Assessing preparation of mainstream composition teachers working with multilingual writers

Research on multilingual writers in first-year composition classes in U. S. universities seems to overlook the issue of professional preparation of mainstream composition instructors who work with multilingual writers. Composition courses are commonly taught by teachers with no formal training in L2 writing pedagogy. Therefore, a better understanding of their professional preparation and needs will help composition programs develop adequate training and prepare instructors who are able to address linguistic and cultural needs of multilingual writers. In this study, a perception survey was completed by 34 instructors of mainstream first-year composition at a large research U.S. university. The participants had no formal training in L2 writing pedagogy. Responses reveal that most instructors acknowledged their lack of education and professional experience and generally felt ill equipped to work with multilingual writers. Conclusions discuss the need to strengthen professional development of mainstream composition instructors

Rethinking Our Work With Multilingual Writers: The Ethics and Responsibility of Language Teaching in the Writing Center

'Just shy of 9 AM on one of the last days of the semester, I raced into the writing center. Waiting for my first writer, I hastily checked my email where the subject line “SOS from June1” jumped out at me. June was a writer I knew well, and she was one of my former students in a writing center studio course for multilingual writers. Reading June’s email, her panic was apparent; she was extremely concerned with how a professor was grading her writing in a particular course. Though she had tried to discuss her concerns with her instructor, her account to me indicated this had been futile: “he said that this class is difficult and he cannot help me any more."'University Writing Cente

Review of Creating Digital Literacy Spaces for Multilingual Writers

This is a book review of Creating Digital Literacy Spaces for Multilingual Writers by Meghan Bowling-Johnson

Teaching the biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder: fostering a media literacy approach for multilingual writers

In creating this thesis, the culmination of writings from teaching English composition to multilingual writers, contributed to my research. This action research study focuses on how to foster a media literacy approach when teaching multilingual writers. The literature focus unit was based on the biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder using the book, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Photographic Story of a Life (Stone, 2009). The research conducted for this study took place during the winter quarter of 2015 within English 112, which is a composition class offered at Eastern Washington University (EWU) for multilingual writers. During this time, questionnaires, journal responses, student sample essays and assignments were collected. Within these pages, several student samples will be provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and importance of giving students an opportunity to express their voice through the use of media literacy . By honoring and preserving their culture they became active participants and were engaged within their learning. The goal of this study was to analyze and synthesize how media literacy can be fostered through a vast array of topics to assist the multilingual writer in gaining knowledge about U.S. history during the 19th and 20th century --Leaf iv

Visuality in Academic Writing: Reading Textual Difference in the Work of Multilingual Student Writers

With the growth of the teaching of English globally and increasing numbers of students in English language medium universities, students in academic English classrooms can be expected to be literate in two or more languages. Multilingual writers in the university engage in high stakes academic writing even as they navigate differences among languages and academic writing systems. While research and pedagogies addressing the question of difference in the writing of multilingual students in English have focused primarily on verbal features, writing has come to be conceptualized in terms of multimodality. Writing is also a visual mode, and multilingual writers draw on their knowledge of different conventions and writing systems as they compose. To reflect on the visuality of writing, this article considers examples of textual difference in the English writing of multilingual university students in Lebanon. Multilingual approaches to teaching writing are developing quickly, but instruction in visual aspects of writing is still predominantly prescriptive. Instructors of academic writing have a responsibility to contextualize visual dimensions of academic writing, especially for multilingual writers. Qualitative studies will help understand the perceptions and experiences of multilingual academic writers as they negotiate all of the modes of writing, including the visual

Multilingual Writers’ Perceptions and Use of L1 in a U.S. Composition Class: A Case Study of Nepalese Students

This thesis shares a qualitative study of multilingual student writers’ perceptions and attitudes toward the use of L1 (i.e., Nepali) in L2 (i.e., English) writing. The research questions include: 1) What are Nepalese students’ attitudes toward using their L1 in a first-year composition class in the U.S.? and 2) How do Nepalese undergraduate students in a U.S. composition class use their L1 for the research writing process? A case study research design was adopted to shed light on the lived experiences multilingual writers in U.S. university writing programs. Nepalese students were recruited from two multilingual sections of English 101 Composition at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and nine participants consented. The data collection process spanned one academic semester, and data sources included a questionnaire, an interview, and written artifacts. Recursive content analysis was employed for data analysis. Data sources were transcribed and coded using MAXQDA12 software. Emerging themes from the data analysis include: L2 writing in a cross-cultural context, L1 use in L2 research writing, and multilingual writers’ identities. Findings, including participants’ perception of their L1 as an L2 writing resource and participants’ use of L1 at various stages of the L2 writing process, inform current and future writing instructors’ ability to better meet the needs of multilingual writers

