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.

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