Composition Forum 52, Fall 2023
http://compositionforum.com/issue/52/

English Language Learner Writing Center: Supporting Multilingual Students and Faculty who Teach them

Larysa Bobrova

Abstract: This program profile describes the establishment and development of the English Language Learner Writing Center (ELLWC) at Miami University. The Center’s mission is to help multilingual (ML) students whose first language (L1) is other than English build writing skills while improving their academic English proficiency. The ELLWC’s profile details peer consultants’ professional training for supporting ML writers’ academic literacy development. Finally, the profile shares ELLWC assistance for faculty members who are interested in making their pedagogy more accessible and inclusive for linguistically and culturally diverse students.

Introduction

Like many universities nationwide, Miami University has a traditional (generalized) writing center, the Howe Writing Center (HWC), where all students can receive feedback on their writing. When the number of international students exceeded 3000 individuals in Fall 2017, the necessity for more specialized writing support became evident because, in addition to the needs writers whose first language (L1) is English typically exhibit, multilingual (ML) writers bring a wide range of complexities stemming from the second language acquisition process and prior writing experiences built on their home academic cultures. In contrast to L1 English writers, ML writers are “simultaneously (a) learning and creating content, (b) learning to write about it, and (c) learning to use a new language both to learn and create the content and to write about it” (Ortega 245). To improve both academic writing skills and language proficiency, ML writers need feedback for language acquisition (Manchón) rather than just feedback for accuracy focusing only on finding errors and/or their metalinguistic explanations. Feedback for language acquisition engages ML writers in the deeper noticing process, reflection on language forms, and grammar practice in addition to errors correction (Hyland 162). For consultants to provide feedback for acquisition, they would require interdisciplinary specialized training covering second language acquisition (SLA) theories, pedagogical grammar of English, and ESL writing pedagogy (Boquet and Lerner; Bruce and Rafoth; Blau, Hall and Sparks; Bell and Elledge) along with writing center theories and practices. In January 2018, the Miami University administration initiated a new writing center, consultants of which would be trained specifically to accommodate ML writers’ writing and language needs as well as to assist faculty who teach them in content-area courses. This program profile aims at describing the English Language Learner Writing Center (ELLWC), educational opportunities for both peer consultants to acquire skills for supporting the academic literacy development of ML writers and for ML writers to become confident users of academic English across disciplines, and professional development opportunities for faculty members to make their pedagogy more accessible and inclusive for linguistically and culturally diverse students.

The Opening of the English Language Learner Writing Center

After discussing ML students’ writing concerns with ESL writing specialists, Dr. Elizabeth Wardle, the Director of the Roger and Joyce Howe Center for Writing Excellence (HCWE), initiated a specialized writing center for ML writers by hiring me in January 2018 to establish the ELLWC. Founded as a free-standing program from the very start, the ELLWC shared two sites with the HWC for the first three years and was moved to the International Student Center (ISC) as locations on campus have always been limited. Driven by the urgent need of the center's services, I opened the ELLWC in Spring 2018 offering about 10-12 consulting hours a week. The first step toward the ELLWC’s opening was my strategic decision to recruit experienced Howe Writing Center (HWC) consultants with generalized writing center training and train them to provide feedback for language acquisition. I hired five accomplished undergraduate writing consultants with more than two semesters of experience. They agreed to take additional intensive training and invest 2-3 hours a week in the ELLWC. One hour a week was used for the seminar and the remainder was spent on completing reading assignments. The total training took about 14-16 hours consisting of six seminars in which the consultants discussed the major second language acquisition theories in light of assisting ML writers in the writing center, consulting strategies/tips for addressing the most problematic issues and applying them to challenging scenarios. Anticipating the difficulties that the consultants may experience in explaining English grammatical structures due to limited training, I designed eight grammar tutorials covering the most frequent grammar errors. In the survey on the express training, the consultants shared that the training gave them a deeper understanding of common errors while noting the need for a more continuous training. Regarding the grammar tutorials, the consultants agreed that they significantly enhanced their confidence and helped them feel better mentally.

