sometimes outright anxiety about working with them, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s. Judith Powers uses images of failure and betrayal to describe the feelings tutors can have when working directly with NNES writers (42), and Susan Blau, et al. reflected “feeling frustration and guilt” about tutoring NNESs (23). Even Muriel Harris and Tony Silva—pioneers of NNES tutoring—acknowledge that working with these students can reveal “bewilderingly different rhetorical patterns” and can reduce tutors to “stunned silence” (525). More recently, this tone has evolved as entire guidebooks, such as Reynolds’ One on One with Second Language Writers, and increasing numbers of articles (Moussu and David) have investigated and/or recommended ways to work effectively with NNESs to avoid feelings of insecurity.
To counter the narrative of dissatisfied NNES writers, Susan Blalock found that when a trained ESL tutor was placed in a writing center, the number of NNES writers who visited that writing center increased dramatically (4). In a satisfaction study, Pamela Bromley et al. (“Student perceptions” 3-4) found that 83-95% of students strongly agreed that their consultation was intellectually engaging, and of those who agreed with that statement, 99% agreed that the consultation was productive, though the researchers did not compare NNES to NES writers. When Harry Denny et al. conducted open ended interviews to explore NNESs’ feelings towards their schools’ writing centers, they found that while the tutoring writers received in the center did not match their preferences for directness, engagement, and authoritativeness, they reported mostly positive experiences in the grammar feedback they received (86). Furthermore, Zhang et al. found mostly positive perceptions of writing centers showing that writers felt the centers were “increasing their writing skills, helping them get better grades, giving them more confidence in writing, and helping them understand grammar rules better” (39). The point here is that NNESs are not summarily fleeing the writing center because of unmet expectations or a perception of writing centers not being useful. Many, and perhaps most, are very satisfied with their experiences.
It should be stressed that not every study mentioned above compared NES and NNES students’ perceptions, so it is hard to get a sense of which group finds the center more useful. But Pam Bromley and her colleagues did investigate this in their article, “L2 Student Satisfaction in the Writing Center.” They used a survey approach to identify NES and NNES student satisfaction of writing centers and received 2,262 responses (22). The results showed that NES and NNES students were equally likely to recommend the writing center to a friend, with NNES students reporting a higher likelihood of returning to the writing center than NES students and 80% of the NNES students reporting feeling intellectually engaged in their session. This is great news and suggests that the writing center is useful for NNESs in spite of any potential frustrations that might exist among writers or their tutors. But again, there may be more to the story since none of these studies asked specific questions about writers’ comfortability in asking questions to their tutor or their perception on how helpful their tutor was.
In a more finely grained study, Salem conducted research over a four-year span at Temple University in Philadelphia where she garnered responses from 4,024 entering students in 2009. She found that female students were more likely to attend writing centers than male students, as well as students whose fathers did not attend college. She also points out that groups who are less socially privileged (NNES, women, non-white students) had higher writing center attendance. She also found that students make their decisions about whether they will use a writing center before they even enter college. All this led her to pose the following questions: “If students with less privilege are more likely to come to the writing center, is this a good thing or a bad thing for the students? Does the writing center serve them well? Would something else serve them better?” (8). She leaves these questions unanswered, but we speculate that by understanding what contributes to the usefulness of a writing center for writers with different English language backgrounds, we may be able to draw some insights.
Researchers have a sense of what usefulness in a writing center means, but not very many studies have asked students for their own perceptions of the writing center. Moreover, the studies which have examined writing centers rarely compare NES and NNES writers and regularly overlook a third, in-between group often referred to as Generation 1.5 writers (some notable exceptions include Eckstein, “Directiveness;” Nakamaru; Thonus, “How to communicate politely;” Thonus, “Triangulation;” Thonus, “Serving generation 1.5;” Thonus, “Differences”). Gen 1.5 are different from NNES writers as they do not typically hold student visas and arrive in an English-speaking country before completing high school or its equivalent in a foreign country (Ferris). Gen 1.5 students may sound proficient in English but might have a difficult time transferring this knowledge to a written paper (Ferris). They may exhibit variability in their language skills, and they may not feel comfortable in contributing to discussions, including negotiated exchanges in writing tutorials (Ferris and Hedgcock). Thus, questions remain about the extent to which Gen 1.5 and NNESs view writing centers as useful, and how these views compare with those of NES writers.
