Blog 3- McKay

I don't have any experience tutoring writing for international students, though I do have some experience helping international students find academic research. With the students I've worked with, I have always felt very conflicted leading students to the dense academic writing their assignment requires when the student is still learning english. Even the native english speaker struggles with understanding academic writing.  I appreciate that for a lot of first years, professors don't always expect students to write in an "academic discourse,"  but they are often exposed to it an asked to interpret it for their assignments.  In some discussions I've had with international students, they've even noted how the academic writing they know is different, particularly when it comes to the rules of citation and ideas of intellectual property.

The article discussed something I've been thinking about in my tutoring sessions (and I am not working yet with any international students). Particularly with rhetoric classes, the courses are focused on introducing critical thinking and concepts. I've found in my tutoring sessions so far, we've mainly discussed larger rhetorical concepts and only secondarily how to structure writing or talk about those concepts. As a previous blog post said, I think it's hard to know when to point out rules of language, grammar, or discourse and when to focus on the main ideas and concepts. I tend to avoid being overly picky with language if the student is showing that they are thinking because I assume their writing will improve as they are exposed to more and more writing. I wonder with international students if they really want help with the language more than the concepts. Obviously we need to find a way to balance both, but I wonder where that line is with international students.