At the end of March 2018, the ELLWC had a “soft” opening offering ten consultation hours per week for the remainder of the spring semester. Due to limited training, only in-person consultations were offered. They took place in the space shared by the HWC as no specific space was designated for the ELLWC. Throughout the semester, consultants met with me individually to discuss the tutoring challenges they faced in their sessions. The major challenge involved the reconciliation of tutoring practices based on L1 writing center theories working within the context of monolingual norms and the tutoring practices drawn on SLA and ESL writing theories working within the framework of global Englishes. For example, though training introduced the consultants to SLA theories describing the process and timeframe of acquiring a new language, the consultants continued to approach tutorials as collaborations of knowledgeable peers who were expected to make equal contributions to tutorials (Lunsford). The consultants struggled to override the idea of equal contributions and to view ML writers as less knowledgeable peers whose knowledge of English is incomplete. They could not admit that ML writers would benefit from directive tutoring in case of interlingual errors (linguistic forms that are transferred from the ML writers’ first language), fossilized errors (incorrect linguistic forms that have become part of ML writer’s repertoire and are used subconsciously), and the errors stemming from gaps in language knowledge. Having been taught that they were peers but not teachers, the consultants often resisted employing directive forms of tutoring such as providing correct linguistic forms, explaining grammar rules, and engaging ML writers in grammar activities when they were unable to correct errors on their own. Evidently, the training was not sufficient to help the consultants understand that second language acquisition is a life-long process and thus ML writers’ knowledge of grammar will always have gaps and will sometimes require directive tutoring. The express training indicated that consultants would benefit from more in-depth and interdisciplinary training focusing on pedagogical techniques for fostering ML students’ development as writers and users of academic English; the training developed in response to this realization is described later in the profile.

English Language Learner Writing Center: Current Operation

Incorporating the experiences of its first semester, the Center could offer full-fledged in-person and written online services to Miami students starting Fall 2019. Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ELLWC moved exclusively online in March 2020, holding written online appointments and replacing in-person appointments with face-to-face online appointments held via videoconferencing. It was vital that the ELLWC maintain live communication with ML students in Fall 2020 to alleviate a negative effect of the COVID pandemic on the growth and development of the program. Since its inception, the ELLWC has contributed to a mission of Miami University — to develop “engaged citizens who use their knowledge and skills with integrity and compassion to improve the future of our global society” (About Miami). In light of this mission, from Spring 2018 to Spring 2022, 46 students were trained as ELLWC consultants who held 1726 sessions and 12 in-class peer-review workshops, teaching ML writers proofreading and self-editing skills. To assist Miami faculty in educating ML students as global engaged citizens, I have facilitated 13 workshops on linguistically and culturally sensitive pedagogy and numerous one-on-one consultations upon request of faculty members.

ML Writers at the ELLWC

The student population visiting the ELLWC is diverse in terms of demographics and academic experiences. While one fourth of ELLWC visitors are U.S. resident immigrant students, the rest of the clients are international visa students, the majority of whom come from China. Others come from a wide variety of countries including but not limited to Germany, India, Argentina, Iran, Luxembourg, Japan, South Korea, Nigeria, Philippines, Russia, Serbia, Spain, and Thailand. In addition to demographic diversity, ML writers bring academic diversity to the Center. Those students who have graduated from regular high schools in their home countries (29%) have received limited exposure to academic English writing and western academic culture. Due to their western educational experiences, the graduates from international schools (24%) have become aware of prominent academic values, such as intellectual ownership, individual voice, and creativity. The third category of ELLWC visitors includes graduates of U.S. high schools (12%) with rich exposure to instructional and writing practices at U.S. educational institutions. The variety of ML writers’ learning and writing experiences as well as their needs have influenced consultants’ training.