Furthermore, many perception studies have used interview methodologies that provide deep insights but limit the perception of writers to a small number of individuals or a limited population pool. Michael Rymer traced the use of discourse analysis in writing center studies from researchers like Terese Thonus who had used interactional sociolinguistic methodologies to discover what conversations take place during tutoring sessions between NES and NNES writers. These methodologies allow the researcher to record and analyze real conversations through context. In this type of methodology, the researcher records a conversation between tutor and writer, transcribes it, and then identifies features of interest either though an a priori approach or through an a posteriori approach. In an a priori approach, the researcher counts certain pre-identified features of the conversation including things like pauses, false starts, backchannels, and so on. An a posteriori approach categorizes salient features of the conversation after examining the data. These analyses have helped to make observations about the differences between native-English and multilingual tutorials in terms of turn length, mitigation, negotiation of revisions, charge-taking, holding the floor, social closeness, reflection of authority, and involvement in conversations (Thonus “How to communicate politely”; Thonus, “Triangulation”; Thonus, “Serving generation 1.5”; Thonus, “Differences”; Williams), but they do not offer NNES and Gen 1.5 perceptions of the tutoring received.
In this study, we compare the perceptions of NNESs and Gen 1.5 writers with their NES peers through a survey methodology in order to positively contrast these groups and suggest ways writing center directors and tutors can support writers with different English language backgrounds.
To guide our research, we asked the following questions:
To what extent do NES, NNES, and Gen 1.5 writers’ perceptions differ in their reports of feeling comfortable and asking their tutor questions in a writing center?
To what extent do NES, NNES, and Gen 1.5 writers’ perceptions differ in their reports of tutor’s knowledge and ability to provide helpful feedback in a writing center?
To what extent do NES, NNES, and Gen 1.5 writers’ perceptions differ in their reports of usefulness of a writing center and feelings of returning to the writing center after their first appointment?
The Study on Students’ Perceptions of University Writing Centers
In order to help writing center administrators and staff effectively communicate and engage with multilingual writers, we designed a survey for writing center attendees and sent it to more than 800 writing centers across the U.S. with the request that they forward the online survey link to recent center attendees. While we could not determine which schools we sampled from due to IRB limitations, we nonetheless received positive confirmation from 56 writing center directors in 26 U.S. states that they would distribute the survey to writers who visited their centers. From our full dispersal program, we collected 462 responses drawing from universities of different sizes, including small (15%), medium-sized (27%), large (20%), and very large (23%) with 14% of respondents unsure of their university size. As a crucial step in this study, we divided respondents into three English language groups based on their demographic information: 280 (60.6%) were NESs, 105 (22.7%) were Gen 1.5 writers, and 77 (16.6%) were NNESs.
The survey asked all participants to rate a series of statements about the usefulness of the writing center during their most recent writing center experience on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree), which included the following statements:
It was easy to make an appointment at the writing center
You felt comfortable asking your tutor questions
You would feel comfortable returning for at least one more session at the writing center if needed
Your tutor sincerely tried to help you
You trusted your tutor's knowledge and expertise
We anticipated that in all questions, most respondents would rate the writing center positively (meaning very useful) since, as mentioned earlier, Bromley et al.’s research showed high rates of positivity among writing center survey respondents (“Student perceptions”). However, we expected small differences to show NES writers to have a slightly more positive experience with the writing center than Gen 1.5 or NNES writers based on findings from Thonus (“Differences”) and cultural sensitivities that might make it harder for some NNES writers to trust their tutor or the writing center or to return as described by Bruce. Furthermore, we speculated that NES writers are likely better equipped with the linguistic resources to make appointments and are more likely socialized to a university environment that recommends students seek out institutional resources. Thus, we anticipated that, in general, Gen 1.5 and NNES writers would find the writing center slightly less useful.
