Crossing the line and ESL students
As a new tutor it can be really difficult to know where the line is and when we’ve crossed it. Right now, maybe the most important thing I know about the line is that there is one. At least I can be aware that there is a point that I’m not supposed to cross with the student. Sometimes the tutor can perceive that a line has been crossed, but other times—especially for new tutors—it is helpful to be reminded of the line.
One of the most useful signs of crossing the line, as Wingate points out, is the body language of the student being tutored. Is the student active and engaged in the session? Does he have a pencil in hand, ready to write? Is she staring off into space, oblivious to the session? Whether in the writing center or in another social setting, I think we can all usually tell when someone is not interested in what we have to say. We catch on pretty quick when a person would rather be somewhere else, talking to someone else, doing something else. When we get that same awkward feeling in the writer center we know that something has gone wrong. The trickiest part of the situation—after we know there’s a problem—is to find a feasible, quick solution to get the session back on course. Maybe I’ll know more about this when I have a little more experience—for now, I’m not really sure.
Last week in the writing center I helped a few ESL students. I think, as Claire mentioned, that the line for an ESL student is different than for a native speaking student. One ESL student I helped had a short one-page paper for his Communications class. It was a good paper. I liked the order and the ideas he used, but he had also misused a lot of conjunctions, used the wrong tense for his verbs, and used the word to way too much. I wasn’t exactly sure how much to correct and how much to let go. Through the first half of the paper I didn’t say much about grammar and misused words, but once I realized how significant the problem was, I started to help him. We also went back and looked over the first half of the page a second time to catch the errors we had skipped over the first time.
I’m not really sure where the line was in that session or if I crossed it. I tried to do what I thought was most helpful to the student during the session, but I made quite a few marks on his page—maybe too many. So, where is the line for ESL students?
I can remember learning a new language and feeling completely confused and lost. I always hoped, and even asked, for people to correct me when I said something wrong, mispronounced a word, misused a phrase, or conjugated a verb incorrectly. That was the best way to learn. We learn from our mistakes, but only when we CORRECT them. For the most part, however, people would NOT correct me. They were too nice, too polite, too passive. A little basic help from a native speaker can make a world of difference for a non-native speaker.
One of the most useful signs of crossing the line, as Wingate points out, is the body language of the student being tutored. Is the student active and engaged in the session? Does he have a pencil in hand, ready to write? Is she staring off into space, oblivious to the session? Whether in the writing center or in another social setting, I think we can all usually tell when someone is not interested in what we have to say. We catch on pretty quick when a person would rather be somewhere else, talking to someone else, doing something else. When we get that same awkward feeling in the writer center we know that something has gone wrong. The trickiest part of the situation—after we know there’s a problem—is to find a feasible, quick solution to get the session back on course. Maybe I’ll know more about this when I have a little more experience—for now, I’m not really sure.
Last week in the writing center I helped a few ESL students. I think, as Claire mentioned, that the line for an ESL student is different than for a native speaking student. One ESL student I helped had a short one-page paper for his Communications class. It was a good paper. I liked the order and the ideas he used, but he had also misused a lot of conjunctions, used the wrong tense for his verbs, and used the word to way too much. I wasn’t exactly sure how much to correct and how much to let go. Through the first half of the paper I didn’t say much about grammar and misused words, but once I realized how significant the problem was, I started to help him. We also went back and looked over the first half of the page a second time to catch the errors we had skipped over the first time.
I’m not really sure where the line was in that session or if I crossed it. I tried to do what I thought was most helpful to the student during the session, but I made quite a few marks on his page—maybe too many. So, where is the line for ESL students?
I can remember learning a new language and feeling completely confused and lost. I always hoped, and even asked, for people to correct me when I said something wrong, mispronounced a word, misused a phrase, or conjugated a verb incorrectly. That was the best way to learn. We learn from our mistakes, but only when we CORRECT them. For the most part, however, people would NOT correct me. They were too nice, too polite, too passive. A little basic help from a native speaker can make a world of difference for a non-native speaker.
posted by Anonymous at 12:05 PM
1 Comments:
It sounds like the student you are talking about needs some remedial writing classes. With my ESL (actually EFL) students I do not correct every sing mistake on a paper, otherwise it would be returned in a sea of red and be very demoralizing.
Rather I focus on 2-3 errors types that are hampering communication or are related to the lessons that I have been recently teaching. And yes, I absolutely agree that mistakes are important but that the student does need to be made aware of them in a manner that doesn't lower confidence.
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