Blog 13.5 Research Bibliography

Research question:  What benefits does recognizing body language, verbal responses and cultural attitudes towards writing of ESL students have on the quality of the tutoring session?

Bibliography:

Barnett,C & Cohn,D (ED.) (2004). The World Comes To Tennessee, a Resource Book of Adult Education and ESOL Teachers of Advanced Leveled ESOL Students.University of Tennessee

This book takes a look at what ESL students are confronted with when learning a new language.  In chapter 1 it discusses “culture shock” and the differences between what “American” classroom looks like and what a foreign classroom looks like.  This book gives insight to what ESL students expect when learning a new language and what professors expect.

Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross-cultural aspects of

second-language writing. Cambridge:University Press.

 In this resource Ulla Connor advocates joining forces with the outside fields of psychology, anthropology, and education for a more rigorous investigation of the interrelationship between culture and literacy/schooling. In summary, she makes the important point that there should be studies "to investigate what good writing is in a given culture and how it is taught" (p. 116).

Connor, U. & Kaplan, R. (Eds). (1987) Writing Across Languages:

Analysis of L2 Text. Reading, Massachusetts:Addison Wesley Publishing Company.

Teaching of writing to foreign students differs greatly from teaching American students.  This resource looks at the cultural differences in the nature of contrastive rhetoric.  It also talks about the importance in what is going on in the mind of the ESL students verses what is coming out of their mouth.

Harris, M, & Silva, T. (1993). Tutoring ESL Students: Issues and

Options. College Composition and Communication, 44(4).

This resource talks about the concerns and issues that ESL students deal with when learning to write.  It looks at the setting of writing centers, the cultural presuppositions experienced by some tutors teaching ESL students.  This journal also examines how typical tutorial assistance offered to ESL students aren’t what ESL students need. 

Panetta, C.G. (Ed.). (2001). Contrastive Rhetoric Revisited and

Redefined. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum

This resource is a type of updated evaluation of Ulla Connor’s research on Rhetoric learning.  It gives a more modern view of the study done in 1996. 

Thonus, T. (2004).What are the differences?: Tutor interactions with first- and second-language writers . Journal of Second Language Writing. Volume 13, Issue 3, September 2004, Pages 227-242

“This paper reports on a decade of research into the nature of interactions between writing center tutors and native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) tutees. It explores and describes the structure of this interaction and the behaviors of NNS tutees, and of tutors when interacting with both NS and NNS tutees. It characterizes writing center tutorials with NNSs as a balancing act among potentially conflicting forces. Finally, it suggests applications of these insights to tutor preparation and practice.” (abstract)