Final project 390b
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Andrew Yim proposes researching strategies for tutors to develop long-term relationships with ESL students. He conducted interviews with 4 Chinese students who discussed their experiences learning English. They struggled adapting to English classes in the US and wanted to improve their writing skills. Andrew found programs at some writing centers that encourage relationships between tutors and ESL students. He will continue his research, observe ESL conversation groups, and interview more students to understand how writing centers can better serve ESL students. His goal is to present his findings at the 2015 ECWCA conference and help tutors build confidence in ESL students and encourage independent learning.
Final project 390b
- 1. 13 Andrew Yim Ethnography and Developing Long-Term Relationships with ESL Students For my English 390B project, I am submitting a proposal about strategies for tutors who want to develop long term relationships with English as Second Language Students in writing centers at the East Central Writing Centers Association 2015 Conference. The conference’s topic is exploring ethics in the writing center. I will talk about strategies that will come from personal experiences, readings, and programs in writing centers that currently have or are developing programs to foster the relationship between tutors and ESL Students. The deadline is on December 15, 2014 and the proposal should be less than 200 words. If my proposal is accepted, I will present in a poster session in April at the University of Notre Dame to discuss my results. Even if I am not accepted, I would like to continue this line of research in the future. Throughout this semester in English 390B, I observed many tutorial sessions in the Purdue Writing Lab. I observed many sessions where tutors work with students on assignments like formal essays or resumes. As I went through these sessions, I noticed that there were many international students coming into the Writing Lab. I remember my first tutorial session with an international student who needed help on his English 106 essay. He really struggled with formal academic writing and this session was his first visit to the Writing Lab. When the session first started, he really wanted to focus on grammatical issues; however, he was not aware that there were only thirty minutes in a session. As the session continued, the tutor tried to set the agenda and she asked him what he would like to work on. At this point, the student was not sure; however, the tutor changed tactics and decided to have the student talk about his essay in more detail. This strategy gave confidence to the student and he was able to develop his essay further
- 2. 14 in those thirty minutes. Overall, I felt that the tutor did a great job engaging the student. If I was leading this session, I would have no clue on how to interact with this student. After this tutorial session, I talked to the tutor and asked her how she thought the session went. She told me that the student had a lot of good ideas, but he did not know how to convey these ideas to other people. I asked her how she was able to connect with the international student because the student seemed closed off at first. She told me that she had lots of experience dealing with international students and had some back-up strategies she had learned over time. However, she told me that she did not gain this experience until after she had starting working with international students in the Writing Lab. Furthermore, I learned some useful strategies about tutoring ESL Students in English 390B through two readings which were “Editing Line by Line” by Cynthia Linville and “Reading an ESL’s Writers texts” by Paul Kei Matsuda and Michelle Cox. These two readings gave me an oversight about helpful strategies when interacting with international students. Matsuda and Cox talk about three different stances that tutors can adopt and these stances are assimilationist, accommodationist, and separatist. (Matsuda and Cox). They encourage tutors to help develop ideas formed by ESL students because ESL students have many life experiences that lead to the creation of great ideas. Linville talks about different strategies for tutors that she found helpful and she talks about how these strategies can be employed. However, I wished that we had spent more time in class learning about more strategies when interacting with ESL students because I would have liked to learn more ways to connect with them. Thus this interest about learning strategies to help tutor ESL students became more prevalent as I began to do research for my English 390B final project because this ties into my
- 3. 15 personal experiences. I have become friends with many international students through my volunteer experiences at Purdue. Many have told me about their struggles with learning the English language. There has been a growing international student population at Purdue University and the Writing Lab has started to play a major role in their lives. Recently the Purdue Writing Lab released its annual report and stated that 77% of students who used the Writing Lab between May 2013 and May 2014 were identified as international students. In addition, they reported that 2456 Chinese students had visited the Writing Lab during this time (Conard-Salvo, McCall, Bergmann 17). This changes how the Purdue Writing Lab operates because they must determine how they can cater to the needs of ESL students. I was interested to see what drew more international students to the Writing Lab than American students and wanted to see how the Writing Lab could help these students. Thus I decided to conduct ethnography to collect this data. I was not too familiar with ethnography but “How to conduct ethnographic research” by Nisaratana Sangasubana provided me with more background information about ethnographies. Ethnography is the study of people and their culture and observers will learn more about a person’s culture by observing their respondents. I wanted to see how students learned English growing up in their native countries and when they first came to the US. Since Chinese international students use the Writing Lab more than other international students from other countries, I decided to conduct informal interviews with undergraduate Chinese students. I interviewed four undergraduate Chinese students who are good friends about their experiences with the English language. I approached my friends and asked them if I could use any information from our conversations in my project. Furthermore, I did not set a time limit on these interviews; I talked to these interviewees as long as I needed to.
