1/30 Blog

I have a hard time generalizing about working with non-native speakers because there’s such a wide variety of backgrounds that they come from. Some have been in the US for many years, and some have been here for only weeks or months—and even among the latter group, some have lived in other English-speaking countries for a long time. For example, in working with Germans, you frequently run into Britishisms, which may or may not be appropriate depending on the audience they’re writing for.

The problem I anticipate running into more with non-native speakers is that even the more outgoing ones may be shy to think out loud in the way that Mackiewicz and Thompson talk about. Native speakers often have trouble saying exactly what they mean, but non-native speakers run into this problem more frequently, particularly those with high CALPS but low BICS. I expect that with non-native speakers, my role as a tutor would include more encouragement and more waiting, to give them space to think things through.

I’m actually really excited to read more about the empirical studies of tutor talk, because I think it will help me direct the balance of teaching, cognitive scaffolding, and motivational scaffolding in my tutoring. I’m also very interested in what kinds of chains they identify, and what phrases are commonly used—and, of course, how it differs with native vs. non-native speakers.

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