"Can you read my paper?"
There were two major factors contributing to my shocked response. 1) This is the first time I've been asked this question since the start of my Writing Composition Theory and Pedagogy class. 2) The question came from an international student from China.
I had never read an international student's paper before, but since he seemed to get relatively good grades, I figured his English writing must be sophisticated. I was... well... wrong. There were grammatical or spelling errors in every single sentence. I could get the gist of some of his sentences, but the meaning of others were lost. My first impulse was to red-pen the entire page, to critique and adjust every sentence into "proper" English.
I knew, however, that I needed to restrain myself. As Stephen North points out, writing consultants do the most good by helping make better writers, not better writing. And so I ignored the vast majority of grammatical mistakes and focused more on points of organization, style, evidence, and arguments. These types of focus points get writers to think about the way they use their language and how they can do it better in the future instead of mindlessly accepting the authority of your red-pen grammar corrections.
I eagerly await to see if my friend's feedback from his professor improves. As he finished his revisions, he commented how "in China, our teachers didn't care much about organization or evidence or quotes. Most of our writing was creative, and we were expected to use language to be creative, but America seems to expect much more structure."
And maybe that's why we have certain expectations of peer editing in the first place. We are taught to believe that structure and "proper" English are the most important aspects of writing and so we start with those and later build up to advanced writing styles, organization, and synthesis. My friend suggests that China might teach language in the opposite direction, and it might work better (or at least make writing consultants' jobs easier).
Jerry your dilemma with language barriers opened my eyes to some new potential circumstances that may occur during our time as writing consultants. I agree with your practice to focus on organization and structure with this student, but should there be a different protocol if a writing consultant is reviewing a paper for a Spanish or French course? Can there be more sentence-level corrections? We can of course tell the student to use only verb forms and vocabulary that is familiar, but this still ignores the frequent problems that arise when necessary articles or accents are used improperly.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the best way to address your problem would be to first discuss the repeated grammar mistakes your friend was making. If you are having problems understanding the points of his individual sentences, rearranging them to aid the organization of the paper isn't going to make what he is trying to say any easier to understand. In a situation where the student doesn't understand the basic fundamentals of the English language, I don't really think organization should be the greatest focus. If you can understand what he is saying, then I would say yes, go for the organization, but if his sentences don't make sense because of blatant grammar errors, I think you should address that first.
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ReplyDeleteWhen I spoke with the writing consultant I'm shadowing this afternoon, she addressed this same issue; even though North focuses on the holistic aspect of consulting, for students who do not write fluently in English the finer points of grammatical construction usually should be addressed in conjunction with organizational issues. The problem is when we're tempted to simply correct the paper's grammatical mistakes rather than explain why the writer's grammar has mistakes in the first place. Obviously we should tackle the larger problem first, but in this case we might have to make use of the writing center's handouts or refer them to the Writer's Web.
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