INTRODUCTION

According to the 2011 Open Doors Data on international students compiled by the Institute on International Education, there has been a 14% increase in international graduate students in the United States in the last 5 years. California ranked first among states for hosting these students. International students who have not attended English-medium schools in their home countries often struggle with the academic writing requirements in higher education in the United States. Matsuda and Silva (2006) urge instructors and administrators in higher education to heed the particular needs of these students. However, instructors of courses in graduate programs often have insufficient training in working with the specific writing needs of nonnative English speakers and provide varied approaches to evaluating student writing (Land & Whitley, 1989).

Research Context and Design

This action research study (see McNiff & Whitehead, 2011) took place in a graduate-level TESOL program in Southern California through collaboration with a course instructor in the TESOL program, the writing center director, and the graduate assistant writing tutor designated to support the writing needs of the TESOL program’s international graduate students. They designed an English Writing Support Seminar taught by the graduate assistant, which consisted of a 2-hour class meeting offered once per week over the course of two semesters. This weekly seminar took place from noon to 2 p.m., when no classes on campus are in session. An e-mail invitation and in-class announcements to participate were extended to the first- and second-year international TESOL students.

The seminar was loosely modeled after the University of Texas at El Paso’s “Crossing Disciplines and Languages in a Graduate Writing Workshop,” presented by Kate Mangelsdorf (2011), whose program provided additional English writing support for their growing international graduate student population (see the Appendix). The seminar included grammar mini-lessons, open forum discussion of writing assignments and coursework topics, and brief individual meetings with the tutor during the last 20–30 minutes of class. The TESOL course instructor, writing center director, and graduate writing tutor (the researchers for this project) met several times during the two semesters of the seminar to collect data for this study by documenting reflections and subsequent actions taken.

Participants

Three of the international student participants were in their second year of the TESOL program, and six were in their first year. Seven students were from China, one was from Taiwan, and one was from Saudi Arabia. All students had met the minimum Internet-based TOEFL proficiency requirement of 83.

Phase I Assessment and Intervention

Phase I occurred during the initial offering of the writing semester. The writing tutor received initial samples of student writing from the TESOL program coordinator indicating areas in need of additional support, such as verb tense, preposition use, and correct word choice. The writing tutor prepared and administered mini-lessons with handout reference guides for each of these areas during the first few meetings. As the seminar progressed and the students’ needs became increasingly apparent, mini-lessons extended to include phrasal verbs, adjective use, critical reading comprehension strategies, word connotations, logical sequencing of sentences, and paragraph structure. The tutor flexed her instruction, designing mini-lessons in response to each previous week’s seminar discussions and the issues she observed in students’ writing.

The writing tutor also encouraged students to bring graded written assignments, drafts, and questions or issues concerning writing, language, or course requirements to the seminar. She gave extensive feedback on in-class writing assignments, and during class discussion she encouraged and fielded all questions about the students’ written coursework, their issues with their classes, and their integration in general to an academic program in English. She reserved the final 20–30 minutes of the seminar to meet individually with each student for 5–10 minutes. After each seminar, the writing tutor sent weekly emails recapping the previous week’s work to encourage attendance and increase continuity.

Phase I Reflections

Throughout Phase I, the writing tutor found that the students needed more support than the time constraints of the seminar could handle. She spent a considerable amount of time covering not only issues related to the mechanics and structure of writing, but also topics that surfaced which went beyond the original intent of the seminar. Some examples of topics include the following:

• conceptual issues concerning completion of the TESOL program
• techniques for conducting academic research
• support with comprehending prompts, assignments, and effective reading strategies
• mechanical issues such as idiomatic expressions, gerunds, temporal sequencing, and articles
• language for ordering a sandwich at Subway (seriously!)

In addition to the issues related to supporting students with queries beyond the scope of the seminar, student attendance was an issue. Attendance fluctuated and eventually dropped because there were no accountability measures in place. The tutor believed that the students had shifted their focus toward merely surviving the culminating assignments of their program coursework. The drop in attendance jeopardized the continuity of the seminar and the learning potential it could provide. Without proper accountability structures in place, the writing seminar could not sustain the original intention of providing academic writing support for these students.

Bridging the gap between individual tutoring and group classroom teaching in this new, hybrid teaching-tutoring seminar format proved to be a notable challenge for the tutor. In the brief, individualized meetings, she had a chance to give one-on-one advice to fit each student; however, this tactic also made it challenging for her to maintain the group classroom attention. Furthermore, the hybrid teaching-tutoring approach encouraged students to bring in last-minute drafts that were due 2 hours after the seminar, instead of a piece of graded work that could be reviewed and revised to inform the student’s next writing assignment. The tutor could not monitor whether students put new knowledge or learned strategies from the seminar to use because she could not assign her own required homework assignments. Ultimately, the tutor did not have enough access to the students’ work overall to know if anything they discussed went into practice.

