As Cool As Mint Ice Cream

I’ll admit it: four years of high-school Spanish plus multiple years of grade-school Spanish have made me only passably able to understand and speak the language. This is partly my own fault, because I lost interest in learning the language late in high school, but it is partly the fault of my academic institutions. In her article about translanguaging, Ofelia García states, “…new language practices only emerge in interrelationship with old language practices” (3). Instead of using only Spanish to teach Spanish, my teachers should have let me draw from my own English repertoire in order to tie the two language practices together. García points out that practicing languages together allows students to “explicitly notice language features” (3).

The concept of translanguaging, which is the idea that bilingual people speak in “one linguistic repertoire”” rather than two separate languages (1). Even though I know several people who speak more than one language, I never realized that bilinguals do not separate the two languages in their minds. They can have both English and Spanish happening around them, like typing English into Google and having Spanish music playing. They can switch between the languages smoothly and even within one sentence, and they can navigate between the structures of each language.

While reading García’s article, I found myself getting embarrassed that I never saw bilinguals as “one person with complex language and cultural practices that are fluid and changing depending on the particular situation and the local practice” (3). When my friend Nithali switched into and Indian accent and kept speaking English, I never knew how to react–laugh? pretend nothing happened? What I didn’t know was that this must have been a regular part of her language habits; both of her parents have thick accents and she often visits family in India.

Then I realized that the embarrassment could be a learning opportunity. García mentions the idea of “dynamic bilingualism.” “It is not enough to maintain the static languages of the past” (García 4). Single languages are always changing, and as the world becomes more interconnected, more and more people will learn second or third languages. I needed this reminder, as I’m sure many do, that we need to “bring these practices into a bilingual future” (García 4).

García talks about using translanguaging in the classroom to help multilingual students take charge of their academic work. By recognizing the wide range of language practices students bring to the classroom, professors and students alike are more able to respect and understand different cultures. All of us are learning languages; no single language is the dominant or more important language.

After all, we are all still learning the ins and outs of the language(s) we already know. I would consider myself proficient in the English language, yet I always learn at least one new word when I pick up a book and new grammar rules attack me out of nowhere. This is coming from someone who wants to be a copy editor in the future (i.e. I LOVE the English language).

García does not go into detail about what types of teaching skills one should use with multilingual students; she just states that it is important to mix the two languages rather than keep them separate.

Although I only speak one language fluently, I would have loved more instruction on how to interact with multilingual writers in the writing center. I am fairly comfortable interacting with their texts, as I have already spoken with many multilingual writers, but I still have trouble interacting with the writers themselves. How do I link their own language practices to English practices? How do I recognize different rhetorics? How do I explain English rules that I only understand by intuition? And how much do I know when to focus on grammar and when to focus on organization?

All of these questions become a thousand times louder in my mind when I am speaking with a multilingual writer.

However, Jennifer E. Staben and Kathryn Dempsey Nordhaus’s article “Looking at the Whole Text” gives advice on how to interact with these students. Their ideas of taking about the text before diving into it, being “direct, not directive,” usingmodels, giving feedback on ideas, and writing down spoken ideas are all wonderful and helpful, yet I almost feel that learning how to interact with multilingual writers is one that will only come with experience (Staben, et. al 81-86).

The best advice for working with multilingual writers comes from Paul Kei Matsuda and Michelle Cox, which is to regard “them as peers rather than as uninformed learners of the English language and the U.S. culture” (46). This creates “an atmosphere of mutual respect,” which is the most important thing to cultivate in a consultation.

Being nonjudgmental and respectful of my fellow humans has always been one of my main goals in life; I value diversity and people’s differences, so why shouldn’t I accept differences in language? Why shouldn’t I look past a text’s grammar issues even though they seem to demand all my attention?

Multilingual writers and speakers deserve my respect. They have done something I have never in my life done–immersed themselves in a new culture to learn a new language. And I can learn from them. Always.

This post was a little disjointed, because it was an attempt to formulate my own thoughts about my personal interactions with multilingual people. These articles have changed the way I think about my conversations and consultations with these people, and I am pretty sure my thoughts have changed for the better (even if they are a little all over the place).

