Writing Centers

I thought Thonus' article was very interesting. I appreciated the transcripts of actual tutor/student conversations. Although I have never worked in a writing center, I thought that her suggestions would be very helpful for writing center tutors working with diverse groups of students. I also think that her suggestions would transfer well to other situations such as for general education teachers in K-12 classrooms who conduct writing conferences with their students. I agree that it is important to consider the specific needs of L2 writers in writing conference situations, but I question her grouping of all 1.5 generation students into one general category. I am always uncomfortable with monolithic categorizations of students, but I realize that there is a need to consider the needs of particular groups of students and to have some guidelines for appropriate instruction. Perhaps more careful language such as "many 1.5 generation students" would help teachers to remember that there is great variation in any given group of students. Matsuda & Cox alluded to this in their article when they warned that overgeneralization should be avoided. I think that their approach of balancing accommodationist and separatist stances allows for more flexibility in working with individual students rather than applying the same techniques to all L2 writers.