Training ELLWC Consultants

ELLWC writing consultants are now required to complete a 3-credit 4-level training course ensuring the development of expertise in communicating across cultures and expertise in facilitating learning through collaborative interaction aiming to simultaneously improve ML writers’ language proficiency and writing skills. The multifaceted expertise in tutoring culturally and linguistically diverse writers is grounded on three empirically confirmed assumptions about ML writers. First, second language acquisition is a life-time process (Doughty and Long) during which ML writers continue learning everyday English while learning academic English (Doughty and Long) they need to succeed in content-area courses. Second, consultants need to be cognizant of the interconnection between language learning and writing learning. Language proficiency contributes to writing proficiency and vice versa (Ortega, Manchón and Williams). Low language proficiency rather than insufficient writing skills may be responsible for poor writing (Harris and Silva). For example, unsophisticated vocabulary and/or unclear or simplified syntax may cause weak content or misused transitions and/or linking words may affect organization. Finally, it is important that ELLWC consultants understand the interaction between feedback on language errors and the improvement of writing. For example, in Benson and DeKeyser’s study, those ML writers who received written feedback on tense errors (the simple past tense and the present perfect tense) did not only succeed in editing them in their two essays but performed better on a new piece of writing. The ML writers in the control group who received only comments on content were outperformed in accuracy by the experimental groups (Benson and DeKeyser). As the SLA and ESL scholarship shows, feedback on language problems enables ML writers to self-edit their errors, improve overall written accuracy over time (Van Beuningan et.al.) and, eventually, strengthen their writing (Ferris, Does Error Feedback Help; Sachs and Polio).

Communicating across cultures in the tutoring context involves understanding of ML writers’ diverse educational and linguistic backgrounds. The training ensures that ELLWC consultants are aware of the general characteristics of international/visa students, students who graduate from U.S. high schools, and international graduate students. ELLWC consultants know that their pedagogical decisions involve understanding of differences in the educational pathways of Generation 1.5 student writers (U.S.-educated children of first-generation immigrants), exchange students who graduated from U.S. high school, and international/visa students (Leki). Consultants would not spend much time on explaining how the writing center works for the former two student categories because, as being exposed to the U.S. education system, these writers would have some experience with writing center tutoring. However, international/visa students would need a detailed overview of writing center services and specifics to be able to use the writing center to its fullest.

ELLWC consultants are well aware of differences in ML writers’ linguistic backgrounds. When consultants work with Generation 1.5 writers, they either avoid some grammar terminology or teach it if necessary because, as “ear learners,” Generation 1.5 students tend to learn English through less formal means such as social interaction with their peers, watching TV, and reading materials on the Internet, thus they may never have been exposed to ESL instruction in school and would not know grammar terms. As “eye learners,” international/visa students have much formal grammar instruction in English and would benefit from explicit metalinguistic information (Ferris and Hedgcock). However, their listening and comprehension proficiency levels may vary, requiring some adjustment of consultants’ speed of speaking and general vocabulary which is not a case with Generation 1.5 students who may present as native speakers.

ELLWC consultants learn about ML writers’ prior writing experiences to better explain U.S. writing conventions. For instance, if consultants know that L1 Chinese and Japanese writers may take a reader-responsible approach to organizing ideas and thus make a claim as indirect and implicit as possible, they can better explain differences in writing conventions and audiences’ writing expectations, not to mention saving them from possible frustration and reading comprehension difficulties. Consultants engage writers in discussion of culture-specific differences in academic genres and conventions while drawing their attention to conflicting definitions of “good writing” across disciplines. This way, consultants mediate writing culture shock while helping ML writers navigate a new writing culture. To provide consultants with pedagogical tools for such discussions, the training includes readings on generalized characteristics of Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Slavic, Spanish, and Arabic writing cultures (Understanding ESL Writers) and activities helping consultants recognize which U.S. academic writing conventions may cause writing culture shock for writers from a particular writing culture. Consultants practice analyzing writers’ texts in terms of their rhetorical deviations from U.S. writing practices. Adapting from Lape’s training of foreign language tutors in intercultural competence (42), consultants are prompted to reflect on their own writing culture shock they have experienced either in foreign language courses and/or in study abroad. Consultants reflect on the rhetorical patterns that conflicted with their writing experiences and rhetorical strategies they adjusted to new writing practices. The reflection activity prepares consultants to assist ML writers in considering their new writing experiences and adjustments of their writing strategies to resolve writing culture shock. Similarly, reflection on writing experiences in different disciplines prepares consultants to discuss rhetorical features of “good writing” across disciplines. To enable consultants to discuss with ML writers what different instructors are looking for in their courses, consultants practice analyzing cultural aspects of writing prompts, rubrics, and instructors’ feedback to identify culturally bound elements causing confusion for someone who is new to American academic culture. Thus, the activities described here train consultants to guide ML writers as they explore a new writing culture, revise their original writing assumptions based on a new knowledge, and adjust their writing strategies accordingly.

