List of assumptions: Bouquet, North 1 and North 2

Bouquet supports:
- North 1 and North 2 essays both believe in a utopia of a WC.
-  writing is a process not a product
-  student focused not teacher directed
-  N1, N2 and Bouquet are extremely against the bad wrap WC have received as just being for remedial students.
-  Collaborative method of running a WC

Bouquet might not support:
-  N1 and N2 believe on a hierarchical formation of the administration side of WC
-  too much control of administrative duties may lead to a loss of focus of the WC
- North 2 tried to inject a more reality of WC but still retain the focus of writing as a process and student ownership of writings

Blog 6 ESL Writers and the Writing Center

Here is what I have so far: 
The ability to write a well- developed professional essay in college is a technique that requires practice and an openness to change.  While in college, many students attend Writing Centers to aid in the refining of writing skills in order to fulfill the expectations of their professors and college philosophies.  In these writing centers, students of diverse backgrounds and academic abilities have found the necessary assistance needed to create acceptable college essays.  Some students require more help in writing than others.  For this reason, Writing centers have changed their methods of instruction drastically during the years.  One group that has benefited from this change, are Hispanic English as a Second Language students.

The demographics of ESL students have grown in number since the Fall of 2006.  In the Fall of 2006, the Hispanics population of students was10.8% and has steady increased to 11.8% up to the Fall of 2009 (http://ir.kean.edu/irhome).  The increase in these of Hispanic numbers has led to a change in how typical students write.  ESL students demonstrate different needs than a typical native English speaker.  For this reason, the method in which this subgroup is serviced by the Writing Center has been modified.

Many ESL students have acknowledge that seeking help of a Writing Center is important to refining their writing college techniques (Bruce & Rafoth 2009).  All ESL students do not write the same.  Some students have issues of codeswitching the home language with the target language.  Other ESL students may have issues that start from sentence structures to having no idea how the English essay should be organized.  More and more Hispanics students have requested assistance in Writing Center for these array of problems.  These concerns vary from ESL student to ESL student and can be summarized in 3 characteristics of students, United States ESL High School graduates, International/ Visa college professionals and International Graduate students. 

The rest of the essay will give a closer insight to what ESL students think a writing center should be.  I will also use some personal opinions from some ESL students who have attend the Kean Writing Center.  I will give a more specific description of what the Kean WC has to offer.  I will end by given my personal experiences.  I have to also check my citations.

 

Blog 5 Topic: The Writing Center and the English Language Learner

  Outline:
A. What is the Writing Center
     1.  define Writing Center  in the early 2000's
     2.  "           "          "        currently (research "Tutoring Writing" Chp. 3

B.  Expectations
     1.  Expectations of Professors for students in college writing:
       grammar, writing style, APA, research based (research demographics from web site given on assignment sheet.
     

C.  ELL views about WC
    1.  Different views of what the writing center should be verses what it is (use research found in white book)
    2.  What do ELL students want and what they don't want.  ( research "ESL" Writers Guide for Writing Center Tutors)
    3.   How do ELL see themselves as writers

D.  Personal Experience
    1.  Personal experience with the Writing Center in early "2000's"
    2.  Professors/ Different academic department (research "Tutoring Writing" chp. 8)

Now that I have developed an outline, I can begin researching my sources and than developing my draft.

The Writing Center and Writing Culture

I was not able to attend class on Thursday.  I review the classroom blog to see what I had miss.  It seems I missed a great deal.  I had no problem connecting my reading assignment to the comments made in the sections of the Master Narratives and Connections between WC stories.  It was not until I read the writing assignment did I regret missing class.
The assignment sheet that corresponded to the Writing Center and Writing Culture confused me a great deal. I do not know if it was the lateness of the day or the affects of sleep deprivation that made the words on the assignment scrambled into a collage of nonsense words.  I read and reread and I still could not make heads or tails of the assignment.  I decided to seek the aid of my classmates but was amazed that many of my colleagues didn't make sense of the assignment either.  So the question I will have on Tuesday is "Can the assignment please be broken down into simple words so I can focus on what is required for the essay.  As for the analysis of the audience, purpose and form of the assignment, I will edit this blog when I can figure the assignment out.  If that is OK.  I need major clarification on the assignment.  I was able to get a better sense of what the assignment entails.
I plan to write about the how English Language Learner are effected by the rules of the Writing Center.  The expectations they may have in the assisstance given in the Writing Center and the expectation professors have in general about writing.

