Bruce, Shanti, and Ben Rafoth, eds.: ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors.

Benhase, Kelly Jones ; Russell, Vicki ; Cella, Laurie 等

Bruce, Shanti, and Ben Rafoth, eds. ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors. Portsmouth: NH: Heinemann Boynton/Cook, 2004. ISBN: 0-325-00644-X. $20. (To order, call 1-800-225-5800 or visit www.heinemann.com)

In his talk at the 2004 Conference on College Composition and Communication, Paul Kei Matsuda continued to call for transforming composition by integrating the work of second language (L2) learners into the field. If we take this challenge to heart, writing centers must address the extent to which we consider ESL writers as different from other writers. ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors won't necessarily transform writing center work. It does, however, have the powerful potential to improve the understanding tutors bring to working with ESL writers, thereby enhancing the quality and efficacy of our sessions. By highlighting the challenges of guiding students while still honoring their agency, these chapters encourage the kind of integration that Matsuda calls for. They challenge us to test both our own culturally constructed assumptions and those of our students.

As Ilona Leki asks in the forward, how might "the promise of the writing center ... be better realized for L2 students?" The book's three parts--"Cultural Contexts," "The ESL Tutoring Session," and "A Broader View"--contain chapters written by 15 individuals, including writing center directors and composition graduate students and instructors. In addition to providing a strong theoretical foundation, a number of chapters also focus on very specific pragmatic concerns tutors may have in working with non-native speakers. This volume will be useful not only to peer tutors, but also to faculty and graduate student tutors as well as to instructors. Since not every chapter will appeal to all of these audiences, this review attempts to help readers assess the pertinence of each chapter.

The "Cultural Contexts" section establishes a cultural and linguistic bedrock for the book by exploring two salient questions: How do non-native speakers perceive and gain knowledge? What are the multiple theories of how humans learn second, third, and even fourth languages? As the point of departure for what follows, the opening chapter on "Insights Into Cultural Divides" (ch. 1) considers how cultural differences can influence assumptions and practices in often-unexamined ways. Author Nancy Hayward's view of cultural expectations when working with ESL writers will most likely be of particular interest to peer tutors who have limited experience with cultural differences.

In the next chapter (ch. 2), Theresa Tseng gets to the linguistic heart of the matter by focusing on four major approaches to second language theory acquisition. As she says, "One theory cannot tell the story of second language learning" (32). In this way, Tseng contextualizes the concept of contrastive rhetoric discussed in a number of these chapters. Her ability to clearly explain highly technical theory, plus her own experience as an L2 learner of English, makes this fascinating reading for those with a keen interest in linguistics and its relevance to tutoring.

A strength of the book is that theoretical concerns aren't swept aside. Even the pragmatic sounding "The ESL Tutoring Session " section points out that as we "read" our tutees, we need to consider every student who comes into our center as somehow unique. After co-editor Shanti Bruce's "Getting Started" (ch.3), which is geared primarily to peer tutors, comes a fascinating cluster of chapters that deal with the tutor's positioning his or herself in relation to the tutee's work. In "Reading an ESL Writer's Text" (ch. 4), Paul Kei Matsuda and Michelle Cox argue for seeing differences in ESL writing as "not necessarily signs of deficiency" and offer some careful generalizations of factors that may affect ESL writing. Using work done by Carol Severino and others that categorizes possible stances from which tutors may respond, Matsuda and Cox offer useful strategies for focusing on what's important in ESL papers.

Carol Severino takes up the notion of "Avoiding Appropriation" (ch. 5) of a writer's text by positioning appropriation on a continuum of control and authority. She offers ten excellent principles for ensuring that tutors work to honor the agency of the writer. In "Earth Aches By Midnight: Helping ESL Writers Clarify Their Intended Meaning" (ch. 6), Amy Jo Minett follows by thoughtfully analyzing what may cause tutors to misunderstand ESL writers' meanings, with suggestions for how to avoid jumping to conclusions about their intentions.

The next two chapters expand the range that exists within best practice, depending on the needs of the tutee. What approaches to working with ESL writers are available and how do we choose what is best? Jennifer Staben and Kathryn Dempsey Nordhaus's "Looking at The Whole Text" (ch. 7), emphasizing "talk before text," is followed by Cynthia Linville's sentence-level focus in "Editing Line-by-Line" (ch. 8), which stresses the need to support ESL writers in improving their ability to edit their own work by focusing on patterns of error.

