Reassessing The "Proofreading Trap": ESL Tutoring and Writing Instruction

Reassessing The "Proofreading Trap": ESL Tutoring and Writing Instruction

Sharon A. Myers, Texas Tech University Myers takes particular issue with writing center scholars and others who view sentence-level revision for ESL students as unethical. -from the abstract, 219 

 This article, which first appeared in The Writing Center Journal in 2003, serves as a thought-provoking challenge to tutors who attempt to apply nondirective approaches to ESL students. It may also provide theoretical support for tutor who tend to take a more directive approach in working with second-language writers. -from the abstract, 219 

 The Foreign Service Institute has estimated that a minimum level of professional speaking proficiency (entailing the ability to fluently support opinions, hypothesize, and explain complex phenomena) in a foreign language relatively remote from English may require a native English speaker 2,400 hours of intensive training under the ideal conditions provided by the Foreign Service. A superior level may entail hundreds of hours more. According to Liskin-Gasparro, attaining a superior level in a more closely related langauge, such as Spanish or French, is four semesters of foreign langauge classes in a U.S. university provide 200-300 hours of instruction. Assuming that these estimations of the tiem it takes English learners to learn to speak foreign langauges at professional levels would at least approximate the tiem it takes for speakers of otehr langauges to speak with the same proficiency in English, it is not realistic to expect that many ESL students will speak fluently at advanced levels. -221 

 Writing is denser than speech and in academic settings requires very high levels of reading comprehension, a formal register, sophisticated paraphrasing ability and a specialized vocabulary. Very few ESL students who walk into a writing center are likely to have such high levels of proficiency. -221 

 [She discusses Jane Cogie's idea of the "cultural informant," an idea that gives the tutor more licence to be directive than the traditional nondirective one. However, this conception still does not permit sentence-level action.] [Cogie suggests 4 strategies for tutors: Learner's dictionaries, minimal marking, error logs, and self-editing checklists. These are mechanical ways for the student to self-correct and reduce errors. In contrast to this, Myers advocates the help of a native-speaker-reader, working as a tutor. She would approve of "They Say/ I Say".]