Composition Forum 44, Summer 2020
http://compositionforum.com/issue/44/

Engaging the Perpetual ‘But’: Kate’s Story

Kate Navickas

It’s nearing the end of my first bi-monthly staff meeting that focuses on how tutors can support and work with multilingual writers. Our writing center works with many international and especially Chinese student writers, and this semester I’ve committed to a three-part series of staff meetings on different aspects of working with these student populations. This staff meeting included a review of the basics, including how and why a tutor should focus on higher-order concerns with multilingual writers. A tutor’s hand shoots up. “But, how do we deal with international student writers?” A second tutor adds, “Yeah, we see a lot of Chinese international students who want help with their grammar—they want us to help them edit their essays. What should we do in these situations?” I bite my tongue, refraining from responding that the strategies I just went over actually do address these issues. Instead, I try to kindly respond, instinctively, with the typical writing center response: that regardless of the writer, they should be focusing on one or two higher-order concerns as they respond to and engage with another writer’s work. If they must respond to sentence-level issues, I remind them of how to locate patterns of error and to use a single pattern of error as an activity and learning experience. Further, I explain, especially given that we have some international and multilingual tutors, that “Chinese international writers” are not a monolithic and homogenous group. This is all stuff we covered in tutor training.

For the second staff meeting, I ask the tutors to read Laura Greenfield’s The Standard English Fairytale. Tutors aren’t responding actively to the text. Perhaps some only skimmed the article? Perhaps others may have just opened the PDF now during the meeting? Perhaps some read it closely and found the topic too controversial to comfortably take a stance yet? In a common administrative dejavu, a tutor reacts, “How does Laura Greenfield’s claim that teaching SE is ‘inherently racist’ help me work with international Chinese students??” This comment is followed by what feels a bit like a coup:

“So,.. what does that mean we should do in a session?” another chimes in.

“Tell multilingual writers that leaving sentence-level errors in their essays is one step in fighting for linguistic justice?” asks another.

“I’ve never met a multilingual writer who didn’t want to learn how to fix their errors and grammar, let alone one who’d be willing to keep their errors as a form of activism,” asserts another.

I butt in, “Well, I think something we can talk about is how we can help multilingual writers to advocate for their writing—to advocate for themselves by arguing that it’s unrealistic and even discriminatory for a non-native English speaker to be expected to have perfect Standard English in their essays.”

And then, the final blow, in which a tutor pushes, “Do these issues even apply to language learners, though? I mean, Greenfield is talking about Black English and less valued language varieties... Should we be applying her argument to people who have chosen to learn English as a new language? Shouldn’t English language learners get to learn how to write perfect sentences?”

I sigh. I know there are good responses and plenty of research. But, the truth is, at that moment, a good answer escapes me. I guess I had hoped that we’d hash it out together and that, perhaps, I’d have more tutors onboard with the idea that editing and teaching SE can be racist. I end the meeting with a different kind of truth, “uhhhh... well, we’re really out of time...but, important questions! Good discussion! Let’s all keep thinking about these issues!!!”

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