The ELLWC is an ideal space for further language acquisition as it is an unconditional requirement for improving ML writers’ writing skills when they use a new language as a mode of communication. The training ensures that ELLWC consultants attain a clear understanding of the linguistic knowledge that plays out in tutoring sessions. Consultants are exposed to an intensive grammar unit focusing on the aspects of English that cause typical ESL errors. Learning how English speakers create meaning when using different grammar tenses, verb forms, sentence clauses, or modals enables consultants to find 86 typical ESL errors (Lane and Lange) and explain them to writers. The course prompts consultants to practice a variety of culturally responsive pedagogical techniques and strategies for engaging ML writers in editing their errors by themselves. For instance, an effective strategy to address the errors transferred from L1 is to emphasize its source, specifically a cross-linguistic difference between an L1 construction and its English counterpart. One of the ELLWC consultants was able to use her knowledge of Chinese to help L1 Chinese writer understand the difference between “didn’t” and “wasn't” by comparing them to the words 不 (bù) and 没 (méi) / 没有 (méiyǒu) in Chinese and thus enabled the writer to revise their errors. While comparing writers’ native languages to English can help writers edit their errors, incorporating writers’ languages into education can help consultants establish a deeper connection with writers and thus can enhance the learning process.

ELLWC consultants know that for ML writers to develop as effective users of academic English, their assistance should be attuned to writers' actual emergent needs and abilities (Lantolf, Thorne, and Poehner). Consultants are trained to determine how much help ML writers need to complete a new task by continuously assessing the writers’ zone of sensitivity to the consultants’ assistance, i.e., their zone of proximal development (ZPD) (Vygotsky). Vygotsky defines the ZPD as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem-solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (86). As more capable peers, consultants engage ML writers in dialogic negotiation to discover a gap between what writers know and are capable of without consultants’ assistance and what writers would be able to do with consultants’ guidance. Strategically employing instruction, and both cognitive and motivational scaffolding (Mackiewicz and Thompson), consultants begin with highly indirect techniques and gradually move toward more direct strategies until ML writers’ responses indicate that the appropriate level of assistance is reached. Consultants begin to gradually decrease support as soon as the writers’ ability to solve the problem more independently increases. The support is withdrawn as soon as writers’ responses indicate their ability to function independently. Working within the writers’ ZPD ensures that ML writers receive enough but not too much assistance aligning with writers’ developmental needs while promoting their agency (Lantolf, Thorne, and Poehner). Contingency and graduation of assistance encourage ML writers both to actively participate in the tutorial and to assume responsibility for the appropriate performance (Aljaafreh and Lantolf).

