Rethinking Writing Center Conferencing Strategies for the ESL Writer

Abstract

Writing Center has recently experienced a dramatic increase in ESL conferencing, brought about mainly by the establishment of a writing across the curriculum program on campus and by changes in the way we teach first-year composition courses for international students.In responding to the almost three-fold increase in numbers of ESL conferences over the past two years, our writing center faculty has begun to question whether traditional collaborative strategies are appropriate and effective for second-language writers.Probably more than anything else, the past two years' influx of ESL writers has pointed up two significant -and interrelated -concerns to writing center faculty.The first is how firm our assumptions are about our job and the "right" way to accomplish it.The second is how little training we as a faculty have in the principles and techniques of effective ESL conferencing.On both counts, we probably do not differ greatly from writing center faculties across the country.This paper presents the problems we encountered in conferencing with ESL writers and discusses the processes that evolved as we sought solutions.1Traditional Conferencing Strategies and the ESL Writer Since our writing center faculty was largely untrained in teaching ESL writing and unaware of the many differences in acquiring first-and secondlanguage writing skills, the increase in numbers of ESL conferences proved

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