Attending to Present Others: A Framework for Supporting Multilingual Graduate Writers

Extending prior work on present others, individuals who are not physically present in writing center sessions—such as advisors, colleagues, and peers—but who directly or indirectly impact what happens during consultations (Kranek & Carvajal Regidor, 2021), we argue that attending to present others is one way to more holistically support multilingual graduate writers. Based on data from session recordings, we contend that present others can be used as a framework to train consultants to better address the specific needs of this student population by acknowledging their socialization processes, feedback networks, language needs, and emotions. Then, we share two approaches to consultant training using present others that have worked at our respective writing centers. Ultimately, we demonstrate how attending to present others and providing explicit training for consultants can lead to more socially and linguistically just approaches to multilingual graduate writing support in the writing center.