Tutor Esl Students example essay topic

Some Helpful Hints for Tutoring ESL Students Introduction Being a writing tutor can be challenging at times. One would be hard pressed to find a tutor who has not encountered difficulties with a student before. Challenges can arise for a variety of reasons, ranging from learning disabilities to cultural differences. This paper will focus on one type of challenge, tutoring English As a Second Language (ESL). Tutoring these students is not only challenging because they may need more help with writing style or grammar, but because of the cultural differences that arise between the tutor and the student. In fact, cultural differences and preconceived ideas about ESL students can cause a tutor quite a bit of trouble.

Every tutorial is different in its own respect. Although tutors tend to tutor ESL students differently than English speaking students, they should not always begin a session with the primary notion that they need to act as a "teller" rather than a tutor. Instead, they should look for certain patters and assist the writer with these concerns (Harris and Silva). In this paper, some suggestions on tutoring are outlined in hopes of helping other tutors overcome cultural barriers in order to tutor effectively. Some Background According to Muriel Harris and Tony Silva, many ESL students come to the writing center in hopes that a tutor will automatically fix their papers. ESL students may find the situation to be strange or uncomfortable because they come from a culture where teachers are supposed to be "tellers" not collaborators.

Tutors who do not address their every concern are considered poor educators in their culture. Suggestions from an essay in A Tutor's Guide mention this could be the reason why tutors tend to change from nondirective to directive approaches. The roles shift from collaborators to informants and there is a stronger urge to fix every error when working with ESL students. These types of conferences contradict our beliefs in nondirective tutoring.

From this, tutors should have strategies that are both appropriate for ESL writers and more compatible with writing center philosophy (Ritter 102). This means that tutors cannot assume that a pattern of interaction that is common and accepted in their culture will be familiar or comfortable for their ESL students. Therefore, tutors might find it useful to make sure that they and their ESL students understand each other's goals and expectations during their tutoring sessions (Harris and Silva). What to Do? I believe, as a tutor, it is important that we deal with these issues in an effort to improve not only an ESL student's writing, but our own communication skills as well. That is not to say that we should learn about every culture that exists today.

What we should do instead is learn to recognize cultural differences and understand how these differences affect the way in which a student writes, thinks and responds to tutoring sessions. A tutor's goal should be to remove cultural assumptions from his / her mind and prepare oneself for any type of challenge that might arise. There may have to be some adjustments in the philosophical writing center approaches. "Tutors who work with ESL students may have to be 'tellers' to some extent because they will probably need to provide cultural, rhetorical, and / or linguistic information which native speakers intuitively possess and which ESL students do not have, but need to have to complete their writing assignments effectively" (Harris and Silva). It would be almost impossible for tutors to try to elicit knowledge if the ESL student does not have this knowledge in the first place. Tutors should not be "tellers" throughout the whole session, but there are times when this approach is appropriate.

This is just like any session when they assume the role of informant occasionally when working with native speakers of English. Jennifer L. Ritter suggests that it is helpful for the tutor and ESL writer to talk about how they want to address language problems. Reading the paper out loud may not be the best way to pick out grammatical errors, since it may focus attention away from the writing onto the pronunciation. The writer may feel embarrassed. Instead, she suggests that if the tutor reads the paper, the tutor may ask whether the writer prefer the tutor to pause, repeat, or stress certain words when there is an error. If the writer is reading the paper, the writer may raise his / her hand or point to an error with a pencil (105).

These are good ways to negotiate the agenda and keep the writer active in his / her own learning during the session. Just to sum up some of these ideas, Dana Jones provides these suggestions on her website. Like tutorials with American students, a tutor should always speak slowly and clearly. Some assumptions lead us to believe that ESL students know nothing about the English language. She suggests that ESL students know grammatical terms, so tutors should use them during the tutorial. It is important to ask the student what the assignment was, what it was about, and what he / she wrote about.

Discuss the paper and ask the student specific questions to see if he / she has developed a strong knowledge of the paper topic. If the student wants the tutor to read the paper, begin reading the paper and put the pen in the writer's hand. As tutors, we tend to think we need to tell the ESL writer about every single mistake in his / her paper. We should not point out every single error.

Instead, we should get an idea of where the student needs the most work, whether it be with sentence structure, thesis development, or spelling errors. If we do this, we can begin with the most commonly made mistake. We can point out a few examples of the mistake in the student's paper and explain why the mistake is wrong then show him / her how to make the corrections. We can then follow up by having the writer write a few sentences or a paragraph including the correct form of the mistake. And we should always encourage them to come back to the writing center with any questions that may arise in the future. Complicating Matters It is a reoccurring problem in the writing center: ESL students are particularly insistent on having tutors correct all grammatical errors in a paper and tutors are at a loss to explain why this is not a productive approach in helping the student become a better writer (Harris and Silva).

"When an ESL student is unaware of language errors due to limited language proficiency, it would be all too easy for us to take a directive role because we have knowledge that the ESL student lacks" (Ritter 108). Resisting such pressure is very difficult, especially when the ESL writer feels this paper needs to be "correct". One way to address this is for tutors to adjust expectations. Tutors need to tell ESL writers that it is unrealistic for them to expect to be able to write like native speakers of English so quickly. It might be helpful to tell the writer that his / her professor probably understands his / her cultural background and will expect them to write with such minimal errors. It is also helpful to tell the writer that content is much more important than style.

Unfortunately, there are faculty who expect such students to write in perfect English, and this makes it difficult for the tutor and the writer who only have a short time to work on global concerns. All we can do is explain to the writer our role as a tutor and tell them that it is almost impossible to deal with every grammatical issue during a half hour tutorial. ESL students need to know that tutors are expected to help them with strategies that will make better writers in the future. We need to explain to them that tutors are supposed assist writer's in their writing, not be personal editors. This problem is often a result of a mismatch between the assumptions and expectations of tutors and students (Harris and Silva)...