Others' Insights and My Applied Understanding
Others' Insights and My Applied Understanding
Approximately a quarter into the semester of the internship with the URWC, we interns were asked to conduct research about tutoring pedagogy articles that we could connect back to our practical experiences tutoring students in the center. I chose three articles that were especially relevant to my future goals and budding philosophy: the first about empowering ELL writers, a group of students I have assisted in the past through English literature courses and intend to assist in the future through foreign language classes abroad; the second about emphasizing laughter in tutoring and its effects on the student's comfortability and learning; and the third about coming to terms with a tutor's own failings to completely understand an assignment and its expectations.
Through avenues suggested by Professor Laflen, the professor in charge of the academic side of the internship, I found these three articles, then wrote three short examinations of their contents and how they may be applied to my own practices. All of these were helpful in informing my conduct and focusing my learning across the semester across a broad range of students, each with their own necessary approaches.
These analyses also served the secondary purpose of informing Professor Laflen of my interests in tutoring and what I looked to when seeking out improvement. As assignments, they provided necessary communication between my supervisor and me about my practices in the center when it was impossible for my supervisor to personally view my tutoring sessions.
“Empowering Tutors and ELL Writers by Examining Commonplaces,” written by Lisa Bell of Utah Valley University, examines many commonly held beliefs and systems in writing centers about the interaction between English Language Learners (ELLs) and tutors. It covers the power dynamics set up by placing a tutor’s language skills implicitly above an ELL’s language skills, as well as the assumption that a tutor would be an expert, the othering of ELLs through systems set up by Writing Centers, and the importance placed on higher order concerns rather than lower order revisions such as grammar or mechanics which functions oppositely to how many ELLs choose to build their pieces of writing.
As one of my ENGL 121 students is an ELL, I plan on thinking on all of these ideas and attempting to figure out ways to incorporate actionable practices that are reflective of these ideas during my next sessions with her. Firstly, though I have already taken some steps to build up her confidence and instill a sense of surety in her writing, I would like to more explicitly tackle the implicit association of ELL with poor language skills. ENGL 110P, a course instructing how to teach English as a second language, has helped me better contextualize her struggles in the context of language learning as a process rather than as an ends; she noticed her struggles with past tense verbs, and I reassured her that those struggles were typical of English learners across the board and should not be fixated on as an area of weakness. Despite her placement as a student and my placement as a tutor, that does not mean her English skills are reflective of that placement nor that her skills are significantly weaker than mine. Rather, it means that she has chosen to seek out extra help and I can offer an alternative perspective as a native speaker.
Secondly, I need to accept that I do not need to be an expert in English to assist her. I had to learn many of the more particular aspects of APA format alongside her, and I made sure to give her the resources I used so she could find them herself if needed. The same idea should be true for English. Despite knowing how to use past tense verbs intuitively, I struggle to explain their use more explicitly. I can find handouts and practice guides for her, and I can seek out explicit knowledge myself, but I should also be more comfortable with acknowledging my own deficits.
Thirdly, I need to acknowledge and work around any ways the Writing Center might other her as an ELL student. While the examples used in the paper are not at play in this Writing Center, I have seen the frameworks listed (e.g., a separate center for ELL students, shorter booking times) and I should seek out which others are at play. Perhaps the noise of other tutors might interfere with our conversations and make it harder to parse through what I am saying, so I should keep in mind any nearby tutors.
Fourthly, and most importantly, I need to recognize her own prioritization of English skills. While the emphasis is placed on higher-order concerns, when she has a good grasp of the content to write but struggles with how to write it out academically, then lower-order concerns do become a higher priority, especially if she is asking for help herself. I need to respect not a generalized account of what centers decide is important for a student to learn, but instead what the students’ themselves prioritize learning.