- 4. 16 My first interviewee mentioned that the English classes in China did not necessarily prepare him for learning English here in the United States. He mentioned that these classes did not focus on formal academic writing and he took these classes to get a good grade. He did not spend as much time learning the language and he had difficulty learning to write English more fluently. He mentioned that he struggled with grammar; however, he was not sure about what types of grammar mistakes he struggled with. He talked his experiences with the Test of English as a Foreign Language Exam also known as the TOEFL exam. My second interviewee talked about how he learned English in middle and high school. He talked about his struggles interacting with native English speakers and understanding certain phrases in English. We talked about his interest in using the Purdue Writing Lab and he mentioned that he would like to practice his English skills with a native speaker. My third interviewee talked about his experiences with English because he attended high school in the United States. He talked about his struggles with essay writing in high school because he felt that the expectations for formal essay writing were much higher here in the US. He talked about the difficulty of English 106 classes at Purdue and talked about how he would be interested in using the Purdue Writing Lab. He was also interested in developing a long-term relationship with a native English speaker. My last interviewee talked about her experiences being an international student pursuing an English degree. She talked about the classes she has taken and how she originally was not pursuing as English as a major. However, she fell in love with the English language and this love lead her to switch her major. After I interviewed everyone, I learned that all four of these students possessed a basic understanding of English before coming to United States. All of these students had taken English classes in China; however, these classes did not necessarily prepare them well. They
- 5. 17 struggled with adapting to the English classes in high school or college when they came to the United States. In addition, each student had taken the TOEFL exam. They also needed to get decent scores to come study in the United States; however, this test did not help them immerse themselves in the English language. Instead they talked about how they studied for this test with friends in order to get a good score. All of them struggled with different grammar issues and learning to speak English more fluently. When I asked them if they knew what types of grammatical errors they struggled with, some knew what types of grammar mistakes they made while others were not as sure. Everyone indicated that they would like to use the services in the Writing Lab like the ESL Conversation Groups and tutorial sessions. They would have liked to see the sessions in the lab be longer than thirty minutes. The most important conclusion from my ethnography was that they would like to develop long-term relationships with native English speakers to help improve their English Writing and speaking skills. From this ethnography, I decided that I wanted to research strategies that can be used by tutors to help them develop long term relationships with ESL students in writing center. I decided to do research into this topic and draw from my own experiences for strategies. After going through a lot of research and my own experiences this semester, I have developed six major strategies as a starting point for my project. These six strategies will be helpful for tutors who want to develop long-term relationships in writing centers. The first strategy is to help ESL students build up their self-confidence. Many ESL students do not feel as confident in their English or Writing Skills. Tutors should be encouraging and not critical. If a student makes a mistake, a tutor should reassure the student that they are doing good work while pointing out the mistake. A tutor should not make ESL students feel like their work is inferior. Instead
- 6. 18 encouraging ESL students will lead ESL students to produce good quality work and this will help ESL students become more confident in future assignments. The second strategy is to help encourage independent learning when working with ESL Students. When working with ESL students, it is important to have students do their own work. Often ESL students often feel overwhelmed and it is the job of the tutor to help them improve their English writing and speaking skills. However, it is a tutor’s job to guide them but not to do their work for them. As ESL students become more familiar with the English language, it is important that tutors help these students get to a level where students feel more about comfortable about their English skills. The third strategy is to find ways to engage with ESL students during a tutorial session. It is important to find ways to make ESL students feel comfortable when they enter a Writing Lab. Some students might feel intimidated during a session; thus tutors should find a way to engage with students. This will help an ESL Student feel more relaxed. The fourth strategy is to encourage ESL students to express their own ideas. Many ESL students have great ideas; however, they have a hard time expressing these ideas in English. Thus a tutor should encourage these students by helping them translate their ideas onto paper instead of making a student think their ideas are terrible. The fifth strategy is to remember that different ESL students will struggle with different issues involving grammar and Spoken English compared to issues faced by US students. Many ESL students may not know about what types of grammar mistakes they struggle with so it is important for a tutor to help students identify these mistakes. The sixth strategy is to refer ESL students to the many ESL resources out there like the Purdue OWL. There are many good ESL resources out there and tutors should
- 7. 19 use these resources during a session. These sources should be recommended to students when ESL students have immediate questions and do not have access to a tutor. I am also interested in strategies that can be developed from current writing labs in the country that have or are developing programs that encourage this long-term relationship. When I first began doing research on the writing labs, I found out that the Purdue Writing Lab offers ESL conversation groups that individuals can attend. The ESL conversation groups at Purdue meet once a week and these conversation groups go over formal topics. These ESL conversation groups are a perfect example of a writing lab that has developed a program that helps fosters long term relationships between tutors and ESL students. However, as I continued to do more research, I noticed that only some writing labs have or were developing these types of programs. The writing center for Boston University offered in fall of 2014 “a pilot program” called ESL Pronunciation Training that would help ESL students with their pronunciation. This class would consist of small groups who would work with a tutor who has received specialized training. These tutorials would take place about once a week for 6 weeks for 50 minutes (Boston). Furthermore, the University of North Chapel Hill writing center offers ESL writing and speaking groups that meets once a week. However, other writing labs did not provide many services for developing long-term relationships; some of these services were provided by other departments or were non-existent. In my bibliography below, I have included writing centers that have these programs in place. As I continue my research, I will determine why some writing centers have not created programs that encourage long-term relationship between teachers and ESL students. I will look more in-depth into writing centers that do not offer such programs. From this research I have collected so far, it seems that writing labs around the country face the
- 8. 20 question if they should change their attitudes in order to cater to the growing ESL population in the United States. As I continue my research, I want to continue to research different articles that have more suggestions about developing long-term relationships between tutors and ESL students. I want to continue researching writer centers that are currently developing programs that can help foster long-term relationships. Also, I would like to make my own observations by regularly attending ESL conversation groups at Purdue University next semester. If I am hired as a Business Writing Consultant next semester, I would see what strategies will work with international students. I would continue my ethnography and expand the demographics so I can interview more ESL Students. I would like to get their thoughts on what they would like to see out of a long-term relationship with tutors in the Writing Lab. Overall, I have really enjoyed this research project this semester and I am looking forward to continuing on with this line of research.