To measure the results, we used a Kruskal-Wallis test to analyze participant responses to the survey questions. The Kruskal-Wallis test is a non-parametric, one-way ANOVA which calculates the average responses of participants and compares these across language groups (NES, Gen 1.5, NNES) to identify statistical differences in participant responses. Non-significant findings can also reveal basic trends, but in these cases, student responses may be too close to really tell if one language group is especially different from another.
The Results: Usefulness of the Center
Since the issue of usefulness of a writing center has been under-researched in the available literature, we chose to investigate the issue using a number of different items. Several writing center researchers have suggested that NNES writers expect their writing center tutors to be authoritative or teacher-like figures (Healy and Bosher; Moussu; Thonus “How to Communicate”; “Differences”). Furthermore, researchers have indicated that because of cultural norms, NNES writers sometimes feel uncomfortable asking questions of their tutors, including questions that would help clarify a suggestion or a directive (Leki). Similarly, unmet cultural expectations, such as a belief that a tutor should be older and more authoritative than the writer, may also translate to a perception of that service being less useful. And when tutors privilege their own agenda over that of their writers’, this can also lead to negative impressions of the center and a reluctance to return.
The survey results of five statements about usefulness are listed in Table 1 below. Responses are broken down by English language background and further displayed with means on a range from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 4 (Strongly Agree). The penultimate column lists the p-value, a measure of statistical significance if below .05 whereby we can interpret that there are important differences among the language groups. The final column lists the epsilon-square value, which is a measure of effect size; that is, it reports the percentage of variance accounted for by the main effect (i.e., English language background) when multiplied by 100. Typically, .01 is interpreted as a small effect size, .06 as medium, and .14 or higher as large.
Ease of Use
The first item, which asked participants to respond to the statement “It was easy to make an appointment for a tutorial” resulted in the kind of response pattern we had anticipated, namely that NES writers would find it easier to make an appointment than both multilingual writing groups. The result is statistically significant, meaning that the language groups had measurably distinct answers. This gap of accessibility based on language background indicates that multilingual writers indeed reported a disadvantage when encountering writing center websites, announcements, or advertisements. This disadvantage may stem from the language used in these mediums, or perhaps the medium themselves. NNES may be unfamiliar with making online appointments or misunderstand the information on the advertisements. The way in which appointments are made in a NNES student’s culture could also be a contributing factor.
It should be noted that despite the statistical significance of the result, the mean difference between the groups is rather small. NNES writers reported an average score amounting to a quarter of a point lower than NES writers. Reinforcing this is the fact that the effect size was also rather small at .026, suggesting that language background is only a small reason for variance in writers’ perception of how easy it was to make an appointment for a tutorial. A final graph can further illuminate the dispersion of writers’ scores on this item as illustrated in Table 2. Less than 3% of NES writers disagreed or strongly disagreed that it was easy to make an appointment compared to almost 11% of NNES writers. By the same token, 76% of NES writers strongly agreed with that statement compared to just a little over half of NNES. In other words, it is statistically more likely for NNES writers to find scheduling a tutorial to be easy compared to NNES writers.
Given the small differences in the data, can the results really be meaningful? On the one hand, they illustrate how similar writers are across language groups. The vast majority agreed or strongly agreed that it was easy to get an appointment, and for this, writing center administrators should rejoice. But of the few who struggle, it is statistically more likely for them to be NNES writers, and this is a nontrivial finding. One reviewer of an earlier version of this manuscript pointed out that as universities become even more service-oriented and require students to already know how to navigate online spaces, this discrepancy could become more noticeable. This may already be the case in different institutional types such as Hispanic-serving institutions compared to primarily white institutions or schools which, for various reasons, have limited engagement with students from diverse English language backgrounds or students with potentially overlapping features of race, class, age, or experience in higher education settings.
Students who struggle to make an appointment initially may set themselves up for low expectations and bad experiences when they do get to the writing center. Inasmuch as writing centers often brand themselves to be inclusive, inviting, helpful spaces where students can get individualized writing support, it is critical to consider even the small details such as language in advertisements and websites which can color the expectations and experiences of NNES writers. Writing centers which engage multilingual writers as a clientele group need to examine the channels by which students make appointments and discover the methods which can best support multilingual writers. If centers haven’t already, they might also benefit from testing their communication streams and appointment procedures with students from diverse backgrounds or hold focus groups with diverse writers including those who have not attended a tutorial to get a sense of how certain communication will land. This is because students who have not attended the writing center may have much more to say about their reasons for not attending, some of which may reveal more obvious patterns in the accessibility of the center.
Comfort in Asking Questions
The next item asked participants to respond to the statement “You felt comfortable asking your tutor questions.” We included this item because when writers ask questions in a tutorial, it is a mark of engagement, negotiation, and collaboration, which in turn is associated with an increased likelihood of student revisions and effective conferences and tutorials (Goldstein and Conrad; Thonus, “Success”). And while NES writers may feel very comfortable asking questions in a tutorial because of their familiarity with the social structure of such interactions and their linguistic ability to quickly formulate questions, the same is not necessarily true for multilingual writers. For instance, Thonus argues that multilingual writers may not have the linguistic resources to adequately ask questions of their tutor in the moment of a short writing tutorial, or they may not have the social or cultural confidence to interrupt a tutor, challenge their suggestions, or otherwise interact with the tutor through questions (“Differences”). We assumed that when writers felt comfortable asking questions of their tutors, this suggested that they felt that the tutorial was useful and that they could actively interact in the tutorial rather than just passively receive knowledge (Sperling). Furthermore, we expected that NES and Gen 1.5 writers would feel more comfortable asking questions than NNES writers. This expectation was based on our assumption that NES writers are more prepared linguistically and culturally for the kind of conversation-based practices of mainstream writing tutorials and that Gen 1.5 writers tend to value oral conversation as a means of learning while NNES writers are more likely to prefer direct instruction (Eckstein, “Directiveness”). As seen in Table 1 above, our expectations were fairly accurate, though not statistically significant. Group means showed that NES writers were the most likely to agree that they felt comfortable asking their tutor questions, with Gen 1.5 writers reporting a slightly lower mean, and NNES writers reporting the lowest mean at 3.52 out of 4.0. In other words, multilingual writers were less likely to feel comfortable asking questions than NES writers based on mean responses, but not to a significant degree.
As with the previous finding, the data on comfort of asking questions should be seen as tentative for now. This is because there are likely more reasons than those we explained above for why NNES writers might feel uncomfortable asking questions. For instance, it may be that NNES writers felt no need to ask questions in the first place, or that their tutors were so directive that there was no opportunity to ask. Thus, additional inquiry through interviews and observation should investigate the reasons why some writers might feel uncomfortable asking their tutors questions and what this might mean in terms of the usefulness of the writing center or the tutor. Exploring factors such as tutor approach, perceived need for questions, and potential barriers could offer a nuanced understanding of the issue, and writing centers that wish to improve the NNES writer experience need to take the linguistic abilities and cultural preferences of their writers into consideration when providing NNES-specific tutorials and in tutor training.
Comfort in Returning to the Writing Center
The following item asked participants to report on their willingness to return to the writing center for at least one more session and was motivated by our desire to determine if the issue was at all related to language background. We expected that NNESs would be more inclined to respond favorably since this is the result Bromley and her colleagues reported in their comparison of NES and NNES writers (“Student satisfaction” 23). On the whole, respondents in our survey largely agreed that they would likely return (see Table 3 for a breakdown of scores). However, our specific findings contradicted those of Bromley et al. (“Student satisfaction”) by showing that NES writers reported a significantly higher likelihood of returning than multilingual writers. Additionally, the mean scores show that of the multilingual writers, Gen 1.5 writers reported a slightly lower likelihood of returning than NNES writers, though the effect size was rather small.
