Cultural or Academic Informants

If one goes to the writing center (WC), one gets the most out of the trip by going in prepared. Have a few specific questions or issues you want to address ready and present them to the consultant before you get started. None of the 1/2 dozen or so WC's I've worked with have prioritized grammar and mechanics, and most try to avoid those "lower order concerns," believing them to be less of a barrier to understanding than higher order concerns like logic or organization. The goal, as Steven North put it, is to create better writers rather than better writing. As a result tutors sometimes find themselves conflicted when faced with international students.

For the Non-native English speaker, immigrant or Generation 1.5 student the boundary between higher order and lower order concerns is blurred. Syntax, word choice, the appropriate use of articles and awkward grammar may not typically thwart understanding between 2 well educated Native-English Speakers from a similar background, but when one comes from an alien environment with different language, culture and values, the typical assumptions can lead to disaster. I've even seen this happen when white upper-middle-class consultants work with students from less privileged urban schools in Toledo, Kansas City, KS and KC MO. Schools tend to train tutors to resist the urge to address lower order concerns even when the tutor's instincts tell them they should. Partly this is to ward off the possibility of the tutor appropriating the student's work. And often grammar and mechanics are not the biggest problem a paper has. Also, IMHO, this keeps the WC from getting too popular. No one wants to create a proofreading center on campus.

Asking for or finding a Cultural Informant provides a solution for NNS and students from diverse backgrounds. The University of Richmond Writing Center tutor training site explains that the role of a cultural or academic informant is to

try to identify the problems that the student is having, and then use a direct approach to teach writing as an academic subject. When we, as ESL tutors, "understand, respect, and respond to the differences between the needs of ESL and native-speaking writers," we can increase the effectiveness of a particular session (Powers 103). For more advanced students, it may be advantageous to show "specific examples of how to fix a particular error, and then to try one on their own, or explain what he/she has fixed" because this process allows the student "to really grasp your ideas, and helps them learn in an effective way," according to Dotty Giordano (Connect, 10/17/97).
All ESL students who enter the writing center come from different backgrounds, and therefore, bring different cultural and social contexts to a tutorial. Although some of the problems that an ESL student has are a result of the rhetorical structure of their native language, "others are social or cultural attitudes and beliefs that will definitely affect the tutor-tutee relationship" (Powers 98). Therefore, the tutor must act as a cultural informant. As an example, the nature of asking questions is different among cultures. For an international student, questioning a tutor, or an authority figure, may be frowned upon in one culture, whereas in ours, it is simply regarded as a means of obtaining information for clarification. Since questioning authority may be considered disrespectful in the eyes of a particular international student, he or she may refrain from asking questions in a tutorial because he or she feels that it is inappropriate. In this situation, the tutor should encourage the student to ask questions and inform him or her that this type of behavior is not considered disrespectful in the eyes of Americans

The term "academic informant" is also used because sometimes non-typical learners, such as dyslexic, dysgraphic, and some students with autism spectrum conditions also benefit from more direct help and communication.

So tell your consultant you want a cultural or academic informant if your learning style needs it, but also let them know specifically what you need work with on your writing. Read the margin and end comments from teachers to get some ideas.

The above research is tertiary - see the Asian EFL Journal on the topic.