Look anywhere online and you can find articles bemoaning the difficulties COVID-19 has wrought on people’s ability to maintain a social life. Despite the constraints that social distancing has placed on socializing, in late 2020 I made a new friend in contexts completely unrelated to Writing Centers and tutoring—unless you consider how our relationship developed pretty much exclusively over text.
In fact, if it weren’t for the internet’s ability to facilitate interactions independent of physical proximity, I wouldn’t have been able to develop a connection to my friend in the first place, since she lives all the way in a different continent.
Lu is close to my age and lives in Brazil. She is currently in grad school, and in getting to know her I learned that some of the different work she does to support herself is similar to what I do at the UCWbL.
Lu and Her Work
She helps people with their writing through her job as an English as Secondary Language (EAL) teacher for those intending to take college entry exams; tutors people in English individually on the side; and additionally proofreads college or scholarship application essays as part of her volunteer work. This got me thinking about what her relationship to helping people with their writing is like.
In asking Lu about how she approaches teaching English and writing, I learned that she primarily imparts technical material like grammar and sentence structure in her class. She strictly sticks to objective information like grammar theory, but also incorporates texts—and sometimes media like song lyrics or art—in her instruction as well.
She said that it’s important to not only teach English, but some of its culture too. How much emphasis she places on writing and communicating while closely following language rules depends on the teaching context she’s in, but she indicated that she must often be objective with the information she teaches because she is typically instructing people who intend to take college entry exams.
Thinking about Lu’s relationship to teaching people about language and writing, given that she knows multiple languages (Brazilian Portuguese and English) and is multiliterate, made me think back to some of the topics covered in my UCWbL training regarding interactions with international students and EAL learners.
Accommodating Learning
In a 2011 journal article by Paul Matsuda and Michelle Cox, I was introduced to the notion of “accommodationist learning.”
This concept encourages working with EAL learners in writing tutoring contexts with the intention of retaining elements of their first language as they develop their English writing abilities, as opposed to completely assimilating to the taught language and its standards; thus, “losing” elements of their native style. The authors of this article refer to one’s first language as L1 writing and their secondary language as L2; and they write that, through accommodationist learning, one can “maintain both their L1 and L2 linguistic and cultural identities” (Matsuda and Cox, 7).
Being rendered in academic writing, I found the description of L1 and L2 styles of writing a bit abstract, and I didn’t come away with a strong understanding of what linguistic and/or cultural qualities unique to L1 writing could look like. But in reflecting on my relationship with Lu, I can see both linguistic qualities and the benefits of accommodationist learning a little more concretely through some of the things I have learned about Portuguese.
For one, there are terms in Portuguese that don’t translate to English, which one could say is a concrete example of an L1 writing quality. Furthermore, as Lu told me, Portuguese does not translate literally to English word by word because of differences in aspects like word gender and sentence structure. A sentence that can “work” in Portuguese will not “work” in English because it would translate literally to a sentence without a subject. Lu says that she tells her students not to translate literally from Portuguese to English.
Learning these details reminds me of how grammar operates in varying ways across languages, and it additionally clarifies to me what distinctions there are between the linguistic qualities of L1 and L2 writing. Overall, it gives me a much stronger idea of how accommodationist learning can function in practice, as I can see that elements like words unique to Portuguese are part of what makes up the linguistic differences that wouldn’t be subsumed under English standards through accommodationist learning.
Making More Friends
Along with enabling a greater understanding of some of the knowledge I gained through training, I feel that having a connection with someone from another country not only helps you learn more about different parts of the world, but can also inform how you engage with people in tutoring situations. More specifically, I feel like being friends with someone who speaks English as a second language reinforces how one can approach interactions with a tutee, particularly one who is an EAL speaker, as one would with a friend.
Obviously, it doesn’t come with the familiarity present in an interaction with a friend, but the basic respect and understanding you show to a friend and their experiences extends to that of interacting with a writer you’ve only just met. I listen to my friend and give her positive feedback when she expresses feeling uncertain of her speaking, and I can do the same with a writer.
As all of my observations have hopefully conveyed, I am deeply grateful to have a strong connection to an online friend like Lu, for both its mutual social benefits and knowledge I have gained from it. She has given me insights into what it’s like to be an EAL speaker and instructor, and I find it very valuable to be able to hear from her perspective as a student living in another country from me, when we’re otherwise all stuck in one place.
Works Cited
Matsuda, P.K., & Cox, M. (2011). Reading an ESL Writer’s Text. Studies In Self Access Learning Journal, 2 (1), pp. 4–14.