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INTL STUDENT EXPERIENCE: Like local students of colour, international students are not a monolithic group & their individual experiences will vary. The documentary “Writing Across Borders”, highlights the experiences of international students as they navigate American academia.
E.g.: In Turkish writing, longer sentences are seen as poetic & certain punctuation serves merely aesthetic purposes. Some Chinese students struggle w. citing bc where individualism & due credit is valued in the U.S., there is a greater focus on sharing and collectivism in China.
Assumptions we make about writing aren't universal. What is natural to you is not necessarily natural to me. Supporting international students involves decentralizing American writing/rhetoric & recognizing that it is not the most “natural” or “professional” way to write or speak
Deborah Healey from the English Language Institute @OregonState explains that we should hold international students to the “same standards of meaning, quality of thought, and content”, rather than over-policing grammar errors.
It's fair to address grammar if it gets in the way of their ideas. Most grammar errors do not impede the meaning of someone’s writing, it just impedes the ease of our reading. Reading through surface error is a skill that tutoring staff should take time to hone.
The documentary highlighted a strategy that involved helping ESL students be better advocates for themselves. Most faculty members do not actively think about how much or how little accent they will accept in writing assignments.
Since students have no way of knowing what is going to be considered acceptable, approaching a professor with a past paper to ask about how it would be marked and what kinds of errors would be acceptable will be beneficial for both the student and the professor.
Source: Robertson, W. (Director). (2011, May 20). Writing Across Borders [Video file]. Retrieved August 4, 2020, from https://media.oregonstate.edu/media/0_v4s6xtpp
