The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

Tutoring Hearing-Impaired Students in the Writing Center
65
Theresa N. Walsh
Spring 2010
As tutors in the Writing Center, we typically discuss papers and ideas with student writers. A
standard session for me begins with a few moments dedicated to establishing a rapport with the writer.
We talk about the class, what the teacher’s expectations are, how the student is feeling about those
expectations and where the student feels that he or she needs to improve. Throughout the rest of the
session I will usually ask a student to read aloud while I watch them read and tell them when they are
self-correcting. This is an effective method for me because I can see where the writer’s spoken language
doesn’t make it onto the page. Sometimes, a student writer attempts to elevate his or her language in ways
that are unnatural to their actual ‘voice’. Other times, the writer expresses ideas in our conversation that
they don’t know how to articulate in written form. From here we might discuss how the student could
improve his or her writing so that the paper is true to the student’s ideas.
All of these typical methods are challenged when the student who is coming to you for help is
hearing-impaired. I have tutored two students regularly who are hearing-impaired and both times I was
uncertain of how I would approach tutoring without spoken language.
Typically when a tutor is assigned a student who is hearing-impaired, you will be notified before
they arrive. These moments prior to meeting the student are really the most nerve-wracking that you will
experience throughout the whole session. One wonders, ‘How will we communicate?’; ‘What kinds of
issues might a hearing-impaired student experience?’; ‘I wonder if we will have a translator.’ These are
the questions I ask myself, anyway, and the answers are revealed in the session.
The concern with communication is typically the first to be resolved. This will not be the first
time that the hearing-impaired student has tried to communicate with a person who does not know sign
language. He or she will be adept at communicating with you. My best advice here is to submit to the
methods with which the student is most comfortable.
Every student with whom you work in the Writing Center brings his or her unique method of
communication to the tutoring desk, and the hearing-impaired student is no different in this way from
students who can hear. In my experience working with hearing-impaired students, I have seen a translator
twice—in the first two sessions with my first hearing-impaired student, whom I will call Ella. Ella
dismissed the translator after the first two sessions because she felt that the translator slowed us down.
Ella and I watched each other closely. Although she was entirely deaf, Ella could speak and read lips.
Most recently I’ve been working with a hearing-impaired student whom I will call Matt. Matt
was not assigned a translator, but arrived with a small pad of paper, two pens and a small laptop
computer, which we chatted on. Matt has grown accustomed to navigating a world in which very few
people speak his language and has determined how he communicates best, with pen and paper.
Ella’s primary issue was that she hated to read and this created a situation in which she was
unable to visualize what was being described in the text she read. In the case of a hearing student I would
ask them questions. But the questions that I would ask would rely on verbal communication. Typically,
I’ll as a student about class discussion. I might suggest that a student talk about the readings with fellow
classmates or the instructor. Ella, however, wasn’t in a position to do these things. Together Ella and I had
to develop methods that would help her with reading comprehension.
We began by reading the assigned text and then we drew pictures of what was going on in the
book. We only had to do this for a few pages before she began to read and tell me how she imagined the
scenes that the author was describing. Once Ella began to visualize the stories that she read, we figured
out what types of stories appealed to Ella personally. Then we came up with a reading plan so that she
would know how much she should read daily to complete her assignments. The reading plan also
included a book that Ella would read that was not assigned, but that she found interesting. This gave Ella
a workable schedule and we would devote time to her reading comprehension while she was doing the
reading at home. After some time with Ella, I realized that many of her writing issues were related not