2019 #8: ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors (Bruce/Rafoth)

ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors by Ben Rafoth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an invaluable resources for ANYONE teaching L2 learners at the college level. I finished this book over a year ago, but have returned to it many times as a reference.

There are several essays that have been most helpful to me in my writing classes and as a writing center instructor. Leki's "Before the Conversation: A Sketch of Some Possible Backgrounds, Experiences, and Attitudes Among ESL Students Visiting a Writing Center" is invaluable reading for instructors who are working with L2 learners for the first time. The review of different types of second language acquisition in Tseng's "Theoretical Perspectives on Learning a Second Language" has helped me recognize individual challenges. Matsuda and Cox challenge instructors (readers/tutors) to be more aware of different reader stances: assimilationist, accommodationist, and separatist. The authors recognize that context can require some malleability and movement between the categories, but propose that the assimilationist stance is seldom helpful or effective. Staben and Nordhaus provide useful strategies for getting students to take a more holistic approach to the editing process (rather than "please fix my grammar"), and this pairs well with Linville's essay "Editing Line by Line" as well as Deckert's essay that both dig in to word- and sentence-level errors and how to explain them. Bouwman's contribution, "Raising Questions About Plagiarism," underscores the importance of *teaching* paraphrasing, and provides helpful questionnaires that can be used with ELLs.

Kevin Dvorak's "Writing Activities for ESL Writers" has been for me, the most valuable essay in the anthology. I use his "25-minute draft" exercise in my Writing About Music classes with my grad students, as well as in Writing Center. This has been invaluable in getting students over the hump of "getting started" with a term paper. I also occasionally use his "Alphabet Exercise" to help students think about topics for their papers.

Part 3 is dedicated more to writing centers and international experiences, but is a valuable read for anyone who wants to have a more global awareness of how language is used and taught.