Reading Response 6

First of all, my favorite clients so far have been my international students! However, they have been upper level students who were in English 201 or Gen 099 rather than an ESL class. I had such a good session on Monday with a guy from Russia! I really enjoyed the whole hour that I spent with him. He wrote such an interesting story. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. He also made me laugh a lot. I was discouraged to hear that he had come here before and still received many comments about his grammar from the professor. Hearing this, I decided that we would just go through the whole paper sentence by sentence and discuss them. I found that all his grammatical errors consisted of tense issues and the lack of articles. Halfway through the paper he was catching them himself and we got to spend most of the time enjoying the story he was telling instead of searching for missing articles.

In my personal experience, ESL students are much more cooperative and eager to hear the ideas of the tutor. They seem more invested in actually learning the process rather than just “fixing” it this time for their paper. However, I must admit I have been lucky and have had very few reluctant clients. (The few I had were annoyed because they had to be there just to pass their paper).

Bruce talks about a student’s first time in the writing center on page 33 in the second paragraph. I can easily relate to this because I have never actually been to a tutor before, although it would probably benefit me to visit a Spanish tutor, and I assume I would be nervous and apprehensive about going to get help from a tutor. I found the final sentence of that paragraph to be a bit odd. It reads, “Just by walking in the door, students are admitting to themselves and everyone there that they need help” (33). I thought that was a little deep considering that this is tutoring; it is not an alcoholic support group. This is not to say that I don’t agree that clients need help or that tutors don’t offer those clients support, I just found it odd.

I think that ESL students are not the only people that “have no idea what a writing center is or how it functions” (34) and this worries me. ESL students may come from a country where there are no writing centers, so that is excusable. On the contrary, American students, especially college age students, should be well aware of a writing center and its purpose. I think one of the main reasons that this is not occurring is because of the PR for writing centers or the lack thereof. Writing rooms want their mission to focus on the student rather than the text yet today I saw a sign in the library that read “who needs help with a paper?”

Bruce talks about the importance of making a plan with the client. I admit to forgetting many of the methods we discuss in class, due to nerves or what have you, this is one method that I stand by and always use. I also agree with him about compliments and how paying attention to the client, in this nature, can help the student feel at ease. I am a firm believer, and follower, of compliments. They go a long way and can help people cheer up a little bit. I know I always enjoy a compliment, even if it is just about my earrings or necklace.

On page 36 Bruce discusses time management in a tutorial and how setting a plan will save time. I used the same argument in my observational analysis. However, I am unfamiliar with the clients who “come to the writing center with specific requests in mind” (36). I have yet to meet this student. So far when I have asked the client for their personal goals of the current paper, I have merely received the response, “I don’t know. My teacher just said I had to be here.” My ESL clients, on the other hand, usually have a better plan of their goals.

I also agree that writing tutors should “not attempt to fix every phrase just because it sounds different. Sometimes, these variations can be refreshing, if not poignant, and leaving them intact goes a long way toward preserving the student’s voices” (36). I tried very hard to keep some of **Slavik’s (my international client) original phrasing but still keep them grammatically correct. The story he was telling sounded really exciting from a Russian narrator’s point of view. If he would have been writing for a creative writing class I would have been hesitant to change much of anything.