To finish off, here is a funny video about things bilingual people do (which gives some examples of translanguaging!).

Works Cited

García, Ofelia. “Theorizing Translanguaging for Education.” A political history of Spanish: The making of a language, pp.1-6. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Staben, Jennifer E. and Kathryn Dempsey Nordhaus. “Looking at the Whole Text.” pp. 79-89.

Matsuda, Paul Kei and Michelle Cox. “Reading an ESL Writer’s Text.” pp. 39-47.

Photos

http://www.flexrule.com/archives/tag/multilingual/

https://www.searchlaboratory.com/ppc/multilingual/

As I read more about writing center philosophy, I constantly come across clashing ideas—the editor vs. the tutor; peer tutors vs. authoritative tutors; nondirective vs. directive methods, etc. And most authors strongly pick one side or the other.

One such opinionated person is Jeff Brooks who, in his article “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work,” states very clearly that writing center consultants should be tutors, not editors. Brooks even goes so far as to say, “If you find a student pushing you too hard into editing his paper, physically move away from it” (132). I was shocked that Brooks wants me to act so repulsed by editing. If line edits, grammar, and punctuation are truly the subjects the writer wishes to discuss, why should I, as a tutor, withhold my knowledge? In fact, Peter Carino suggests that withholding knowledge is an abuse of power (122), which is a bold yet, I believe, accurate statement.

Brooks’s simple-minded view of a writing center consultation completely disregards the individual and diverse needs of the writers. He sticks with the long-held writing center tradition of making better writers, not better papers, but I am confused as to why we cannot do both. Making better writers creates better papers, and vice versa; what we should be doing is reading the situation—the writer, the assignment, the paper—and using whatever tactics we determine will be most helpful.

Linda K. Shamoon and Deborah H. Burns discuss alternative methods of tutoring in “A Critique of Pure Tutoring,” many of which reminded me of helpful processes that have benefited me in the past. Shamoon and Burns talk about “master classes” in music teaching where students learn from an expert by imitating or emulating the student. (Here’s a modern example of a master class with Pharrell Williams.) I saw nothing wrong with this way of learning, but many professors might argue that imitation and plagiarism are essentially the same. I would point out that writers have been emulating each other for much longer than writing centers have existed, and most were not plagiarizing.

Many writers draw inspiration from their favorite authors or books, sometimes even emulating the author’s style to enhance their own writing later. In my Intro to Fiction Writing class last semester, Professor Jennine Capó Crucet had us write “remixes” of our own stories based on different authors’ styles. This helped us add new tools to our writing toolboxes. But we never plagiarized, because we applied the concepts to our own writing. This style of teaching was extremely effective for many of us in the class, and using methods like this in the writing center could be beneficial.

Learning through imitation is NOT plagiarism! There are definitely right and wrong ways to emulate someone else’s writing, but Shamoon and Burns hit it on the nose when they say, “Rather than assuming this imitation will prevent authentic self-expression, the tutor and the student assume that imitation will lead to improved technique, which will enable freedom of expression” (140). Even though they are discussing music master classes, this statement may as well apply to writing center consultations. Many people learn by imitating. It’s how I learn certain concepts. When I used to play tennis, I had to watch someone else serve a certain way before I could try it myself. This practice only becomes “unethical” when applied to writing, which cuts off access to many beneficial writing practices.

Both figuring something out by yourself and learning from someone else are valuable processes. A writing tutor has to

We can have the best of both worlds!

determine what is best for the writer during the time they have together. The same goes for Carino’s debate between “peerness” and “authority.” Tutors have to possess a little of both. Sometimes, if a writer knows something the tutor doesn’t, it is best to use the question-and-answer technique, just two people talking about a paper. If a student seems to be struggling or the tutor has information that will help said student, the tutor should take some authority and help the writer.

I can edit and tutor. I can be a peer and an authority figure. As long as I am genuinely helping the writer, I know that I am doing the right thing, no matter what all of this writing center literature tells me.

Works Cited

Brooks, Jeff. “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work.” The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, 1991, pp. 128-132.