The training ensures that consultants practice analyzing ML writing in terms of error patterns and their gravity for them to teach ML writers self-editing skills. L2 writing experts agree that ML writers cannot learn to edit their writing all on their own. They need to be trained in self-editing strategies (Treatment of Error). In addition to giving such general advice as putting aside a paper for a few hours, reading it out loud, ML writers need to be aware of their most pervasive errors. The task of self-editing may be overwhelming. To make it manageable, writers need to learn how to prioritize issues in their writing and how to edit individual error patterns. Finally, writers need to remember that learning grammar and building writing skills take time and a lot of effort. They should be encouraged to keep track of errors and work toward making fewer errors in each next paper. To help ML writers learn how to help themselves, ELLWC consultants use the following pedagogical tools: error analysis and error logs. Error analysis enables writers to recognize individual errors and their frequencies. Together, consultants and writers identify all errors the paper displays, their pervasive patterns, and determine which error patterns are the most problematic and should be addressed first. After completing error analysis, ML writers are encouraged to maintain a log of error frequencies to see their progress. Using error logs, consultants help writers track the same error types for each paper they write. Error logs direct students to think in terms of error frequency ratios (total numbers of errors divided by total numbers of words) rather than simple error counts. For example, if there are ten verb-tense errors in a six-hundred-word essay, this number is significant; however, if ten verb-tense errors are made in a two-thousand-word paper, that may be less so. Looking at error log counts, writers can see error patterns either decrease or increase regardless of the length of a paper. Both the error analysis and error log forms and instructions are available on the ELLWC website.

Finally, consultants are trained to facilitate in-class peer- and self-editing workshops. They are 20-25-minute consultant-led sessions focusing on one type of issues, for example, verb-form errors or past-simple and present-perfect-tense errors, or subject-verb-agreement errors. The main purpose of workshops is not to correct all errors that papers show, but to provide opportunities for ML writers to practice proofreading and editing skills as both readers and writers. After a brief presentation reviewing grammar rules with sample sentences, consultants engage writers in discovery (writers analyze target language structures in authentic discourse), editing (writers find, label, and correct errors with the target structure), and application (writers find, label, and correct errors in their peer’s writing and their own writing) activities (Treatment of Error). As we all know, it is easier to find errors in other’s papers than in one’s own. As such, these activities are critical for building editing skills because they enable writers to find and solve their own errors as well as build confidence as self-editors. About 90% of ML writers find in-class peer- and self-editing workshops very useful because they help them feel more confident about finding and correcting errors in their papers and enhance their understanding of problematic grammar aspects.

Support for Content-Area Instructors in the ELLWC

The ELLWC helps content-area instructors who teach mixed classes make their pedagogy more accessible and inclusive for linguistically and culturally diverse students through workshops, one-on-one consultations, and teaching materials that are available on the ELLWC website. The ELLWC Coordinator facilitates 2-3 workshops each semester to educate faculty about the second language acquisition process and general principles of working with ML students. Workshops aim to help instructors understand ML students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds, needs, and challenges and share a variety of field-tested ESL practices. When reading ML students’ writing, responding to it and/or assessing it, differences in fluency, structure, and accuracy should be considered if instructors practice an inclusive and eggetarian approach to teaching. ML students continue learning English while also learning how to write in academic English. For that reason, instructors’ feedback on grammar rule-governed issues in addition to content, development, and organization is needed so that students can improve both academic writing skills and language proficiency. Second language acquisition research indicates that it takes years to acquire competence in a second language approaching that of native speakers. Even after ML students complete special courses before taking required writing courses, and then move into courses in their disciplines, they may make errors. Though ML students are not able to produce error-free and native-like writing, they can correct about 82% of errors if instructors provide feedback on language issues (Ferris and Roberts; Does Error Feedback). ESL specialists warn that marking each error in ML writing can be counterproductive because making too many comments is demotivating, overwhelming (Wingate), and “discouraging, detrimental to self-esteem” (Bitchener and Ferris 126) of students while daunting for instructors. In workshops, instructors learn about and practice best practices for responding to ML writing, including but not limited to differentiating grammar errors from style errors, applying a pattern-oriented approach, and using ESL error codes. Workshops make sure that instructors understand feedback benefits. The pattern-oriented approach helps ML students recognize particular error-types, correct them, and thus improve overall grammatical accuracy over time. Responding to two or three patterns saves instructors time and effort because it takes two or three comments rather than, for example, fifteen comments when addressing each error.

The discussion of various approaches to assessment of ML writing in light of second language acquisition scholarship encourages instructors to redefine “standards” that require “correctness.” The workshops emphasize that the idea of correctness should consider the second language acquisition processes in a sense that ML writing may be correct even if it does not sound native-like. Though ML students should be held responsible for using language effectively and it would be fair to ask ML students to improve grammatical accuracy, it would be unfair to ask for a native-like writing. Therefore, it is important for instructors to differentiate writing with an accent from writing with grammar issues when scoring it. Workshops also function as a platform for faculty across disciplines to discuss challenges and needs their students face in their courses and possible solutions to them. If instructors have questions relating to individual student’s challenges or writing problems, or adaptation of teaching strategies to a particular group of students, they bring them to one-on-one consultations with the ELLWC Coordinator. Typically, instructors request assistance with analyzing individual students’ writing in terms of language and writing issues, facilitating group work in mixed classes, determining language proficiency of individual students, and improving grammatical accuracy in graduate students’ writing, to mention a few.

Recommendations for Writing Centers with a Strong Commitment to Tailor Tutoring Strategies to ML Writers

Applied linguists have argued that second language writing development is a multidimensional process of changes in “language (e.g., complexity, accuracy, fluency, cohesion, mechanics); knowledge of different genres; text-production processes; metacognitive knowledge and strategy use; and writing goals and motivation” (Polio 261). Given this multidimensionality, ideally, a specialized writing center is needed to ensure that writing consultants are trained to pay equal attention to rhetorical and linguistic aspects for writers to simultaneously develop both writing and second language skills. For existing writing centers considering adapting their staff professional training to ML writers, I have three recommendations:

1. Enable consultants to revise tutoring practices and strategies working within the context of monolingual norms by educating them about differences between ML writers’ diverse academic backgrounds and prior writing experiences and those of their U.S. peers. While consultants must recognize that ML writers present heterogeneous populations with a wide variety of socio-cultural, education, and linguistic experiences, it is helpful for consultants to know the characteristics that distinct groups of ML writers share and those that they do not share. In this respect, Ilona Leki’s chapter from ESL Writers sketching three broad groups of ML writers (international undergraduate students who graduated from U.S. high schools, international/visa undergraduate students who plan to return to their home countries after completing their education in the U.S., and international graduate students) is useful. Knowing ML writers’ general characteristics can help consultants explore what they share with their U.S. peers and what they do not in terms of academic literacy, writing experiences, and awareness of U.S. academic culture. The identified similarities and differences will help consultants revise those tutoring practices and strategies that work for native English-speaking writers but do not work for ML writers due to their distinct academic backgrounds. For example, the tutoring strategies for promoting audience awareness that work for those students who are typically exposed to the concept of audience through the formal writing instruction at the tertiary level will not work well for those international students whose prior writing experiences have been mostly limited to writing for exams where exam evaluators have been the only audience they have been taught to write for. Additionally, reading texts written by native English-speaking writers is different from reading those written by ML writers. Paul Kei Matsuda and Michelle Cox’s chapter as well as Carol Severino’s chapter from ESL Writers can help consultants tailor their reading strategies and avoid appropriation of ML writing. Finally, for consultants to effectively respond to structure and organization issues, they need to become aware of formal differences between ML writers’ rhetorical expertise in textual arrangement and genre and that of their U.S. peers. Familiarity with different ways of constructing arguments (e.g., taking a clear position and its direct development vs. avoiding a clear position and its indirect development), different strategies for using and integrating evidence (citing and paraphrasing vs. reciting verbatim famous figures without proper citations), and different approaches to cohesion (the use of pronouns and transitional expressions vs. avoiding them) (Ferris and Hedgcock 23) can help consultants revise their strategies by drawing on differences between rhetorical styles used in U.S. academic culture and those employed in ML writers’ home cultures. Ilona Leki’s chapter on rhetorical styles preferred in East Asian, Middle Eastern, and European cultures in Understanding ESL Writers can inform the strategy revision.

