Flurious

I met with my first ESL student today. He came in and was very shy. I asked him what he wanted to work on. He said grammar. I asked if I could read the paper aloud; he was reluctant to let me. He came in for English 1010, but the vocabulary he used was way more advanced than that of a normal 1010 student. His word choice was not only correct but refreshing and original. The assignment was an introductory paper about himself. I learned that he had already earned a bachelor's degree in China, and that he had interned at a huge accounting firm over there.

His grammar and word choice were great, but the organization of some of his sentences was confusing. I found myself saying, "this needs to be at the beginning of the sentence," but I couldn't explain why. The ideas came out in the wrong order. I have no idea what makes the way I had him change them "the right order," but it was the right order. When I attempted to explain why and I couldn't, he looked at me like "My writing is still making sense, why aren't you?"


I have had the experience of living in a foreign country and learning another language. I think the best language learning advice that I was given before I left was: English isn't Spanish. That statement is even more true when you are trying to compare Mandarin and English, like my tutee was. There really aren't words to describe the frustration that learning a new language brings, so I will make one up. Flurious-adj: A word that describes the necessary frustration a person will experience in learning a second language. The ESL writer is going encounter a lot of potentially flurious situations as they learn English. The hardest part for them can be letting go of their established ideas of order. As tutors, it is our job to have enough knowledge so that we can properly explain the "whys" of the English language.