Hello, friends and fellow UCWbLers! My name is Evan, and I’m a member of the Collaborative for Multilingual Writing and Research. Here at the CMWR, we facilitate events and programs to assist International and English Language Academy students and serve as a resource for peer tutors working with English as an Additional Language writers. Over the next couple quarters, I’ll be writing blog posts that will serve the latter pursuit. I’ll talk about working with EAL writers, particularly through the Conversation Partner modality, by reviewing various ideas presented in the How to UCWbL Fourth Edition handbook and supporting these ideas with personal experience. The topic for this blog post is facilitating a healthy exchange of language.
Perhaps the best place to start when thinking about how working with EAL writers differs from working with native speakers of English is how language itself is exchanged. Clearly, learning a new language is a complicated task, and it serves as an additional hurdle to the already challenging goal of crafting effective writing. But the relationship between learning a new language and writing goes beyond added difficulty: How to UCWbL paraphrases a 1984 article by Bruffee: “Navigating a learned language and its structures… allows the EAL writer to make meaningful connections about their language, which will transfer into their writing.” Essentially, the process of learning a new language can also be a great benefit to developing writing skills in general. In order to facilitate this navigation of a language and its structures, The UCWbL has engaged in various endeavors that support EAL writers, including Conversation Partner appointments and the CMWR itself.
So the exchange of language between a tutor and an EAL writer is important. But how can this exchange be healthily facilitated? For one, don’t neglect rapport building! Even if the writer seems hesitant to respond, try to ask them questions about themselves that you would ask a native English speaking writer—it can be intimidating to discuss a draft or to converse in an additional language, but it’s often easier in the long run to try to confront this head-on with friendly, casual banter than it is to jump right into a discussion of agenda items. And as with any appointment, rapport building promotes collaboration and trust. Make sure to check the writer’s MyWCOnline profile to see if they have adopted a preferred English name, too!
Furthermore, pay attention to how much you are speaking. This is particularly important when working with EAL writers in conversation practice appointments, as practicing the formulation and articulation of language is vital to their development as writers. Expect and welcome long pauses! While it’s never fun to feel at a loss for words, the writer might start to feel self-conscious about their language ability if you step in too quickly or too frequently. Giving the writer at least 10 seconds is a good rule of thumb. In conversation partner appoints, consider using online or text resources as a means to explain or present examples of English sentence structure if you feel that you’re placing too much focus on your own speech. If you’re ever unsure about how much you’re speaking, you can always ask the writer—Having a mutual understanding of expectations and the tutoring process is beneficial to a healthy exchange of language!
One experience that comes to mind when I think about the healthy exchange of language is a conversation partner appointment with a writer who was interested in Shakespearean English. Specifically, the writer had encountered some snippets of verse from one of Shakespeare’s plays and had been unsure how to parse through them. I believe the actual question the writer asked was something like “Can you read Shakespeare?”
Off the bat, I tried to steer my answer away from a “yes” or “no” into something more concrete and productive. I tried to explain how a lot of English syntax is more flexible than we think, at least in poetry. I also suggested that although certain vocabulary words might seem odd, they are often clearer in context. It occurred to me that I was doing a lot of talking, and though I was trying to answer the writer’s question, I wasn’t giving him much opportunity to practice the formulation of language. So I decided to use some resources, including a soliloquy from Hamlet, an article that explained the differences between the various eras of English—I pointed out that Shakespeare is still Modern English, not Middle or Old—and a list of contemporary everyday words that Shakespeare is credited with inventing, like “elbow.” I had the writer practice reading some lines, and we were able to have a more substantive discussion when focusing on a text and not a tutor’s recalled experience. In the end, we had more fun and the writer engaged more directly in the formulation of language.