We wondered what it could mean that two similar studies, both comparing NES and NNES writers across multiple writing centers using survey data, could report opposite findings. The answer may lie in the sampling procedures. Bromley and colleagues (“Student satisfaction”) showed that the likelihood of returning for a second visit was actually non-significant between NES and NNES writers at two of the three institutions sampled, namely a small liberal arts college and a large public university. It was only at a medium, private, research university where NNESs were significantly more likely to return. But in sampling only three universities, the results may reflect opinions of well-prepared, well-resourced, socially privileged students who are familiar with college support mechanisms rather than students who are new to or unfamiliar with such resources. Different outcomes might be expected when polling students in two-year institutions, community colleges, or graduate programs where students may need more individualized support and direction on how to use that support. Our present study did not control for this factor directly but did sample from universities across the U.S. in all size categories. The divergence in findings underscores the importance of considering the nuances of institutional differences. The identified pattern of higher return probabilities among NNES writers in a medium, private, research university but lower likelihood of return when sampling from a greater range of universities should prompt more discussions about how institutional characteristics and student demographics may influence the writing center experience. If factors such as university size, resources, and academic preparedness of students play a role in shaping student perceptions and behaviors, then future writing center research that explores these variables could inform targeted interventions and support mechanisms. More specifically, writing center directors could examine their institutional identity and student body for clues about what multilingual writers need or want in order to feel encouraged to return to the writing center.
In turning to the bigger questions of why our data showed that multilingual writers and Gen 1.5 in particular were significantly less likely to return to the center, we reasoned that the writing center experience may have contradicted the expectations and self-perceived needs of some multilingual writers; some may have shown up seeking grammar help and received something else altogether, which is a common enough experience that it is often discussed in writing center literature. Or it may be that multilingual writers were more likely to use the writing center because a teacher suggested it or assigned it, and so, after an initial visit, they had no intention of returning. Conversely, multilingual writers may have been more advanced in their studies (e.g., graduate students) and thus may have had access to other resources such as academic advisors, writing fellow programs, or private tutors who could assist them in their tutoring. Perhaps, some writing centers operate without a retention strategy for multilingual writers. Without consulting directly with the writers who felt uncomfortable returning, it is unclear their precise reasons, and the present methodology precluded such inquiry, so more probing by individual centers can help unravel the interplay of factors that might cause the seven or eight percent of multilingual writers to feel uncomfortable returning to the writing center.
Sincere Attempts to Help
Another item related to the usefulness of the writing center is whether a tutor sincerely tried to help. This is an interesting consideration since the basic service rendered in writing centers is to help writers develop as writers. It seems at odds with that purpose that a writing tutor would withhold sincere help. Yet it may be the case that some tutors are unable to provide the kind of help NNES writers want without extensive content or linguistic knowledge, or because of institutional policies prohibiting some types of linguistic help (Blau et al; Moussu). For instance, if the tutor privileges higher order concerns, or if time prohibits a full review of a paper, this might lead to a writer mistakenly believing that a tutor was not sincerely trying to help. Moreover, even though NNES writers are more likely to request help with grammar (Eckstein, “What students want” 20), Gillespie and Lerner argue that many students use this as a catch-all term to refer to any number of issues they aren’t sure how to explain, even if they have nothing to do with grammar (51). Thus, if a NNES writer requests grammar help, a tutor might demur, thanks to a policy or force of habit even if by “grammar” the writer really wanted help with organization, idea development, or word choice for targeting a specific audience.
With this scenario in mind, we reasoned that NNES writers would most likely see a tutor as unhelpful. Our expectations appeared to hold true at least when looking at means. As seen in Table 1, NES writers had a mean of 3.72 out of 4.0, showing that they strongly agreed that their tutors tried to help. This is in comparison to Gen 1.5 and NNES writers who both had a mean of about 3.60. While the difference in means was not large enough to claim statistical significance, there nevertheless appears to be a trend toward significance given that the p-value was .053. In instances like this, statisticians suggest a larger or more balanced pool of respondents in order to clarify the pattern; indeed, we received more than triple the number of NES responses than NNES responses, so our results underrepresent multilingual writers. But what can writing center directors and tutors do with the information presented here in spite of the unbalanced results? Perhaps the best advice is to talk with all writers—multilingual writers especially—long before they sit down with a tutor about what they find helpful in a tutorial, possibly in focus groups or individual conversations. Getting to know what writers view as helpful early on can give tutors more time and opportunity to address those preferences as they undoubtedly want to, thus aligning perceptions and realities of usefulness.
