Axis Special Issue: Imagining the Decolonizing Writing Center

Learning about Tutoring Multilingual Writers from Multilingual Tutors

Albert C. DeCiccio
Salem State University

 “This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.”—Joy Harjo 

When at our tutoring tables with multilingual writers, we in the Salem State University Writing Center have tried to follow the advice of Michelle Crow (formerly, Michelle Cox): We assure writers their “written accents” will be treated with respect (6). We advise tutors not to spend time worrying about features of English that take many years to acquire (e.g., articles, verb tense, prepositions), but instead to focus on expression of ideas and rhetorical skill. Following the advice of Tony Silva and others, when working with multilingual writers, we pay attention to what’s good enough and do not let perfect get in the way of good. Nonetheless, especially as they are using all their language choices, or translanguaging (Garcia and Lin 117), multilingual writers still encounter a dilemma: trying to translate ideas into English in their voices while attempting to mimic the “authentic” American voice they are so persistent about perfecting. This fall, we followed the lead of writing center workers like Elise Dixon. Reminiscent of Eric Camarillo’s more recent clarion call, Dixon wrote the following in “Uncomfortably Queer: Everyday Moments in the Writing Center”: “I am calling for a splitting open, a calling out and a calling in, . . .a breaking open and a blowing up. . . .”

Salem State University Writing Center tutors, a keystone species in the institution, helped in making some of the above points at our tutoring tables—as Harjo’s speaker expresses in the above epigraph, places that could be “houses in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.” We believe that, without writing tutors, multilingual writers would find it difficult to cross the thresholds of their academic programs. So, taking Dixon’s “magnifying-glassed, wide-eyed stare into [translanguaging] moments as a way to better understand the complicated” nature of our multilingual writers, the Center’s core staff turned to its multilingual tutors. Working, when the situation arises, with students who speak the same first language, these tutors helped us to understand how important it is to determine, as one explained, “whether one thinks in English or their native language when writing.” That knowledge, the tutors explained, aids efforts to provide optimal tutoring for multilingual writers. By optimal tutoring, we mean not just helping multilingual writers to learn the rules for the “beautiful English” (Cox 151) they aspire to produce, but also sharing strategies that will help these writers produce meaningful writing. We are finding out that this standpoint—as one multilingual tutor termed it, “Being multilingual is a treasure!”—makes a big difference in the relationships we hope to establish with our multilingual writers.

“While we all agree that being a multilingual tutor is a strength,” said one of our tutors, “multilingual writers for the most part write in accented English and may find it hard to fix the fossilized errors and mistakes at this point in life. This might strip them of confidence and be frustrating sometimes.” When this fall’s tutors addressed working with multilingual writers, they were made aware of how palpably multilingual writers experience the perspective that accents equal mistakes. We believe that, with this understanding, the tutors are better prepared to inspire confidence and motivate multilingual writers to complete writing tasks. We found it helpful to explore how stereotypes about multilingual writers may block those writers. The tutors discovered that moving past academic labels about multilingual writers expanded their developing repertoire for tutoring the writers. We value the wisdom in what one multilingual tutor offered: “Whether one thinks in English or their native language while writing in English is an important consideration for tutors when working with multilingual writers.”  

Ann Raimes observed that, for multilingual writers, the act of writing served to generate more writing. Language and the ideas writers expressed in that language emerge “out of the student’s own creativity, not out of textbook instruction or teacher input” (52). We found her advice to teachers of multilingual writers relevant for our tutors, that is, using think-aloud composing—conversation—as a tutoring tool. More than anything else, however, we maintained that English-learning students need time to develop as writers, attending to the processes they use as well as the products they write (53). We observe this fact in tutoring sessions with multilingual writers: they have to work in two languages to complete a writing task.

Despite the steep steps and walls erected physically and figuratively, people from all over the world are attending colleges and universities in the United States. Our task is to prepare tutors to help these students whose home languages are not English to become better writers. To that end, using recommendations from writers in the field like Pimyupa Praphan and Guiboke Seong, we developed this checklist for our Writing Center tutors. We hope it will be used in writing centers nationwide and abroad as they welcome multilingual writers to tutoring tables.

