Advice and Strategies for Working with Second-Language Writers across the Curriculum

by Terry Zawacki, Director, Writing Across the Curriculum

According to the university’s 2009-2010 Factbook, in fall 2009, Mason enrolled 1,764 international students from 131 countries, yet these figures do not even account for the numbers of immigrant students who have had some schooling in the U.S. but who may still struggle with writing in standard edited English. The writing center’s demographic data provide a glimpse into the range of language backgrounds of international and immigrant students who, for the past several years, have represented well over 50% of those who come for tutoring and workshops on writing. (See writing center language charts). While the writing center can provide individual and group assistance at the point of need, all of us can adapt our teaching-with-writing practices to help our multilingual students—in fact, all of our students—succeed as writers. A first step is to recognize and value the many strengths multilingual students bring to our classrooms as language learners, including the ability to acquire relatively quickly not only a new language but also the unfamiliar vocabulary and conventions of our specialized disciplines.

Advice from the research on second-language (L2) writers in response to often-asked questions:

• Writing in home language and translating: Teachers frequently ask whether multilingual students should be encouraged to write in their first language and then translate into English. Depending upon the extent of their experiences and knowledge of the topic in their first language (L1), student writers may be able to generate ideas and retrieve content more easily in their L1.

Free writing and drafting might also be easier in L1, again depending upon the context in which knowledge has been acquired. As students gain fluency as readers and writers in their disciplines, however, they find that it is easier to write in English about materials learned in English.

• Drafting and revising: While drafting and revising are standard practices in writing-intensive classrooms, L2 students are composing the language (syntax and lexicon) in which to write at the same time that they are producing meaning. For them, drafting is likely to be a more constrained and slow process. Revising at the sentence level as they draft may help them access meaning.

• Reading aloud to catch errors: Depending upon how long they have been reading and writing in English, L2 students may or may not be able to catch their errors by reading aloud. Unlike English L1 writers, these students have not been immersed in the grammatical and syntactical structures of English and so may not hear or see errors even though they might be quite familiar with the textbook rules governing usage.

• Correcting student errors: While too much focus on errors will lead students to think you don’t care about what they’re saying, too little focus may make them think the errors don’t matter. L2 writers need attention to both what is good, e.g. phrasing that demonstrates understanding of course material, and what is not, e.g. incorrect syntax, word choice, or grammar. When teachers correct every error, however, the writer will not know which errors present serious problems with intelligibility and which are comparable to spoken accents in writing.

Writers, even English L1 writers, will not learn how to correct every mistake you mark for their next paper(s); further, your thorough editing assistance, while helping them produce a cleaner copy, will not necessarily teach them how to correct the errors themselves. Better to focus on persistent patterns of errors, explaining what’s wrong and then finding similar kinds of mistakes that they must correct themselves. You can also ask students to “self-monitor,” i.e. to keep an error log and to write annotations about the language issues they are struggling with and to which you can respond on subsequent drafts.

Strategies to facilitate the writing and learning process:

• Give specific names to writing tasks you assign. Rather than calling an assignment by a generic name like “research paper” or “essay,” use names that reflect the genres typical of your discipline, e.g. proposal, white paper, executive summary, literature review, book review, issue analysis, and so on. Specific names make it easier for students to understand purposes, audiences, structures, and conventions.

• Be explicit about the goals of assigned writing tasks and how these connect to the writing students will do in subsequent courses and in the field. You can create a favorable climate for learning and the transfer of learning if you explain why you’re giving writing assignments and, more than that, why writing is important to how you know and work in your discipline.

• Give models and clear criteria for what you expect students to achieve. Along with model texts, students need explanations of what they are supposed to learn from the model, whether that be how to construct a thesis, incorporate sources, format each section, and/or use conventional phrasing. Research on L2 writers indicates that they draw extensively from models and related texts, e.g., assignment guidelines, notes, and syllabi as resources for learning the expected genres and conventions of a discipline. They may even draw on some of the same phrasing to acquire language to talk about the topic.

• Give students explicit information about when it is appropriate to consult with you about their writing and how to request a meeting. Teachers often wonder why struggling writers don’t come for help during office hours. Their failure to do so is often interpreted as not caring about their writing or wanting to fly below your radar. But other interpretations might be more likely. L2 students who come from “high-distance” cultures, i.e. cultures where teachers are not approachable or accessible to students, may not know how to approach a teacher to ask for a meeting or the appropriate email etiquette to do so. You can give them advice in class or on your syllabus. Consider giving them a sample email request.

• Give explicit directions for how to share the workload on collaborative projects. L2 students are often given a minor role in the writing of group projects. While some research indicates that they may learn by observing the writing process from beginning to end even if they have not contributed to what gets written, they may also feel that they are entitled to fuller participation based on their knowledge of the material. You can facilitate the process by asking the group to assign specific agreed-upon written deliverables to each member and to evaluate each member’s contributions. See the Center for Teaching Excellence website for excellent advice on managing collaborative projects.
  

Works Consulted

Bean, Janet, Robert Eddy, Rhonda Grego, Patricia Irvine, Ellie Kutz, Paul Kei Matsuda, Maryann Cucchiara, Peter Elbow, Rich Haswell, Eileen Kennedy, and Al Lehner. “Should We Invite Students to Write in Home Languages? Complicating the Yes/No Debate.”Composition Studies 31.1 (2003): 25-42.

Casanave, Christine. Controversies in Second Language Writing: Dilemmas and Decisions in Research and Instruction. Ann Arbor: University of Michican Press, 2007.

Ferris, Dana. Response to Student Writing: Implications for Second Language Students. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2003.

Kietlinska, Kasia. “Revision and ESL Students.” In Revision: History, Theory, Practice. Eds. Alice Horning and Anne Becker. Parlor Press Online and the WAC Clearinghouse, 2006.

Leki, Ilona “A Narrow Thinking System: Nonnative-English-Speaking Students in Group Projects across the Curriculum.” TESOL Quarterly 35 (2001): 39-67.

Leki, Ilona, Alister Cumming, Tony Silva, Eds. A Synthesis of Research on Second Language Writing in English. NY: Routledge, 2008.