Tutors’ Knowledge and Expertise
The final item in our survey asked participants to respond to the statement “You trusted your tutor’s knowledge and expertise.” We found that the general trend of lower ratings among multilingual writers held true in terms of the mean scores, but again, the item did not reach statistical significance, so caution should be exercised in drawing definitive conclusions. Nevertheless, the slightly lower means seem to align with previous research. For instance, the multilingual writers' diminished trust in their tutor's expertise compared to their NES peers might stem from their perception of tutors as authority figures, aligning with Thonus's observation that multilingual writers often value advice from teachers or teacher surrogates ("Triangulation") over undergraduate or peer tutors. It may also be that tutors are able to establish more rapport with NES writers through backchanneling and laughter than with multilingual writers, a finding supported by Thonus (“Differences”).
Conclusion of Writing Center Perceptions
At the beginning of this article, we described three students who might visit the writing center on any given day: Maricel, the NNES, Jacques, the Gen 1.5 writer, and Samantha, the native English speaker. All were hypothetical amalgams of real students we have worked with over the years in writing classes and in writing centers. While they might all attend the same university and want writing support, their experiences of writing center usefulness might be very different and may differ based on their English language backgrounds.
Indeed, as explained in the study above, the results of our survey illustrate a couple of real differences in whether writers find the writing center to be useful. The most obvious findings were that multilingual writers—both NNESs and Gen 1.5 writers—found it harder to make an appointment for a tutorial and were less comfortable returning for another writing center visit compared to NESs. In other areas, multilingual writers felt less comfort in asking questions, were slightly more dubious that tutors were sincerely trying to help, and had slightly lower trust in their tutor’s knowledge and experience.
But where do we go from here? Perhaps the first thing to clarify is that writing centers are overwhelmingly positive places for almost all writers. While it is true that there are differences between groups of English language users, those differences exist on the right side of the Likert scale, between the labels agree and strongly agree. The data shows that multilingual writers agreed that it was easy to make an appointment at the writing center; it’s just that NESs agreed more strongly. The same is true for the other items measured.
The variation observed between English language groups in this study is probably related more to individual variation within those groups. That is to say, NNESs differed more from one another while NESs were a more homogenous group. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to those familiar with the language acquisition process—there is often wide heterogeneity among NNESs in terms of the skills, expectations, and cultural understanding they bring to a U.S. learning environment. The same is true for Gen 1.5 writers. And in international writing centers outside of the U.S., we might see an analogous survey to our own with reversed results: U.S. NESs might struggle slightly more to use a writing center that is situated within the cultural and linguistic expectations of a dominant NNES population. What this all says about U.S. writing centers that cater to multilingual writers is that understanding their diverse needs and expectations is imperative to ensuring that writing centers are easy-to-use resources. In particular, writing center directors might examine the language used in their documentation to ensure it reaches a diverse audience. Is it clear for both NESs and NNESs how to make an appointment? Or what services are offered? Additionally, if they don’t already do so, writing centers may consider explaining the role of the writing center and what students can expect during an appointment. This would be particularly vital in helping NNESs know the expectations before attending.
A particularly salient observation which was highlighted by this investigation is that many variables can co-occur with English language background including race, class, age, and experience in higher education settings. These variables should be considered in research that investigates the useability of writing centers. It may not be multilingual learners per se who struggle more to make an appointment, but rather those unfamiliar with university support services in general, non-traditional students who may feel otherized, or individuals working multiple jobs whose schedules make it difficult to get a writing center appointment.
There are multiple realities of the writing center and its perceived usefulness, influenced by a myriad of factors. While our focus has been on English language background, we recognize the interconnected nature of other social variables. It's crucial to broaden the scope of research, considering the unique challenges faced by non-traditional students or those juggling multiple responsibilities. Exploring these dimensions, alongside amplifying individual student voices, will contribute to a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the dynamics at play in writing center useability.
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