Phase II Assessment and Intervention

After the first semester of offering these writing seminars, the course instructor, director, and graduate assistant discussed adjustments and chose writing portfolios as a method to better document writing progress. To the researchers’ surprise, only two students attended the writing seminars during this second semester. According to these two students, the others from Phase I had become overly involved with significant others, families, and part-time jobs. During the first meeting of Phase II, the writing tutor discussed the structure and purpose of the portfolio, which the two students in attendance responded to positively. As the semester progressed, however, the sessions often shifted focus to topics such as how to use the library; how to conceptualize, plan, and execute graduate research; how to seek out guidance from program directors and professors during office hours; how to use the Writing Center; and how to read critically and annotate effectively. These pressing needs filled the seminar meetings with discussion and advisory instruction from the writing tutor, rendering the portfolio of writing exercises, drafts, and revisions a subsidiary directive.

Phase II Reflections

The writing tutor had prepared numerous and creative writing assignments to put writing concepts into motion for the portfolio, but she was unable to create the kind of continuity she needed because of student absences and lack of accountability. Two-thirds of the way into the semester, attendance wavered between one and zero students. This second semester left the writing tutor with questions about the actual needs the interventions had been trying to address:

• Did the international TESOL students need this kind of support?
• Would they benefit more from individual tutoring appointments instead of a group forum with their peers and an instructor?
• If they were kept accountable for attendance, would they see the benefit of the seminars?
• Did an additional seminar detract from the time they needed to complete assignments instead of benefit the quality of those assignments? Should the seminar be mandatory?
• If so, should the seminar include only international students from one program (i.e., TESOL) or multiple graduate programs?
• Should the seminar be solely for international students, or would they benefit from working with native-English-speaking peers in the seminar, too?

Future Directions for the English Writing Support Seminar

Providing scaffolded writing support outside of coursework is a challenging endeavor, but there are several learning opportunities we can continue to address through the iterative process of action research. The following solutions may be viable:

1. Academic Writing Seminars—Instead of weekly sessions, offer a few 1-hour Academic Writing Seminars. The content of these seminars could be generated by the nature of the students’ needs. Thus, there could be five seminars on these themes: unpacking writing assignments, academic library use, academic research strategies, academic argument development, and academic writing mechanics.
2. Focused Individual Tutoring—To supplement the Academic Writing Seminars, tutoring sessions could be offered to individual students in small groups between seminars. The content of the sessions could focus on the term papers from the students’ courses, with the tutor helping students get started early on these term paper assignments and work toward polished drafts. Brainstorming, reading notes, outlines, and rough drafts could be compiled in a writing portfolio to reinforce the concept of the writing process.
3. Timeline—Instead of holding forum sessions throughout the semester, the Academic Writing Seminar and the Focused Individual Tutoring could be scheduled beginning with the second week of the semester and ending 2–3 weeks before finals week. At the end of each semester, the students would be queried for their opinions on the content of the seminars and tutoring and the timeline.
4. Attendance, Accountability, and Continuity—Attendance could be encouraged by accommodating students’ learning and timeline needs, publicizing the program schedule, and asking advisers and faculty to promote the program. Accountability and continuity could be cultivated by means of integrating writing portfolios into course work assessment. Attendance in these seminars, one-on-one tutoring appointments, or both could also become part of the course requirement and integrated into the students’ overall coursework grades.

As we continue to accept international students into our programs, this study highlights the need for an ongoing effort to identify and address their needs so as to support their success in U.S. institutions of higher education.

REFERENCES

Institute on International Education. (2011). Open doors report: International students in the U.S. Retrieved from http://www.iie.org/en/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors/Data/Fast-Facts

Land, R. E., & Whitley, C. (1989). Evaluating second-language essays in regular composition classes: Toward a pluralistic U.S. rhetoric. In D. M. Johnson & D. H. Roen (Eds.),Richness in writing: Empowering ESL students (pp. 284–293). New York, NY: Longman.

Mangelsdorf, K. (2011, March). Crossing disciplines and languages in a graduate writing workshop. Handout presented at the TESOL International Convention, New Orleans, LA.

Matsuda, P. K., & Silva, T. (2006). Cross-cultural composition: Mediated integration of U.S. and international students.In P. K. Matsuda, M. Cox, J. Jordan, & C. Ortmeier-Hooper (Eds.), Second-language writing in the composition classroom: A critical sourcebook (pp. 246–259). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

McNiff, J., & Whitehead, J. (2011). All you need to know about action research. London, England: Sage.

Appendix: Resources Used by the Writing Tutor

Bruce, S., & Rafoth, B. (Eds.). (2009). ESL writers: A guide for writing center tutors (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Lane, J., & Lange, E. (1999). Writing clearly: An editing guide (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Heinle ELT.

Raimes, A. (2005). Keys for writers (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Roen, D., Pantoja, V., Yena, L., Miller, S. K., & Waggoner, E. (Eds.). (2002). Strategies for teaching first-year composition. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Sarina Chugani Molina is the coordinator of the TESOL, Literacy, and Culture Program at the University of San Diego. She teaches second language acquisition, methods of teaching ESL, and linguistics. Her research interests include international education, cultural intelligence, teacher development, and working with culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Jen Marshall Lagedrost is the graduate assistant of the Writing Center at the University of San Diego. She teaches an international graduate student writing support workshop to aid the transition of students pursuing a master’s degree in a second language. She is completing her MFA in creative writing and poetry at San Diego State University.

Deborah Sundmacher, MA, is the director of the Writing Center at the University of San Diego and the academic coordinator for the English Language Academy, which provides an academic preparation program for international students. She teaches writing and literature in the English Department, where she focuses on the structured writing of thesis-based essays.