- 9. 21 Bibliography Conard-Salvo, Tammy, Mary McCall, and Linda S. Bergmann. "Annual Report Writing Lab at Purdue University May 20, 2013 to May 9, 2014." Purdue Writing Lab. Purdue OWL. Purdue University. Web. 13 Nov. 2014. <https://owl.english.purdue.edu/printables/2014_WLab_report.pdf>. "ESL Conversation Groups." Purdue OWL. Purdue University. Web. 12 Nov. 2014. <https://owl.english.purdue.edu/writinglab/esl>. "ESL Speaking Groups." University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,. Web. 18 Nov. 2014. <http://writingcenter.unc.edu/esl/instruction/speaking-groups/>. "ESL Tutoring Strategies." University of South Carolina Aiken Writing Center. University of South Carolina Aiken. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://web.usca.edu/dotAsset/fc087b63-c211- 4d01-916c-6b7e53b7e05c.pdf>. "ESL Writing Groups." University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,. Web. 18 Nov. 2014. <http://writingcenter.unc.edu/esl/instruction/writing-groups/>. Linville, Cynthia. "Editing Line by Line." ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors. Boynton-Cook, 2009. ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors. 2004. Web. 18 Oct. 2014. <https://www.coloradocollege.edu/dotAsset/9708f45a-c1e3-4ed1-b98e- ca0fcb7f7142.pdf>. Matsuda, Paul Kei and Michelle Cox. "Reading an ESL Writer’s Text." Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal 2.1 (2011): 4-14. Mar. 2011. Web. 14 Oct. 2014. <http://sisaljournal.org/archives/mar11/matsuda_cox/>. Ryan, Leigh, and Lisa Zimmerelli. The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors. 4th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. Print. Sangasubana, Nisaratana. "How to Conduct Ethnographic Research." The Qualitative Report 16.2 (2011): 567-73. NOVA. PBS, 2 Mar. 2011. Web. 13 Nov. 2014. <http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR16-2/sangasubana.pdf>. "The CAS Center for Writing." BU Arts & Sciences Writing Program. Web. 29 Nov. 2014. <http://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/the-writing-center/>. "Tutoring ESL Students: Everything You Need to Know." University of South Carolina Aiken Writing Center. University of South Carolina Aiken. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://web.usca.edu/dotAsset/5c2c45e8-6a2c-4778-8f0d-70c591ac5ee4.pdf>.
- 10. 22 Andrew, Thisis a verygoodproject. While inmanywaysit feelsincomplete,Ithinkthisisactuallya goodthingbecause itshowsthat youare pursuinga topicand consideringaproblemthatis big,complex,andimportant.Ithinkit’sgreatthat youare applyingtoECWCA and I wantto encourage youto considerothervenues,includingthe Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Researchandthe 2015 Purdue WritingShowcase (youmayevenbe able togive yourECWCA presentationatthe showcase).Notonlywill thesebe greatopportunitiesforyouif you’re still consideringlawschool orgraduate school,butthey’re alsothe kindof bigeventsthatmotivate researchand keepyoufocused. What I like mostaboutthisprojectisthat it’snot producinga single resource,butratherhas the potential to influence manyresourcesandthe waywe traintutors.Thisideaof thinking abouttime inrelationtowritingcentersisfascinating,andI’mespeciallydrawntothe distinctionbetweenformal long-termservices(i.e.conversationgroups) andthe long-term relationshipsstudentsdevelopwithcertaintutorsandwiththe labas a whole.These are both fascinatingtopicsthat(asfar as I am aware) have not beentalkedaboutthatoften. Please stayintouchand letme knowthe resultsof your ECWCA proposal.If youget accepted we can plan tomeetearlynextsemesterandtalkabouthow I can helpyouprepare. Great workthissemester,Andrew. -Jeff ProjectGrade:A