Schedule of Events

Standard Academic English and academic writing expectations may deviate within the writing of multilingual writers, and specifically Hispanics. In general, multilingual writers come into the writing center with unique patterns and needs, making the connection tutors have with these writers especially important. We used double blind survey questions asking 11 bicultural and/or bilingual students to self-evaluate their writing strengths and weaknesses to see their perception about their own writing. Additionally, we identified patterns and occurrences in their responses. This information will be used to identify the views these students have about writing in relation to the patterns present in their writing. We will also explain other patterns we have noticed both in the Writing Center through actual sessions and research. Then, we will provide strategies to address these patterns, ultimately creating a better connection between tutors and our clients. This project addresses the idea of connecting with purpose because it is important to be aware of patterns and perceptions a writer has in order to understand them and use appropriate strategies to best help them.

Since the summer of 2015, the Writing Center of California Lutheran University has started a series of writing projects that reach out to community members in its nearby neighborhood in order to create an active culture of writing in the communities around campus and outside the classroom. One of those projects is a Multiliteracy Camp for young writers, where we strive to represent all youth of the surrounding community. In the summer, the Writing Center presents itself as a multiliteracy space dedicated to introducing 21st-century literacy skills and engaging children in multimodal writing and their writerly identities. The rationale of this summer camp stems from the Resolution on Social Justice in Literacy Education stated by National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), which states “Literacy education can be used to… [interrupt] current practices that reproduce social, cultural, moral, economic, gendered, intellectual, and physical injustices.” Therefore, this camp reaches out and offers scholarships to underprivileged children scattered throughout the surrounding community, bringing together children across all socioeconomic boundaries and simultaneously observing CalLu’s commitment to service and justice. In the past two years, we’ve found ourselves in a similar path to Rousculp’s (2016) process in exploring uncertainty and potentials, and mapping out the ecological structure among writers, writing consultants, spaces, locations, and identities. Our presentation will reflect that exploration by focusing our discussion on how through this project we work to expand our networks and ecologies to include the voices and writings of historically and chronically marginalized members of our communities.

This project will detail the research results from several meetings with groups of ELL students. Over the course of two months, meetings were set up with two different groups of ELLs in which information was gathered through questions that covered anything from festivals and religions to everyday household life. The goal of this project was to gather a sufficient amount of data from the ELL students in order to provide useful information for English teachers. The data shows cultural and linguistic differences that can be used for instructors. Data was collected from conversations between group members and the ELL students. This was done by not only taking note of the content that the students were giving us, such as information on cultural practices, but also by paying attention to their deliverance of the information. The results show that Japanese students, when speaking English will have difficulty pronouncing many vowel and consonant sounds which are missing from Japanese. Additionally, Japanese is a SOV language whereas English is a SVO language, and students have expressed that this is a difficulty for them when speaking. There are also various gestures and expressions that commonly caused confusion for students upon arriving in the United States. This includes things such as asking a person "What's up?" or "How are you?" or even making a beckoning gesture with your hand.