2/20 Blog

I've often found it impossible to separate HOCs from LOCs in the tutoring session, so it was validating (if already obvious to me) to read that is an effective way to run tutoring sessions. The "toggle" seems both necessary and unavoidable, as evidenced by the experiences of the two FL tutors whose "negotiated interactions" around a single word had implications at the grammatical/sentence level and global level. I'm not fluent in anything (honestly, I think saying I'm fluent in English is pushing it sometimes), so I have no experience working with FL writers, but I've found toggling to be a useful and necessary approach with both native English speakers and ELL students. It is just too difficult to read through a paper and focus on only global or only sentence level concerns.

I also found Brice's suggestions for tutoring in contact zones to be a bit obvious, not only for tutoring, but as a general attitude for cultural awareness. I frequently tutored Hmong students in Stevens Point and, though their cultural writing practices (informed by oral traditions) are by no means the same as native Athabaskans, the same approach is useful in the session, but perhaps not for the student in the classroom. One-on-one, it is much easier to take the times to "learn before you teach" as Brice suggests, but professors don't usually have that kind of time to invest and the students will receive their grade (right or wrong) based on western writing standards. I've had many students come back still frustrated the professor didn't understand how difficult it was for them to negotiate not just a new language, but a completely new style. While what she suggests is great for general deportment and how the tutor should approach the student, I found it necessary to just break it down sometimes (e.g. "I know it's weird, but this is what you need to do to meet the requirements because white people are awful"). Some of her suggestions are variations on the theme we've already been talking about (tailoring pumping questions to your specific students, creating a "safe" environment, etc.), but I do think cultural awareness is something to keep in mind as you "toggle" not just from HOCs to LOCs, but your negotiation of understanding.

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