Bilingual students or ESL(English as a Second Language) students have it hard on them in the writing arena. ESL students are narrowed down into an entirely different writing culture than the native speaking students, causing them to seek for further help with different programs such as the writing center. Although all students has different needs and expectations of their papers, ESL students have even greater in-depth difficulties that must be attained to before reaching their final writing aspirations. Are writing centers fully equipped in aiding such obstacles?
Grammar has been practiced religiously back in elementary and middle school, while at the High School level, grammar was very seldomly practiced. Grammar has been put aside and the main focus in writing has become the organization of the paper including getting the point across, finding the thesis statement and proving that point with supportive ideas. Entering an intermediate writing class may be a struggle for students with another native language; although their speech may be clear enough, their language on paper may not.
The mainstream of the classroom is usually made up of English native speaking students. Out of the 15,051 students enrolled in Kean University, only 282 students make up the international student body (Office of Institutional Research). Therefore, the classroom is taught with regards to the capability of the majority, leaving the rest (1.8%) behind. A classroom entailing a couple of ESL students, gives no right to lower the entire classroom’s expectations, therefore, all of the students have to work up to the professor’s hopes. This situation leaves the ESL students in a considerably substantial ambush.
There is a certain presumption of all students to have prior knowledge in grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure including a topic sentence, supporting details and conclusions. The lack of practice in these areas shows in their papers, causing administration to focus on their grammar and language rather than their context supporting their hypothesis. The professor doesn’t want to seem malicious, but rather helpful, wanting to prove a point and assist the student to the best of their ability. The only problem is, the professor is incapable of servicing the student with their grammatical issues, when they should be focusing on the thesis of the paper. The professor then relies on another type of assistance, more commonly known as the writing center, in helping the student with their grammatical errors.
ESL students have writing issues that can only be dealt with one-on-one consultations. Professors not having the time or patience to do so, immediately throw them into the writing center. Typically, the writing center are viewed as service to the teachers, which is entirely off. The writing centers work hard to keep their reputation and are strict and disciplined in their tutoring skills, yet in teacher’s perspectives they are still viewed as paper fixer-uppers. They are expected to do the dirty work for the teachers, which is exactly what they work so hard not to do. Writing centers have been set up to help assist motivated writers to write and not to fix teacher’s papers to make it easier for them to grade.
Unfortunately, teachers have been misinformed and do not understand the philosophy behind their writing center’s motive and misuse their assistance. The typical attitude of a professor toward a lack of higher writing skills is: “I’m not teaching you something you should have learned back in middle school, go to the writing center”. This attitude is not only fallacious, but at the same time destroys both the writing center and the student.
The writing culture has portrayed their main focus on the mainstream student body, leaving the rest behind straggling to make it. The stragglers are then sent to their last resort also known as the writing center, to help “fix” their grammatical issues in their writing habits. Unfortunetly, the writing center is not created to fix or restore a student’s writing, their goal is to tutor and assist writers and not to hand them the “right answer”.
The Kean University’s writing center is a peer tutorial institution made up of collaborative techniques to assist the writer but not teach the writer. According to an article called, Coaching the Writing Process in the Kean University’s Online newspaper, the writing center is described as “the product of a long-term ambition to provide tutoring services in an area with interdisciplinary importance and personal development. Writers from the Kean University student body, faculty, and staff are welcome to utilize the writing center's tutoring sessions and resources.” (Nieves , 2010)
As an ESL writer, being thrown into a writing center, may not be the best possible answer for the student. Typically the tutorial assistance available for these students is provided by writing centers, and most of the work available there is more commonly based on the work of an English native speaker. Peer tutors attend to all students who walk in the door with proofreading and writing process questions, organizational and main focus inquiries, planning consultations, etc. The main question here is, do these strategies appeal to the entire student body? What about those who need assistance witht the simpler writing processes such as grammar and sentence structure?
Judith Powers writes an article on the different strategies needed to be held for the ESL writer. “In responding to the three-fold increase in numbers of ESL conferences over the past two years, our writing center faculty has begun to question whether traditional collaborative strategies are appropriate and effective for second-language writers”(368). The problem of not being fully equipped for the non-native speaking student evolves. “Unfortunately, many of the collaborative techniques that had been so successful with native-speaking writers appeared to fail (or work differently) when applied to ESL conferences” (369).
Works Cited
Nieves , B. (2010). Coaching the writing process. The Cougars' Byte Online, Retrieved
from http://media.www.cougarsbyte.com/media/storage/paper738/news/2010/09/28/CampusLife/Coaching.The.Writing.Process-3936962.shtml#cp_article_tools
Office of Institutional Research, . "Kean University 2009 Facts." Kean University: Office
of Institutional Research . N.p., 2009 . Web. 3 Oct 2010.
<http://ir.kean.edu/irhome/Factsheet/FactSheet09FA.pdf>
Powers, Judith. Rethinking Writing Center Conferencing
Strategies for the ESL Writer. 1993. 368-369. Print.
