ESL Students: Arabic & Japanese vs. English
Since it was my week to review one of the articles for class I decided to focus my blog on my own article because I looked more closely at my articles than the others. I agreed with the major points of the article, but one that sort of puzzled me was the idea that consultants should have prior knowledge of the languages with which they will be handling. In theory, this idea is great! I mean it would be easier for consultants and students to connect and concentrate more on the paper rather than structural differences between their language and English. On the other hand consultants are not linguists. It would be very cumbersome for them to try and understand, learn, and familiarize themselves with problems common to certain languages. For starters, there are multiple languages and it would be ignorant to focus only on common ones like Spanish, French, etc. What about Tagalong, Lebanese, Portuguese, Serbian, etc and other less common languages. Also each year new students and new consultants filter in and out of the writing center so the process would be never ending. The majority of consultants (at least from what I know at Richmond) are students who have hectic lives, booked social calendars, athletics, and other equally important obligations. That being said they have time to familiarize themselves with the mistakes ESL Arabic students make when trying to write English essays. If I were to consult an ESL Portuguese student, knowing some of the common mistakes that occur would definitely behoove me for the session but the opportunity cost of doing so would be too high a price to pay.
Article: Moujtahid, B. "Influence of Cultural and Linguistic Backgrounds on the writing of Arabic and Japanese Students of English." Writing Lab Newsletter 21.3 (Nov. 1996): 1-5.
It would be so hard for a consultant like Emily or I to tailor our learning to many or even a few specific languages, when we are only going to be consulting for a semester. I believe that having certain people learn about the cultural differences of certain cultures is way to ideal and impossible to really make work.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it's possible to teach consultants a toolbox of skills that can apply to helping ESL students rather than train them in linguistics in general? Then again, it's problematic to lump every ESL student into one group. Being cultural interpreters is an important skill to have, however, and I think that if consultants can learn this skill they will not only become more effective in the Writing Center but in any other job as well.
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