Working with ESL Writers

Working with ESL Writers

While reading “Working with ESL Writers” by Gillespie & Lerner, I came across a passage in the third myth section. Paul, a Marquette tutor, stated that “Patience and understanding are two key factors to tutoring anyone. Just because someone does no use English as their native tongue should not change that” (Gillespie & Lerner, 120). I think this is one of the more important part of being a tutor. The tutors in the Writing Center at Gavilan, as far as I know, have not been formally trained in current teaching methods according to California state standards, we have to pull from our own learning experiences and translate them to the student. Which doesn’t always work.

              What helps with the reduction of stress in a tutoring session is as Niki, another Marquette tutor, says to ask questions that will help you better understand what they want out of the session like: “What do you feel like you have the most trouble with? What was a concern that your professor brought up in your last paper?” and “What is difficult for you about writing this paper?”(Gillespie & Lerner, 120). This allows for a more direct path to a solution for the problem/s of the paper.

              I also came across a section in the fourth myth section that stated “NNS (Non-Native Speaker) writers need opportunities to work with complex forms that fit their complex ideas…” (Gillespie & Lerner, 121). I feel like this is highly overlooked. As tutors we want to help, but when we sit down we start to do auto-correcting before the student even has time to get settled. This unfortunately does not allow the student to find and fix mistakes. This could be remedied by “ask[ing] them to read their whole texts aloud…not only [does this] give NNS writers practice in English pronunciation…but gives you a chance to assess the text as a whole…” (Gillespie & Lerner, 122). This step will, in my opinion, help the student/s the most, let them read and find their own mistakes.