"We Don't Do That Here": Calling Out Deficit Discourse in the Writing Center to Reframe Multilingual Graduate Support

Over the years, as writing center tutors, graduate assistants, and administrators, we have witnessed the challenges facing multilingual graduate student writers on their quest for academic writing support. We have spent our time researching campus resources only to find that holistic (and whole-istic) approaches to working with the particular needs of graduate multilingual writers (GMLWs) are lacking. One common narrative that we witness repeatedly is concerned with GMLWs: the “we don’t do grammar” frame that many writing centers endorse. In the example from narrative one, which is based on a client with whom Erica has been working, Yifan left embarrassed, as she was made to feel like she had been using the writing center fraudulently. In Erica’s next meeting with Yifan, she explained why writing centers are so resistant to changing this frame for their work. While her explanation may have mediated Yifan’s embarrassment somewhat, Yifan was still hesitant to work with anyone besides Erica. A similar sense of guilt and embarrassment is felt by Sam, the tutor in narrative three, who focuses on local concerns in longterm, high stakes projects that graduate students typically bring to the center. All three narratives echo what we identify as particular obstacles faced not only by our GMLWs when seeking out resources to improve their communication skills, but also by tutors and administrators who wish to identify best practices in serving multilingual students.University Writing Cente

Generation 1.5 Writing Center Practice: Problems with Multilingualism and Possibilities via Hybridity

In much writing center theory and practice, conversations about multilingual writers have tended to involve L2 writers. Often international students, these writers speak at least one language other than English, but they perhaps speak more than just one other language despite their L2 designation. They do not speak English as their first language, and when they come to English-language-based institutions of higher education, they find themselves needing to learn and learning English. More recently, however, the field of writing center scholarship has recognized complexity in the category of multilingualism. Especially following the publication of Terese Thonus’s “Serving Generation 1.5 Learners in the University Writing Center,” Generation 1.5 or L1.5 writers have emerged as part and parcel of writing center practitioners’ and scholars’ conversations. Neither L1 speakers and writers nor L2 necessarily, Generation 1.5 writers exist in a linguistic liminal space. Although much variation exists among Generation 1.5 writers and although Generation 1.5 writers do not inherently represent a single, transitional generation in a family’s immigrant history,1 Linda Harklau, K. M. Losey, and Meryl Seigal define them as writers with “backgrounds in US culture and schooling” who sustain identities that are “distinct from international students or other newcomers who have been the subject of most ESL writing literature” (vii). They differ from English as a Second Language (ESL) students in that they “are primarily ear learners,” and they may “have lost, or are in the process of losing, their home language(s) without having learned their writing systems or academic registers” (Thonus 18). They are neither here nor there in terms of their linguistic identities. Or, perhaps, they are both here and there.University Writing Cente

Tutor Training and Services for Multilingual Graduate Writers: A Reconsideration

Multilingual graduate writers make few appearances in writing center discussions. These students live, work, and write at the intersection of two subjectivities—graduate writer and multilingual writer—neither of which is the core population of native-English-speaking undergraduates with whom most writing centers have traditionally worked. Writers who are multilingual or “ESL”1 have received frequent attention (e.g. Blau and Hall; Bruce and Rafoth, Myers; Harris and Silva), and a handful of scholars have considered the challenges of tutoring graduate students (e.g. Pemberton; Powers; Gillespie; Snively). However, the research tells us little about how to work effectively with students who are both multilingual and graduate writers (hereafter, MGWs). In this essay, I place interviews with MGWs in conversation with a survey of writing center practices with MGW student populations. Based on the experiences of the MGWs I interviewed, I suggest that writing centers could better meet MGWs’ needs by adopting a more holistic approach to the writing process that is more disciplinarily informed and that resists creating false dichotomies between global and sentence-level concerns. I argue that for MGWs, sentence-level problems—even those that tutors might judge to be minor or moderate—may have serious implications for their professional advancement.University Writing Cente

Review of Re/Writing The Center: Approaches To Supporting Graduate Students In The Writing Center, Edited By Susan Lawrence And Terry Myers Zawacki

University Writing Cente