The next cluster's usefulness isn't limited to tutors working with ESL writers. Co-editor Ben Rafoth's "Tutoring Online" (ch. 9), about online tutoring and the efficacy of focused endnote comments, will benefit anyone who comments on student papers. Kurt Bouman's "Raising Questions about Plagiarism" (ch.10) offers a complete and sophisticated look at the problematic issue of academic integrity, including the benefits and challenges of American academic conventions. Paula Gillespie's "Is This My Job?" (ch.11) focuses on how tutors conceive of their job and its boundaries, encouraging us to realize, for example, that a student's request "is sometimes not our job." Kevin Dvorak's "Creative Writing Workshops for ESL Writers" (ch. 12) reimagines writing centers as locations for creative writing workshops that encourage ESL writers to take risks and enjoy writing.

The final section of the book, called "A Broader View," offers the kind of reflection that may happen rarely in a busy writing center: How do things look from an ESL student's perspective? Although a number of this volume's chapters offer authors' personal insights into learning a language or living in another country, Gerd Brauer's "The Role of Writing in Higher Education Abroad" (ch. 13) focuses on the experience and insight of students from other countries. This chapter is particularly interesting when Brauer describes differences between "Anglo-American" and "Continental" ways of writing.

Following in the vein of viewing our work with ESL students more broadly, Rafoth's "Trying to Explain English?" (ch. 14) positions English as a "global phenomenon" and looks carefully at certain characteristics that make English vexing both to learners as well as to tutors trying to explain this language to non-native speakers. For example, his discussion of predictable and nonpredictable adjectives offers a perfect example of something native-speaking tutors could explain effectively only by having learned the linguistic rule behind the choice, something Rafoth urges us to do. In the final chapter of the book, "Conversations with ESL Writers," Shanti Bruce (ch. 15) urges us to "[return] the focus from theories of culture and linguistic concerns to the individual student." Readers will meet Sami from Saudi Arabia, Jung-jun from Korea, Zahara from Uganda, and Helene from Germany--all students who came to the writing center with varying degrees of confidence and insecurity. Through their words, we gain a better understanding of the challenges ESL students face.

Overall, this volume powerfully involves its readers in a larger conversation about ESL writers, from its useful glossary to the way chapter authors refer to the work in other chapters. Most refreshingly, the volume avoids the unnecessary and often counterproductive dichotomy between nondirective and directive tutoring common in discussions about working with ESL writers. Taken as a whole, the volume problematizes tutor reaction to error, with a number of chapters urging that tutors be what Staben and Nordhaus describe as "direct, rather than directive."

In essence, those of us who are native speakers are in one sense L2 learners of the ESL writers we tutor. As Bruce states in the sentence that closes ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors: "The incentive to keep working and to keep learning lies in the possibility that each new day will bring one more student closer to understanding and enjoying the process of learning to write in English." Thankfully, this volume offers all of us a wealth of ways for writing centers to "read" our students--and ourselves--more completely.

When I taught a tutor practicum class for the first time in 2001, my goal was to highlight ESL training. As I constructed my syllabus, I trekked over to the library on a regular basis to copy articles by scholars like Judith Powers, Muriel Harris, Tony Silva, and Jennifer Ritter. These articles proved extremely useful as I educated myself on the topic of ESL tutoring strategies. In the fall of 2000, I was lucky enough to meet Jennifer Ritter at the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing, and she agreed to give a presentation to my tutors on ESL strategies. The tutors were amazed that Jennifer, a published author, would drive through a New England snowstorm in order to share ESL tutoring strategies over dinner at a local restaurant! For me, Ritter's snowy trip demonstrated her commitment to the cause of ESL training, and for the tutors, Ritter's advice was helpful because she gave a number of practical suggestions balanced by just the right amount of theory.

It is this balance of personal warmth, theoretical background, and practical advice that characterizes Ben Rafoth and Shanti Bruce's new collection of essays, Tutoring ESL Writers. This collection fills a key void in writing center scholarship; to my knowledge, there is no other book designed primarily to train tutors on the most effective ways of tutoring ESL students. Of course, none of the authors promise any magical solutions, but they do emphasize that tutoring ESL students requires empathy for the particular difficulties of managing a second language in a foreign academic context.