2. Teach consultants to respond to language problems that ML writers with different abilities to write in English as their second language typically face. Consultants should learn how the second language acquisition process can inform pedagogical choices they make when tutoring and how to coach ML writers in self-editing their writing. Familiarization with the major theories of second language acquisition that Theresa Tseng overviews in her chapter in ESL Writers will help consultants understand why ML writers may continue to make the same error after discussing it and successfully correcting it in the previous sessions. The discussion of interlingual errors and fossilized errors will help consultants understand why ML writers can find and correct some errors when they read out loud their papers but cannot see others. Consultants are familiarized with the concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) to determine what writers can do without assistance and what writers can do in collaboration with consultants. To help writers realize their potential development, consultants should learn how to tap into the writer's ZPD by gradually moving from indirect to direct tutoring strategies. To build ML writers’ self-editing skills, consultants must learn how to apply the pattern-oriented approach to language errors: (1) treatable (rule-governed) and untreatable (not rule-governed) and (2) global (affecting writing clarity) and local (not affecting writing clarity) that Dana Ferris highlights in Treatment of Error. Finally, without knowledge of how English structures work, consultants will not be able to assist ML writers in growing as users of academic English. Lane and Lange’s Writing Clearly has proved to be extremely helpful for training consultants to identify and explain the 15 most common errors ML writers make. The textbook offers exercises based on authentic ESL writing, includes concise error explanations, and suggests self-editing strategies for writers. When practicing responding to errors through completing exercises, consultants should be instructed not only to correct errors but also to specify their subtypes and explain them by utilizing sample explanations and grammar solutions from Writing Clearly.

3. The supplementary training outlined in both recommendations above is intensive and can hardly be compressed into a few professional development seminars. A possible solution might be Vicki Kennell’s model of self-guided training detailed in Writes Well with Others. Consultants should complete assignments individually at their own pace. Feedback from the program director and their peers can be provided through individual conversations, group discussions, and written comments. As an incentive, a certificate can be awarded to institutionalize the specialized training for assisting ML writers in the writing center.

ELLWC Program’ Future Developments

The ELLWC’s long-term goal is to increase learning opportunities for all Miami students through enhancing collaboration with Miami units that cater to ML students including the ESL Composition Program, American Culture and English (ACE) Program, Advanced Writing Program, and Library Program. The close partnership with the ESL composition and ACE instructors will integrate ELLWC services in ESL and ACE course assignments. Regular meetings with ELLWC consultants throughout the semester should help them better achieve course outcomes. To ensure individualized assistance with writing assignments in advanced writing courses and content-area courses, the ELLWC will establish the embedded consulting program when embedded consultants help students apply what the instructor teaches while helping with assignments. In addition to receiving feedback at multiple points in the writing process, students will, hopefully, become more comfortable using the ELLWC for content-area courses. ELLWC consultants will partner with librarians to hold research and writing drop-in sessions for ML students. In these sessions, librarians and consultants will help with writing, citing, and finding scholarly sources for their research papers. It is our hope that, due to these collaborative initiatives, students will consciously be willing to invest time in the improvement of their writing skills and perceive the ELLWC as a service that can help them build a future professional career in the globalized world where English serves as a lingua franca.

Appendix: Theoretical Perspectives on Learning a Second Language in the Writing Center Context

The goal of the activities is to introduce writing center consultants to the complex process of second language acquisition for them to gain a more holistic picture of ML writers' linguistic backgrounds and to understand the sources of language errors.

Before class: consultants are asked to read Tseng’s chapter “Theoretical Perspectives on Learning a Second Language” and Aljaafreh and Lantolf’s article “Negative Feedback as Regulation and Second Language Learning in the Zone of Proximal Development” as a homework assignment.

In class: consultants complete one activity at a time in small groups followed by a whole class discussion.

1. Work in three groups. Discuss these questions and fill in the columns for the Behaviorist, Innatist, and Cognitivist approaches to SLA.

