Discussion Questions

1) What kinds of cultural preferences do you think you have as a writer? Where did those preferences come from?

As an American writer, my cultural preference is to read and write in Standard English. I haven't had much experience with many other cultures because I have lived here my whole life, and the grade schools I attended did not have much diversity in them. I would love to explore other cultures because the video we watched demonstrated how other places read and write, and I think it'd be interesting to experience these writing styles and cultures firsthand. I feel that it's my duty as a Secondary English teacher to have knowledge about different cultures and their ways of writing. I think it would also be very beneficial for me to actually travel to these places so I could witness their uniqueness in the way they present their ideas and organize their thoughts on paper. I feel like I am missing out on learning about other place's stylist forms by only writing the way an American would write. I'd really enjoy seeing the different ways people express their ideas.


2) What do you do when you think you notice a cultural difference in how a studentis writing or responding to an assignment? What things do you need to be aware of?(If you have examples from writing center experience, great! If not, cast forward tohow you might/could handle such a situation.)

Well, I haven't had much experience with tutoring ESL students, but I did tutor a female ESL student, and I had a difficult time understanding what it was she was trying to express through her writing. She used phrases and wording that I was unfamiliar with, and that made me really nervous. I tried not to be to pushy and allow her to express her ideas the way she wanted to, so we mainly worked on grammatical errors. I asked her a few times what it was she was trying to say and after she explained it clearly to me, then we worked on making her statement more clear to the reader. I also noticed that she started her sentences off with a word that needed the word "the" in front of it to make it sound correct. An example of this would be "Cat went to the barn." She was missing the word "the" that went in front of the beginning of her sentence, but reading it aloud helped her notice her error. I only had to correct her once or twice on this though, then she caught on right away.

I think that all tutors should be aware of the ESL student's background. I was lucky enough to read this student's beliefs in her paper and realize how different her lifestyle was when she lived in Jerusalem. I learned a lot about the cultural that I didn't know before and I found a lot of it very interesting. One thing that I remember from the paper was that people in Jerusalem cannot go into a shopping mall if they are not married and have children. The mall there is very different from here because it's not a teen hangout and single people cannot go there to try and meet other single individuals. Other than rewording some of her writing and grammar, the session went pretty well in my opinion and I think I didn't make her change anything that would distort her culture/beliefs.