Writing Culture at Kean

The students of Kean University, in my opinion, are made up of many diverse groups of individuals.  During the day, you will find students whose main goal is to attend school and fulfill the requirements for graduation.  They may still live at home or have some to little responsibilities but school.  On the other extreme their are students that attend school after a long day a work in the hopes to complete a degree to further their career.  These individuals may have families, financial responsibilities and or a lot of baggage they drag with them to class.  What both these groups have in common is the commitment to complete a degree.  In order to do this, their style of writing lends itself to be more professional.
Professional writing at Kean University like in many other colleges, involve fulfilling requirements.  Essays are written in order to achieve the specifications of the professor.  Topic are given and the students respond by completing the necessary research that is expected by the professor. 
Professional writing is more direct and less forgiving.  Grammar and style are expected to adhere to college standards.  The use of creative writing is not the norm in most classes but a type of reflection has been adopted in courses to give students the opportunity to enhance their writing skills.
There are some students at Kean who still prescribe to the old norms of enlightenment.  These students do take the time to write for leisure and self improvement but I think the percentage of these students is very low.  I have been here at Kean since 2004 and all my colleagues that I have had the pleasure to take classes with have written countless essays to fulfill the course requirement.  The essay are perfect in grammar, research and style with little opinions as possible unless the opinions are peer reviewed ones.  These opinions are held in great regard by college professors here at Kean.  I guess what else should be expected by the students at Kean.  We come to Kean to learn and become something more then who we are now.  This change requires some change in our aspects of learning and writing.  Writing professionally is part of that change.

Writing Process

The concept of writing is a process that causes difficulty in some individuals and ease in others.  Writing has always been a form of therapy in my life.  As a young girl, memories of far away places and deep dark secrets saturated my journals.  As a young adult, writing helped me find out what really matter and what needed to be changed.  It was not until, I was force to look at my writing in a professional manner did my writing become sterile and without passion.  Writing for leisure gives an individual a blank easel to create stories of endless delight while writing professionally offers a map of carefully directed routes. 

Writing  for a classroom assignment may cause stress.  It could also create a block in the flow of ideas.  I have experienced both.  Leisure writing is simple with no rules or the grammatical barb wire that is expected in most professional papers.  For this reason, I have had to develop ways to enhance my writing in a manner that will satisfy the requirements of administration, college professors and colleagues.

Developing an outline prior to actually beginning to write, helps me keep my writing in focus.  It makes me stay on the write path and fulfill the requisite of the assignment.This type of strategy can be used in the Writing Center with those students who tend to write and write and not say anything.  Professional writing requires focus on a specific idea and writing an outline can achieve this.

My first language is Spanish and as many of you know, our language in many areas reverses the order of grammatical correctness in English.  To make sure my thoughts don't lose their meaning in the translation from Spanish to English, I read and reread my papers aloud.  I listen to my voice as I read and pick out the sentence structures that do not make sense.  Reading aloud allows the reader to invoke more of their senses.  This technique will help a bilingual student pick out grammatical errors easier.  Another area of importance is respecting the culture of our clients.

Many cultures have different ideas about topics depending on their life experiences.  What makes sense to one might be totally bizarre to another.  For this reason asking open ended question and listening to the writer will help the reader, in this case us, to better understand the writers point of view.  I feel that by acknowledging the writer ability to create a professional essay will give the writer a sense of accomplishment causing him or her to want to better their writing.  Cultivating good writers should be an added benefit to working in the Writing Center.  I hope to be able to do this.