SLA Theory	Behaviorist	Innatist	Cognitivist	Interactionist
How does an SLA theory approach the acquisition of a second language?
How does an SLA theory explain errors in ML writing?				N/A
What tutoring strategies does an SLA theory inform?

2. Read the tutorial interaction. Joe is a consultant and Maria is an L1 Spanish writer.

Joe: Maria, why did you write “I received a pair of shoes news for my birthday”?

Maria: Look (pointing at her shoes), they are news.

Joe: Oh, you mean they are your new shoes.

Maria: Why can’t I say “shoes news”? In Spanish, we say, “zapatos nuevas” (shoes news).

Joe: In English, we put the description (the adjective) before the thing (the noun) we describe. So, new goes before shoes. And we don't make the adjective plural even though the noun might be plural (Tseng 19-20).

Use the table in 1 to answer these questions.

1. What type of error did Maria make?

2. What strategies did Joe use to address Maria’s errors?

3. What scaffolding techniques did Joe use?

3. Assign levels of implicitness/explicitness (Aljaafreh and Lantolf’s Regulatory Scale on p. 471) to Joe’s feedback.

Joe: Maria, why did you write “I received a pair of shoes news for my birthday”?

Maria: Look (pointing at her shoes), they are news.

Joe: Oh, you mean they are your new shoes.

Maria: Why can’t I say “shoes news”? In Spanish, we say, “zapatos nuevas” (shoes news).

Joe: In English, we put the description (the adjective) before the thing (the noun) we describe. So, new goes before shoes. And we don't make the adjective plural even though the noun might be plural.

1. Is Joe working within Maria’s ZPD? Explain.

2. What would you do differently? Write your own questions/clues for the following scenario: Maria is not responsive to implicit help, and she can’t correct her errors. The sample prompts from Aljaafreh and Lantolf’ article on pages 469 - 470 should help you complete this task.

Works Cited

About Miami. Miami University, 20 June 2008, https://www.miamioh.edu/about-miami/leadership/president/mission/index.html).

Aljaafreh, Ali, and James P. Lantolf. Negative Feedback as Regulation and Second Language Learning in the Zone of Proximal Development. The Modern Language Journal, vol. 78, no. 4, 1994, pp. 465-483., https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1994.tb02064.x.

Bell, Diana Calhoun, and Sara Redington Elledge. Dominance and Peer Tutoring Sessions with English Language Learners. Learning Assistance Review, vol. 13, no. 1, Mar. 2008, pp. 17-30.

Benson, Susan, and Robert DeKeyser. Effects of Written Corrective Feedback and Language Aptitude on Verb Tense Accuracy. Language Teaching Research, vol. 23, no. 6, Nov. 2019, pp. 702-726, https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168818770921.

Bitchener, John, and Dana Ferris. Written Corrective Feedback in Second Language Acquisition and Writing. Routledge, 2012.

Blau, Susan, John Hall, and Sarah Sparks. Guilt-Free Tutoring: Rethinking How We Tutor Non-Native-English-Speaking Students. The Writing Center Journal, vol 23, no. 1, 2002, pp. 23-44.

Boquet, Elizabeth H., and Neal Lerner. After ‘The Idea of a Writing Center.’ College English, vol. 71, no. 2, Nov. 2008, pp. 170-89.

Bruce, Shanti and Rafoth, Ben. Tutoring Second Language Writers. Utah State University Press, 2016.

Doughty, Catherine J., and Michael H. Long. The Scope of Inquiry and Goals of SLA. The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, edited by Doughty, Catherine J., and Michael H. Long, John Wiley & Sons, 2008, pp. 3-16.

Ferris, Dana. Does Error Feedback Help Student Writers? New Evidence on the Short-and Long-Term Effects of Written Error Correction. Feedback in Second Language Writing: Contexts and Issues, edited by Ken Hyland and Fiona Hyland, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 81-104.

—. Treatment of Error in Second Language Student Writing. 2nd ed, University of Michigan Press, 2011.

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