Accomodating Difference, Acknowledging Reality

In recent discussions about ESL writing center clients with my tutors-in-training, I've noticed a variety of responses ranging from the somewhat panicked, "there's just too much to deal with here," to the easy-going, "multicultural writing is just another tutoring challenge." By the end of the semester, I'd be thrilled if my tutors all fell closer to the latter end of the spectrum, but at the same time, I know that getting there means confronting not just our practices but the ideology that underlies our practices.

Paul Kei Matsuda and Michelle Cox hint at these ideological perspectives in describing three approaches to ESL writing, first defined by Carol Severino: assimilationist, accomodationist, separatist. Matsuda and Cox relate that while some writing center tutors "may note the richness of ESL writer's texts that come from their hybridity and alternativeness...not all encounters with ESL texts produce such generous responses. Readers with little or no experience in working with ESL writers may be drawn to surface-level errors and differences that they see as problematic...Because of these and other differences, ESL writing is sometimes seen as 'deficient,' especially when it is evaluated in comparison with texts produced by NES writers" (42, 43).

We are fortunate in our tutor training practicum to have an ESL writer amongst our tutors. I'm grateful that S. is already pointing out to us how she perceives NES writers' texts as more difficult to read than ESL writers' text - not only on a linguistic level, but on a conceptual or global level, as ESL writers tend to avoid the cultural references that often pervade NES writing, making it inaccessible to anyone not immersed in American culture. The ethnocentrism S. perceives in her American clients' writing - American students automatically assume an American audience, regardless of the fact that many of their professors and classmates come from other countries and other cultures - bleeds out into how many NES readers perceive ESL texts. "Difference," whether in syntax, phrasing, organization, or argumentative strategies, becomes "deficiency"; hybridity and alternativeness are not marks of sophistication and intelligence but evidence of the Other, and an ethnocentric perspective on knowledge and expression causes many NES readers to shudder at the "lack of Americanness" in an ESL text.

So you see the problem I anticipate my tutors-in-training having with ESL clients. On the one hand, we have to overcome the initial reaction Matsuda and Cox describe as a kind of well-meaning horror: "(Serverino) felt tempted to take [the assimilationist] stance after first reading Michael's writing because she felt 'stunned' by the number of errors in the text" (45-46). I've heard this echoed already in some of my students' questions ("How do you tutor someone when you can't even figure out what they're trying to say?"). The assimilationist stance is tempting to us as Americans because we see our culture and our language as The Way, and writing that violates our cultural expectations must, by definition, be wrong, deficient.

But even if we can overcome this perspective as tutors, learning to appreciate the richness of difference, are we doing our ESL clients a disservice if we avoid an assimilationist approach? After all, as Matsuda and Cox say, "the assimilationist stance may be an attempt to protect the ESL writer from other readers...Tutors...may try to represent what they consider to be the possible response from the intended audience of the ESL writer's text: the professor" (46). In other words, a writing center tutor who allows ESL "errors" to remain may feel that she or he is ultimately setting that client up to fail, because the text's ultimate audience - the professor - may penalize the writer for those differences the tutor has come to appreciate.

There is no easy answer to this problem, of course. (And I know none of my tutors-in-training are surprised by that by this point in the semester, though I imagine they're still frustrated by it.) But I do think it helps us to do our jobs as tutors effectively by remembering that ESL clients are no different from NES clients in that our goals for their tutorial sessions should not be to fix their texts but to help them improve as writers. To my mind, the accomodationist stance is best suited to achieving this goal: "The accomodationist, then, reads differences as, well, differences, explaining to the writer how some differences may be seen as deficiencies by some readers; it is up to the writer 'how much like a native speaker' she wants to sound" (Matsuda and Cox 45).

The accomodationist stance strikes a balance between ethnocentricism (which I believe the assimilationist stance reflects) and a fairytale world in which we pretend to our ESL clients that all readers will be actualized enough to appreciate difference as evidence of multicultural richness (which I think the separatist stance does). More importantly, the accomodationist stance gives us concrete strategies that harken back to best practices for working with NES clients: setting an agenda for what issues to focus on in the tutorial; encouraging active, collaborative learning in the writing center tutorial; keeping the client in control of her/his writing and ideas; focusing on long-term improvement of writing ability, not short-term improvement as a text, as the accomodationist tutor emphasizes the client's understanding of differences between L1 and L2 writing and allows the client to decide how, when, or if to make the text more like a native speaker's.

As my tutors-in-training learn more about ESL clients, I hope they come to advocate for a separatist stance, because I believe our world will be a much brighter place when we stop seeing difference as deficiency. But when it comes to acknowledging the reality of our current society, I think the accomodationist stance is the most ethical for dealing with ESL clients - and the most productive.

Matsuda, Paul Kei and Michelle Cox. "Reading an ESL Writer's Text." ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors. 2nd ed. Eds. Shanti Bruce and Ben Rafoth. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2009. 42-50.