Mextesol Journal (Nov 2020)
Let’s Be Direct: Making the Student-Teacher Writing Conference Work for Multilingual Writers
Abstract
The student-teacher conference has been established as a pedagogical tool in composition courses, and teachers and students typically view the student-teacher writing conference as an effective way of providing feedback. However, most previous research on conferencing has been carried out with first language (L1) writers or advanced multilingual writers, and little attention has been given to student-teacher conferences with multilingual (L2) writers at various stages of language development. Though little research has been conducted, recent studies on student-teacher conferencing with multilingual writers offer important insights that provide direction for conducting effective conferences with multilingual writers. Earlier studies on conferencing with L2 students tended to measure the success of the conference on whether the conference effectively employed certain policy-as-pedagogy principles of conferencing, principles that had been initially developed with L1 speakers. Two of the prominent principles which should be called into question were insisting that the student-teacher conference be non-directive, and that higher-order concerns (HOCs) should be dealt with before lower-order concerns (LOCs). Rather than simply applying a structure of conferencing theory originated in conferences with L1 student writers to student-teacher conferences with multilingual writers, it is important to first closely examine these practices and reflect on whether they are applicable for working effectively with multilingual writers. This paper provides an overview of the student-teacher writing conference and multilingual students, and then addresses common practices and principles of conferencing and argues for the importance of flexibility when conferring with multilingual writers.