Before starting

_____ I prepared for the session and was aware of what I was asked to help with: self-awareness is the best way to be present for multilingual tutees.

_____ I helped establish a shared agenda with agreed-upon priorities: the goal is to help make

better writers, modeling how successful independence depends upon successful interdependence.

During the session

_____ I made time to read aloud: reading generously is interactive, helping the tutor and the multilingual tutee to hear what works and what doesn’t.

_____ I followed the tutoring hierarchy: responding to high-order areas of the text before responding to low-order areas is a good way to proceed with multilingual writers.

_____ I asked effective questions: asking effective questions engages the multilingual tutee in the work of the session and helps to highlight the writer’s strengths.

_____ I was clear about what could be revised while also providing encouragement: being clear about what needs attention while also acknowledging the multilingual tutee’s work is the goal.

_____ I was not a harsh critic pointing out errors: “noticing,” as Michelle Crow points out (146), is what tutors do best. When tutors notice patterns that interfere with understanding of the text, they point out those patterns and provide resources for how they might be overcome. Rather than fix errors or avoid talking about them altogether, acknowledge the pattern and help the multilingual writer develop a strategy to correct the problem.

_____ I did not let perfect get in the way of good: remember that the goal is not just to make a better text; it is to help make a better writer. Usually, a text exhibits more that is good than what is not-so-good. It is important to try to encourage more of that growth mindset, while letting the multilingual tutee know that perfection is not possible.

After the session

_____ I provided resources and reminded the multilingual tutee to consider other appointments: offering multilingual writers physical and online resources and providing takeaways (lists, articles, etc.) encourages self-study and is aligned with the goal to help make better writers.

_____ I completed the survey in WCOnline and made notes for myself: keeping a record of the session makes sense for a lot of reasons, as a reference point should there be a future meeting with the multilingual writer.

Works cited

Camarillo, Eric C. “Burn the House Down: Deconstructing the Writing Center as Cozy Home.” The Peer Review, vol. 3, no.1, Summer 2019, https://thepeerreviewiwca.org/issues/redefining-welcome/burn-the-house-down-deconstructing-the-writingcenter-as-cozy-home/.

Cox, Michelle. “Multilingual Writers across the Curriculum.” Emory University, 2016, pp. 1-11.

Cox, Michelle. (2019). “‘Noticing’ Language in the Writing Center: Preparing Writing Center Tutors to Support Graduate Multilingual Writers.” Re/writing the Center: Pedagogies, Practices, Partnerships to Support Graduate Students in the Writing Center, edited by Terry Myers Zawacki and Susan Lawrence. University Press of Colorado, 2018, pp. 146-62.

Dixon, Elise. “Uncomfortably Queer: Everyday Moments in the Writing Center.” The Peer Review, vol.1, no. 2, Fall 2017, https://thepeerreview-iwca.org/issues/braverspaces/uncomfortably-queer-everyday-moments-in-the-writing-center/​.

García, Ofelia, and Angel M. Y. Lin. “Translanguaging in Bilingual Education.” Bilingual and    Multilingual Education (Encyclopedia of Language and Education), edited by Ofelia Garcia and Angel M. Y. Lin. Springer, 2017, pp. 117-130.

Harjo, Joy. “Perhaps the World Ends Here.” The Woman Who Fell From the Sky. W. W. Norton and Co., 1994, p. 68.

Raimes, Ann. “What Unskilled ESL Students Do as They Write: A Classroom Study of Composing.” Landmark Essays on ESL Writing, edited by Tony Silva and Paul Kei Matsuda. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001, pp. 37-61.

Praphan, Pimyupa W. and Guiboke Seong. “Helping Second-Language Writers Become Self Editors.” Tutoring Second Language Writers, edited by Shanti Bruce and Ben Raforth. University Press of Colorado, 2016, pp.235-251.