I always enjoy reading the Writing Lab Newsletters. I found the previous one particularly interesting and decided to comment on this article for this week's blog post on the class readings. I think the best line/advice in this article for us as consultants to remember is that:
"Each group faces very different problems and tends to produce characteristic mistakes which result from confusion of the structures of their native language with those of English, and from writing to satisfy cultural expectations which are very different from those of the United States. Language is an expression of culture, and the influence of either upon the writing of foreign students cannot be understood without considering the other as well."
I really agree with this idea that language is an expression of culture. Evening thinking about in Japan the important of Haiku's; these simple, yet beautiful poems can be quite powerful, even though they may just be short and sweet. I feel like as an American, I am so used to arguing and explaining, however, not everyone writes in this manner. It definitely makes me think about whether or not I would be helpful when consulting an ESL student. Would I get frustrated or be super confused?
In reading that article, I also thought about Haiku poems. As the article says, Japanese culture strives to present "intuitive thoughts" (pg 4) instead of arbitrary, organized writing. I also agree with what you say about how we are so used to doing all this arguing and explaining. At this point in my education, I feel as though writing a simple Haiku poem would be more difficult than writing a two-page reading response.
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