In their introduction, the editors explain that the three sections of their collection, "Cultural Contexts," "The ESL Tutoring Session," and "A Broader View," provide the cultural, theoretical, and practical context tutors need to confidently address the specific challenges ESL students pose. They have selected tutor-friendly articles that cover issues as varied as contrastive rhetoric (Nancy Hayward), strategies for teaching students to edit their own work (Cynthia Linville), and the benefits of creative writing workshops as a means of encouraging ESL writers to imagine the English language in a playful, even fun, way (Kevin Dvorak). A common theme running throughout this book is a familiar one: tutors must negotiate competing impulses when working with ESL students. The tutors in my practicum classes always want to know where to draw the line between a helpful and an aggressively directive approach; the authors in this collection offer practical and creative ways to solve this dilemma.

For example, in Chapter 5, Carol Severino offers a personal example to dramatize the dangers of an overly directive approach. She explains that, as a second language learner in Italy, she had been proud of her essay "Una Viaggio a Venezia" because she felt that it had accurately represented her experience in Venice. Severino then describes the loss she felt when her Italian professor rewrote her Italian essay using more sophisticated language. She uses this moment as a segue into a short history of appropriation and ends with a practical ten point list of suggestions designed to help tutors negotiate the line between a helpful and an overly directive approach. Throughout her article, Severino includes the experiences and suggestions of the University of Iowa tutors, which effectively allows tutors to have a real voice in the discussion. Severino's narrative dramatizes the need for a respectful attention to students' texts and an empathetic awareness of their struggle to create and sustain a writerly identity in a foreign language.

Kurt Bouman's discussion of plagiarism in Chapter 10 echoes the theme of cultural awareness, for he demonstrates that the very definitions of plagiarism change from culture to culture. He points out that some ESL students who appear to be plagiarizing may instead be adhering to their own cultural expectations for creating persuasive texts. Bouman suggests that one way to broach the topic of plagiarism is to ask students to describe the writing process they learned in their home country. This approach allows students to identify how their own techniques for citation differ from the expectations of an American academic audience. He argues that even when tutors suspect purposeful fraud within a student text, they should view this potentially uncomfortable tutoring moment as a site for instruction. Bouman ends his article with a number of possible plagiarism scenarios that would stimulate a thoughtful in-class discussion.

In Chapter 14, Ben Rafoth provides some examples of tricky grammatical constructions that would also provide fodder for a useful discussion in class. One of the tutors currently enrolled in my practicum class recently confessed that she had never been "good at" grammar and so she was worried about her future performance as a tutor. As I reassured her, I was reminded of Rafoth's charge for all tutors to quell their fears of grammar and investigate the very questions that confound them. For instance, he presents the problem of pluralizing the "headless compound" and argues that attention to compelling questions like this will open new and amazing doors of language for the inquisitive tutor. (By the way, a headless compound is a word like Walkman, which is pluralized by simply adding an s. Cool.)

Shanti Bruce and Ben Rafoth have produced a collection of particularly teachable essays, each article representing an important link in the on-going discussion of the rich possibilities and challenges of working with ESL students. The last chapter of the book is composed of Shanti Bruce's interviews with a number of ESL students whose opinions of the writing center provide a useful addition to the discussion. It seems only appropriate that the book's editors, whose main premise is that ESL students have much to offer tutors, both culturally and linguistically, would allow the ESL students to have the last word. Next semester, I won't need to trek to the library to create my own ESL packet; this collection will serve as my new staple in the Spring 2005 Tutor Practicum class.

Works Cited

Harris, Muriel and Tony Silva. "Tutoring ESL Students: Issues and Options." College Composition and Communication" 44 (1993): 525-537.

Powers, Judith. "Rethinking Writing Center Conferencing Strategies for the ESL Writer." The Writing Center Journal 13.2 (1993): 39-47.

Ritter, Jennifer. "Recent Developments in Assisting ESL Writers." In A Tutor's Guide: Helping Writers One to One. Ed. Ben Rafoth. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 2000. 102-110.

Reviewed by Kelly Jones Benhase and Vicki Russell, Duke University, Durham, NC

Reviewed by Laurie Cella (University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT)