CREATING THIRD SPACE: ESL TUTORING AS CULTURALMEDIATION

When Stephen North laid the foundations for the modern university writing center in his 1984 article “The Idea of a Writing Center,” he proclaimed that “in a writing center the object is to make sure that writers, and not necessarily their texts, are what change by instruction” (38). That is, the writing center should focus on the process of writing and not the produced text. While it may be easy for tutors to follow this guideline in general, the task becomes much more daunting when tutors deal with tutees whose first language and style of thinking are different from their own. When the tutor and tutee are separated by a language barrier—and a difference in cultural and historical context— North’s collaborative process tutoring is nearly impossible. I have noticed that this is a large problem in the writing center at the University of Maryland–Baltimore County where I work. All of us tutors were required to take an extensive course in tutor training and tutoring theory in which we were reminded time and again that a writing center is not what North calls a “fixit shop”—ESL tutoring scenarios were especially highlighted—but I still frequently find myself and my fellow tutors doing nothing more than proofreading the papers of ESL students when a session becomes difficult. In this situation, tutors are given the task of helping tutees transform their “unofficial” product into Standard English prose. In addition, since these students usually appeal to the writing center because their produced texts were rejected—by teachers or their own insecurities about the quality of their writing—tutors feel pressure not to aid in the writing process but to translate the troubled text into their own versions of academic prose. When an ESL student comes into the writing center, an inherent contradiction arises between what the writing center is supposed to do and what the writing center does for this sort of writer, in particular. A difference in expectations manifests; the tutee expects to have his paper proofread or to be taught why his problems persist, while the tutor does not know what to expect from such a difficult session. Thus, the tutoring session turns into a somewhat nebulous proofreading session, since the tutor’s and tutee’s exigencies are competing rather than communicating or collaborating. The tutee and tutor both expend a lot of energy on parallel paths because their starting points and end points are not common. If intersection—or effective communication—does not occur, a common goal cannot be met. The efforts of the session result in parallel objectives, both of which remain unfulfilled. In my article, I plan to show how a tutor can work to solve this contradiction by creating a “third space” within the tutoring session, a theoretical space where the tutor’s and the tutee’s expectations meet and negotiate. As I will go on to show, third space is not only a space that helps bridge the gap between the unofficial ESL bank of knowledge and the official academic bank of knowledge, but it can also change and shape participants’ identities to become more active and, thus, more apt to change. Furthermore, when such a negotiation is reached, tutors are able to conduct sessions consistent with Stephen North’s idea of a writing center: one where the focus is on a person’s writing process, not the product.