The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

only to the fact that she hadn’t been reading, but also to the fact that the language she communicated in
was different from the written language and the academic discourse that she was being introduced to in
school. In some ways, Ella’s problems with writing closely resemble those that we might find with
students who are learning to speak and write English as their second language. However, an ESL student
can go to a supermarket or listen to the radio and this will accelerate their language acquisition. A
hearing-impaired student does not have that option.
Similarly, Matt has developed a written language that serves the purpose of quickly
communicating with individuals who are able to hear. He has developed a sort of short hand and this is
the language with which he is most familiar. This unique language becomes problematic when Matt
enters into academic discourse. Matt communicates with brief notes that describe very basic needs or
concerns. When he writes for academic subjects, High Order Concerns are rarely an issue with Matt, as he
understands conceptually exactly why he writes any given assignment and has no trouble with
organization or the progression of his ideas. However, sometimes the shorthand that he uses to
communicate will slip into his papers and reports. I’ve had to be careful to ask him to explain everything
that is not entirely clear to me in his written work.
Matt’s repeat issues are related to verb tense, articles and prepositions. Explaining these issues to
the hearing-impaired student is tricky. When working with a student who speaks and hears, the tutor can
explain the decision to use “a” over “an” through auditory examples. “A” precedes a word that begins
with a consonant, while “an” typically precedes a vowel or a vowel sound. You might say, “I got an A on
that paper” and this makes sense and can be broken down in writing, but to say, “I got an F on a paper” is
more difficult to explain to a student who cannot hear that, although “F” is a consonant, when spoken it
sounds like “eff”, demanding the indefinite article “an”, for audio-centric reasons.
When working with hearing-impaired students, especially on LOCs, you should throw out the
idea that we are never to write on student papers. I’m not suggesting that you start editing, but once you
have worked on HOCs, you should feel free to be creative when helping hearing-impaired students with
Later Order Concerns. For instance, when Matt and I work together, I will often write him a note stating,
“I’m going to show you where something is missing. In this round, it will either be an article or a
preposition.” Then I will draw an arrow between two words and he will fill in the word that he thinks
should be in that space. We will go through the paper a couple of times, once for articles and prepositions,
and sometimes for verb-tense issues or other grammatical errors. I always tell him ahead of time what
errors he should look for, and this has proven to be an effective method with Matt.
Tutoring hearing-impaired students has drawn my attention to the fact that the academic culture
does not always effectively accommodate the needs of all students. Much of this is because the hearingimpaired
learn on their own how to communicate with the hearing population. The hearing-impaired
student learns to rely on his or her own communication methods long before they ever reach the
university. Most students enter the academic environment without any prior exposure to the conventions
of academic discourse. However, the hearing-impaired student is at a greater disadvantage when they
enter the university. Many of us begin to pick up new language and conventions through dialogue with
other students and professors. Such conversations occur naturally when we are able to hear and speak.
One basic way to help a hearing-impaired student is to encourage him or her to read and to read a lot.
Books, blogs, journals, magazines and fellow-student papers will expose the student to conventions that
will bolster their understanding of patterns in academic writing that they might not otherwise be exposed
to. But, probably the best advice that I can suggest is to encourage the student to work with you as
regularly and as often as possible because writers and tutors both perform better when they trust and
understand one another.
Works Cited
Weaver, Margaret E. “Transcending ‘Conversing”: A Deaf Student in the Writing Center.” JAC: A
Journal of Composition Theory. 16.2 (1996): 241-51. Rpt. in The St. Martin's Sourcebook for
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