The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

A Spare Tire, Not a Windshield
89
David Price
Spring 2011
One of the more challenging aspects of tutoring in the University Reading and Writing Center
(URWC) involves working with ESL students. In addition to the fairly ordinary concerns about LOCs
and HOCs which arise in any given session, an ESL student may bring to the tutoring table a specific set
of expectations derived from their cultural background. It is important to remember that you also bring
expectations to the very same table, and that both sets of expectations must be sorted out in order to have
a successful tutoring session. True collaboration is not possible if a tutor and tutee spend the entire time
wrestling over the direction of the session.
The ESL student sitting across from you did not materialize in the hall and walk through the URWC
doorway. Each student is the product of years of scholastic and life experience. Though we as tutors may
have a preconceived notion of the ideal tutee, it is dangerous practice to start mentally sanding a tutee’s
edges in an attempt to fit them into that notion. It is up to you to be aware and beware of your own
thought process when engaging an ESL tutee, for it is likely that their “culturally conditioned notions
about what to expect in a nonclassroom instructional setting” (Harris 207) will come up, possibly making
it necessary for you to adjust your tutoring approach.
In her article, “Cultural Conflicts in the Writing Center,” Muriel Harris discusses how she “learn[ed]
more about what ESL students expect when they come to tutorials” by “ask[ing] eighty-five international
students at [her] university to respond in writing to a lengthy list of questions” (208). These responses led
Harris to conclude that tutors “should . . . be wary about creating learning environments in which we
assume students from other cultures share our perspectives and goals” (209). The spirit of collaboration
which we seek to extol in the URWC may be an anathema to an ESL student from a cultural background
in which teachers and tutors simply correct errors. In such cases, a strict adherence to minimalist tutoring
could result in thirty minutes to an hour of awkward silence.
Harris indicates some culture-specific responses from her questionnaire, pointing out that “Asian
students all responded that the tutor’s job is correcting errors, showing mistakes, and ‘giving clear
understanding,’ not providing motivation or encouragement” (210). Most tutors would view such a
clinical and directive approach to tutoring as rather backward; however, it is not an option to tell an ESL
student that you do not appreciate or agree with their point of view concerning tutoring theory. Should
you forge ahead without regard to cultural difference, you may be the recipient of false feedback. Harris
gives us the warning of “Xiaomin Cai, an Asian tutor in an American writing center, [who] cautions us
that Asian students prefer to be indirect and may agree or nod rather than challenge or confront those they
disagree with. They may also pretend to understand when they don’t, to save face” (212).
The challenges of cultural difference do not end with tutor-tutee interactions. Determining the
“rhetorical qualities of good writing is even more difficult because we are less aware that some are
culturally determined, not universal” (215). Finding a repetitive error in grammar is fairly easy, but
identifying an alternative rhetorical approach is far more challenging, for many of us are accustomed to
American rhetorical values: “conciseness, directness, . . . clarity” (215). We need to keep in mind that
there are other rhetorical systems at play in this wide world, such as “the Asian preference for indirection”
(215). Each rhetorical vantage point views itself as best. If a tutor denigrates indirection as wrong, she or
he could make an Asian student feel like an outsider. These rhetorical differences must be treated with
extreme care. Though we may want a student to gradually adapt to American rhetorical values, we
should never disparage the home discourse and concomitant rhetorical approach of an ESL student.