I really enjoyed this week’s focus on multi-lingual
writers, but I think you already know that, so I’m sorry if the rest of this
seems a little redundant.
As I have thought back on my consultations this semester,
I feel like most have been with multi-lingual writers. Even though many can
find these interactions more frustrating than consultations with native
speakers, I just so enjoy them. I love getting the opportunity to help these
hard-working students further their proficiency in English speaking, and it is
so rewarding to feel like you’ve actually helped someone at the end of thirty,
or even just twenty-five minutes.
I connected to the readings for this week in several
different ways. First, I think we got to read about the snazzy language
acquisition business this week, even if we read it last week, I’m still going
to talk about it, because I was so excited to read about Krashen and Asher
again. I think it has been five or six years since the last time I encountered
their theories. Yet again, as I mentioned in last week’s blog, I think a lot of
what these second-language acquisition theorists talk about is appropriate to
most language learners/users in general. For instance, both the concepts of the
“Monitor Model” and the “Affective Filter” are very important to bear in mind
when working with writers in the center whose native language is not English.
These concepts are the reason why it is so important to connect with
multi-lingual writers on a personal level and to be extra sensitive to their
needs: be supportive, be engaging, be kind… Yet these theoretical SLA concepts
also inform other facets of writing center practice that have absolutely
nothing to do with writers from other countries. For instance, the very
intentional design of the Writing Center space is created as such to be
inviting and to make writers feel comfortable so that they are not afraid to “expose”
their writing to another human, to ask questions, and to take risks. This very
much follows the idea of lowering the students’ affective filter to enable
learning to take place. It also helps reduce the depth and frequency of
students’ over-active monitors. Further, in the writing classroom, I think the
goal of creating a community of writers is also born out of a desire to lower
the affective filter so that students, again, are comfortable enough to ask
questions and take risks to develop their writing skills.
On a totally different note, I so, so appreciate the
conversation that we had last Thursday, Melissa. I finally added up where my
hours were for the internship, and I’m actually sitting at eighty already. To
earn three credits, I think I only need to have 120 hours by the end of the
semester. So, I think that writing a shorter, more practical piece for my final
paper will work beautifully, and I think we can chat later on in the semester
about how things are shaking out time-wise, and as far as the contributions I’m
making go. I know you had mentioned something about pay for the hours that
accrue after meeting my internship requirements, and I think we can talk about
that later, too. I am pretty flexible, so I’m not worried about where we’re
going, but it is nice to know that I’m sitting on the fuller side of required hours
at the moment.
As for the practical piece, I really want to do
something on working with our
multilingual writers. I think it would be fun to look at the kind of folks we
have that fit into this “category”, and to come up with some good tools that
our consultants could pull out of their toolkits to help them with the nuts and
bolts associated with some of these interactions –how to explain pronoun
issues/articles/ablout(strong) verbs– I will also look into our mission
statement…More on these ideas later. Have a great weekend, Melissa!
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