Three Points about the Readings

1. In Part I of The St. Martin's Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, the authors briefly touch upon ESL students in the writing center. They note that ESL students are their own subset of tutees and expect and require different things from a given session. Quoting Muriel Harris, the authors introduce the idea that when asked a question by a tutor, a "polite [ESL] student waits for the tutor to answer the question, [and] the two parties are acting out assumptions and expectations from very different worlds" (18). I have come across this issue several times, particularly when working with Asian students. In many Asian cultures, the teacher figure is always correct and ultimately has the final say in academic situations. So, when an ESL writer comes to the center looking for help, the question-answer system commonly used for tutoring doesn't quite work. For example, if I were to ask the student if she thinks something needs to be reworded, instead of saying yes or no, she would simply ask what my opinion was or how I would reword. This scenario occurs because of the teachers' role in many foreign countries and needs to be confronted in a different way. Instead of asking questions in ESL-writing sessions, I have found that it is much more useful to point out errors or possible problems and then help the writer work through the issue.

2. In "The Idea of a Writing Center," North says "The fact is, not everyone's interest in writing, their need or desire to write or to learn to write, coincides with the fifteen or thirty weeks they spend in writing courses--especially when...those weeks are required" (43). I have come across this issue time and time again throughout my tutoring career. Students just don't care about their writing assignments because they do not understand the relevance writing has in their life or will have in their future career. I try my best to explain to them why writing is important and how often it is used in the "real world," but it's very difficult to convince such students. Most often in these situations, both the tutee and I leave the session feeling very frustrated because it was not a fulfilling session. I could not convey the importance of writing and the excitement it can bring, and the student is left feeling flustered, often having to do a great deal of work that they don't care about. I wonder if there is a way to make students more aware of writing's importance and get them excited about it.

3. In Cooper's essay, she brings up the idea that college writing is limited by several institutional constraints that the American collegiate community has overtly implemented in curricula. While I completely agree with what Cooper is saying, I was unaware of these institutional influences when I began tutoring several years ago. Without even thinking twice, I would tell students that the material they were addressing or the way they worded various issues were not acceptable in the classroom; however, I never once stopped to think what made their topics or wording inappropriate. It was not until several years later, as I began editing for some ESL students, that I began realizing how American academic writing constraints affect what writers are trying to say and how they convey their ideas. Quite honestly, it makes me very upset because countless writers are losing their voices in the one place they should be able to keep it. (I am talking outside of the realm of strictly-regulated prose like technical reports.) If such writers cannot express their ideas in their own ways, how do we know that they are conveying their message in the exact way that they want to and not simply how we think it should be conveyed?