Carino, Peter. “Power and Authority in Peer Tutoring.” The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, 2003, pp. 112-127.

Shamoon, Linda K. and Deborah H. Burns. “A Critique of Pure Tutoring.” The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, 1995, pp. 133-148.

Pictures

http://newsroom.unl.edu/announce/nextatnebraska/6424/36327

http://whisper.sh/whisper/051b0bed5729ba55994781df470ce8798f040/You-get-the-best-of-both-worlds

Main Home

What if I told you thinking is a social process? And knowledge is socially constructed?

Kenneth A. Bruffee makes the argument in “Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation of Mankind’” that “reflective thought is public or social conversation internalized” (89). As someone who is in her mind more often than not, whose thoughts are her main focus, I was astounded that these thoughts were shaped by conversation. Thinking is something I believed was so inherently individual. Certainly my thoughts came from some thought-producing machine in the back of my brain, right? Instead, “[w]e learn to think reflectively as a result of learning to talk” (Bruffee 90). So, what Bruffee basically says, is that my parents and sister are always in my brain. (Okay, maybe that’s not what he’s getting at.)

Even though I do believe that some thoughts are unique to a specific person, the relationship between conversation and thought strikes me as important. Bruffee uses his conversation-thought argument to explain the importance of writing center collaboration. Because writing is just a physical manifestation of our thoughts (though somewhat more polished), conversations before and during the writing process are crucial.

This year, I am peer tutoring for the first time at the college level, and I have been nervous about imparting my wisdom to other students. What if I am not as good at writing as I think? What if I don’t know how to help someone? Am I supposed to have some knowledge of the psychology of writing? I’ve now realized that it’s okay not to know everything! No one does. Andrea Lunsford makes a strong argument for the importance of collaboration in the learning process, claiming that knowledge is “always contextually bound, … always socially constructed” (97). This is another way of saying thought is shaped by conversation. Our knowledge comes partially from our peers, and our thoughts come partially from our conversations.

Learning about the strong links between talking, thinking, and writing has further strengthened my opinion that collaboration is essential in classrooms—elementary and high school classrooms, as well as universities. Unfortunately, many of my peers have negative views of group work. “I end up doing all the work.” “We don’t actually work together; we just split up tasks.” This is not the type of collaboration that is valuable to students.

“Collaborative environments and tasks must demand collaboration. Students, tutors, teachers must really need one another to carry out common goals” (Lunsford 95). Group work is forced collaboration, which usually results in negative connotations of working with others. Lunsford argues that people must want and need to work with others on a certain task.

Working with fellow students on a particularly tricky physics problem or discussing the chapters you had to read for class—these are the collaborations that happen organically. Teachers should encourage students to collaborate on their own, to make their own choices about working with others, while also guiding them as to what is appropriate and what is plagiarism. This builds a student’s confidence in both herself and her peers. Internalizing these positive connotations is essential to students.

In the workplace, no one is sitting alone in a room with absolutely no way to communicate with anyone else. Heck, phones and technology are everywhere. Professionals ask each other questions and work together! Offices and other workplaces are often set up to be social, collaborative places, so why aren’t classrooms set up this way? Computer programmers share their programs if they cannot figure out a glitch, writers get peers and professionals toedit their work, and rocket scientists solve difficult equations together, but two students who work on an assignment together will get disciplined for cheating. Working together constructively (without cheating or plagiarizing) is so, so important, but this lesson is often left out in the classroom.

Humans are social beings, so it makes sense that we learn through conversation. Even someone as introverted as I am can get A LOT out of talking about her own writing, about books that confuse me, about being a better tutor. I am eternally grateful to my seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Anderson, who first taught me that talking about writing will make me a better writer. And I haven’t stopped talking about it since.

Works Cited

Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation    of Mankind.’” Writing Centers: Theory and Administration, 1984, pp. 87-98.

Lunsford, Andrea. “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center.” The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, 1991, pp. 92-99.

Photos

http://www.kepner-tregoe.com/blog/critical-thinking-requires-knowing-what-questions-to-ask/

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/critical-thinking-in-the-marketing-world

http://www.collectivenext.com/blog/classroom-collaboration-grand-scale