ERIC Number: EJ1447542
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0889-6143
EISSN: EISSN-2832-9414
Tutors' Perspectives on Their Work with Multilingual Writers: Changes over Time and in Response to Revisions in Training
Tetyana Bychkovska; Susan Lawrence
Writing Center Journal, v42 n2 Article 5 p76-101 2024
A large body of literature on writing center pedagogy suggests that serving multilingual student writers requires approaches different from those developed for native English-speaking students, a difference that may pose unique challenges to tutors. To identify and address these challenges, we elicited tutors' perspectives on their work with multilingual writers as well as examined how these perspectives change as tutors gain experience and in response to revisions in a training curriculum. Specifically, we analyzed survey responses provided by two consecutive tutor cohorts at three points in their first semester working at the writing center. The overriding theme to emerge from participants' responses was that working with multilingual writers often meant working at the sentence level to help them expand their linguistic and rhetorical choices, but this tutoring was sometimes challenging. The first tutor cohort even described sentence-level tutoring as transgressive, as they struggled to distinguish it from fixing or editing writers' prose. In contrast, the second cohort, who went through a revised curriculum, treated sentence-level tutoring as acceptable practice, theorized it in richer ways, and expressed themselves as better prepared to support multilingual writers. In addition to describing revisions to the curriculum, this study also provides pedagogical implications for tutor educators.
Descriptors: College Students, Writing Instruction, Tutors, Writing (Composition), Laboratories, Bilingual Students, English (Second Language), Second Language Learning, Writing Attitudes, Training, Tutor Training
Writing Center Journal. e-mail: iwcaofficer@gmail.com; Web site: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/wcj/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research; Tests/Questionnaires
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A