In the last three years, the writing center that I direct at Dickinson College has become a Multilingual Writing Center, or what we here like to call the MWC. Yes, we work with ELL writers who come from varied and multiple language backgrounds. However, we call ourselves “multilingual” because we have undergraduate peer writing tutors in eleven languages. In AY 2011 we had over 800 visits; in AY 2012 over 1200 visits, and in AY 2013 over 1500 visits. The MWC, I think, is here to stay and students are loving it.

As you might imagine, the MWC has created a lot of pedagogical and theoretical challenges. For one, I no longer think of tutoring quite so hierarchically (higher and lower/later order concerns). Instead, we use the phrase “holistic tutoring” in our writing center. For another, my college has a robust study abroad program with students coming here and going to international sites in droves every year. That said, I have become very interested in intercultural rhetoric and cultural varieties of academic writing. In trying to think about academic discourse communities along global lines, I have begun to interview the students who have just come back from study abroad or are studying abroad at Dickinson. I have made these interviews into podcasts. I invite you to visit my site, “Going International: Stories of Second Language Writers” — http://blogs.dickinson.edu/mwc/

In the meantime, of those writing centers out there that call themselves bilingual or multilingual, how do you find your pedagogy changing? How do you take into account cultural differences related to writing and the writing process?