High Reward

Learning about working with English Language Learner students has been a particularly interesting part of English 383, in my opinion. Because I come from a multicultural background, I am always interested in research that has been done about people from my mother and father's cultures. Reading articles about how to best assist those writers who may be struggling with the English language has been some of the best readings that I have done in this class and I cannot wait to put these theories into practice.

Mosher's "Creating a Common Ground with ESL Writers" was an article that I particularly enjoyed. His WATCH method for assisting ELL writers will be so beneficial for me when I am working with international students in the future. I am so happy that Mosher emphasizes that "helping the writer is [our] primary purpose". I think that, over the course the semester, we may have gotten caught up in theories and readings and lost sight of the reason that we are Writing Consultants. We all have the ability to write well. In my opinion, when one has a particular strength or skill, it is part of their responsibility to share that ability with others. I know that I have always loved helping others with their writing and I hope that I will not lose sight of that when I begin working in the Writing Center.

Our responsibility to our peers is exponentially increased when we are faced with a situation involved a writer whose native language is not English. Forget nuance and flow; many of these writers must focus on sentence-level errors or organization as a whole. When an ELL student walks through the doors of the Writing Center, we as Consultants must share our skill with them and help them to the best of our ability. I am so happy that Mosher emphasized this aspect of consulting in his article...I think we may have needed a little reminder.

Another aspect of Mosher's article that I enjoyed was how he broke issues into "Cultural Variants". We as Americans often do not acknowledge that people in other cultures do things differently than we do. As the world becomes smaller with the help of technology, it is increasingly important that we acknowledge these differences in culture and that we are respectful to those who hail from different places than we do. I know that, as a business major, the likelihood of me working with people from different countries is very high. When I am reading a report or proposal written by someone with different cultural variants than my own, I am sure that I will return to Mosher's article to remind myself of these differences.

I welcome the challenge of working with ELL students as a Writing Consultants. It may be one of the more difficult tasks that I will face during my time in the Writing Center, but I am sure it will be the most rewarding.