One of the consistently difficult aspect of the tutoring so far has been attempting to address the grammar issues of my non-native English speaking student when the higher order ideas she's attempting to communicate are not entirely clear. Difficulties with tense and article usage have been particularly common in her work, as have difficulties making the relationship between ideas clear. Clarity is, of course, something all of the writing center students struggle with, but with the non-native English speaking student who is struggling to figure out how those ideas relate conceptually as well as how to articulate them on the page the difficulty is doubled. I often ask her to write through her thought process, which usually yields more clarity for us both, but makes our progress slow-going which I anticipate will be increasingly frustrating for her as the semester progresses since the rate of writing assignments will only increase.
Week 3
I’m so glad to see such wonderful and insightful posts from you all about working with international and ESL students, because it’s something I’ve also been thinking about a lot in terms of some of my ESL students in my Interpretation of Literature class, who I think could really benefit from Writing Center tutelage! One student’s reading responses, in particular, embody many of the grammar/syntax issues we’ve been reading and talking about — the ideas are there, but her clarity of expression is impeded by the difficulties of this language. I can only imagine how incredibly frustrating it must feel to know what you want to say, but be struggling with how to say it (I look like half a semester of Italian in college, but dropped it because it was too hard, lol; non-native English speakers don’t have that luxury). Another international student’s reading responses, on the other hand, demonstrate the ability to put a sentence together in a way that makes sense—but I can ...
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