“Laughter in the Writing Center: Creating Intimate Rhetorical Experiences in the Writing Center to Engage the Learning Process” by Kimberly A. Bain emphasizes the importance of laughter, and therefore empathy, in tutoring. She covers what effects laughter can have, the social understanding a tutor must have to avoid offending or harming a student, and the persuasive influence a positive interaction can have on the overall learning outcome. Laughter can result in a shared understanding between the tutor and the student, breaking down the barrier between the helper and the helped to something similar to friendly assistance. The increased connection between the two parties can result in greater comfort on the part of the student when asking for feedback as well as when receiving it. However, a tutor must be aware of whether or not their laughter is crossing the bounds of friendly towards belittling. Laughter can easily be taken out of the context it’s meant in, so a tutor must be aware of both its actual effect and the student’s interpretation of the laughter. When used correctly, though, laughter convinces the student to engage and enjoy the learning process beyond completing it by rote.
I already make it a point to personalize any tutoring I give out, but I do want to focus more on cultivating laughter collectively as we learn. I have not yet run into any problems with my laughing being misunderstood as aimed at a student, but this article has made me more aware of potential pitfalls if a student is not responding to my tone or to my style of teaching. While I do not think I will change my initial approach, I will need to keep any negative effects in mind as I continue navigating tutoring new students I am unfamiliar with. I would also like to extend this personalization to the larger Reading and Writer Center so that any student I take on will associate the location and the help with enjoyment rather than exclusively me.
Hannah Alpert-Abrams wrote “Case Study: Teaching What You (Don’t) Know” that reflects on two diverging tutoring experiences and how she handled them differently. In one, she was helping a student summarize a scholarly essay on cinema on a topic that she happened to have a significant amount of experience in. In the other, she was asked to make a short abstract on a biochemistry paper more concise while maintaining good flow: this was an area she was not familiar with at all. With the former, she was able to help build the students’ understanding of the content and set him up for a stronger paper, while with the latter, she was able to provide tips on how to conduct a revision. What stood out as strange to me is that despite being limited in the range of advice she was able to give both students, she still helped them both considerably and gained a new focus in learning herself.
I found my own experiences in the writing center reflected in this case study; though I may be proficient in English, I often struggled to help students with restructuring their content while lacking knowledge in what exactly their content was about. There was only so much help I was able to give in scientific or sociological papers, though I tried to form their thoughts explicitly then structure them rather than guide their thought processes as I might in a rhetorical analysis paper. From this, I would like to better learn how to contextually understand a complicated, subject-focused paper and provide more specific, pointed feedback while not understanding the subject itself. While Abrams did not know what a reagent was, she was still able to guide the student on the prose itself by inferring what was important based on, presumably, the student’s feedback. In these cases, I should remember to ask the student questions to provide me with any context I am missing. I should also get comfortable with feeling their thoughts out to hone in on the central pieces of their paper and when it is truly necessary to retain jargon and awkward sentence structure compared to when it is not. Though the students will be my strongest guide, it is always helpful to refer back to the assignment itself. If I cannot understand the assignment, that should be my first priority.
Works Cited
Alpert-Abrams, Hannah. “Case Study: Teaching What You (Don’t) Know.” Praxis, University Writing Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 24 Nov. 2014, www.praxisuwc.com/praxis-blog/2014/9/24/g8gun2kx4jj48da4mzeofsc6d1gh29?rq=tutor.
Bain, Kimberly A. “Laughter in the Writing Center: Creating Intimate Rhetorical Experiences in the Writing Center to Engage the Learning Process.” Praxis, University Writing Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 6 Feb. 2024, www.praxisuwc.com/praxis-blog/2023/3/6/laughter-in-the-writing-center-creating-intimate-rhetorical-experiences-in-the-writing-center-to-engage-the-learning-process.
Bell, Lisa. “Empowering Tutors and ELL Writers by Examining Commonplaces.” The Peer Review, 12 Jan. 2023, thepeerreview-iwca.org/issues/issue-7-1-featured-issue-reinvestigate-the-commonplaces-in-writing-centers/empowering-tutors-and-ell-writers-by-examining-commonplaces/.