Multilingual Writers and Writing Centers

Download or read book Multilingual Writers and Writing Centers written by Ben Rafoth and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2015-01-15 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multilingual writers—often graduate students with more content knowledge and broader cultural experience than a monolingual tuto—unbalance the typical tutor/client relationship and pose a unique challenge for the writing center. Multilingual Writers and Writing Centers explores how directors and tutors can better prepare for the growing number of one-to-one conferences with these multilingual writers they will increasingly encounter in the future. This much-needed addition of second language acquisition (SLA) research and teaching to the literature of writing center pedagogy draws from SLA literature; a body of interviews Rafoth conducted with writing center directors, students, and tutors, and his own decades of experience. Well-grounded in daily writing center practice, the author addresses which concepts and practices directors can borrow from the field of SLA to help tutors respond to the needs of multilingual writers, what directors need to know about these concepts and practices, and how tutoring might change in response to changes in student populations. Multilingual Writers and Writing Centers is a call to invigorate the preparation of tutors and directors for the negotiation of the complexities of multilingual and multicultural communication.