Working with ESL Students

Rutgers University Writing Centers

Plangere Writing Center ♦ Livingston Writing Center ♦ Douglass/Cook Writing Center

Working with ESL issues is difficult, confusing, and tiring.

However, ESL students themselves are often a pleasure to work with. They know that
their English needs improvement, they seek help voluntarily, and they are often quite
well-prepared and willing to work. When you tutor ESL students, though, you are forced
to think about language in an unfamiliar, self-conscious way; you're forced to explain
things about English that you probably never thought about before because they always
seemed second nature. Moreover, when you read ESL papers, it often seems as if
there are so many language problems that you'll never even get to half of them in your
five weeks with the student. That may be true. But even if you don't get to everything,
that doesn't mean your work with the student is useless. Language acquisition is a slow,
painful process, but small improvements eventually add up to fluency-and sometimes
add up to at least a passing grade in a composition course.

Things may move very slowly in your sessions with ESL students:
It is OK if things go slowly. That is how ESL tutoring goes. In a well-spent session, the
student might work on only one pattern of error for half the time, and in the other
half, might only be able to look up all the unfamiliar words in a passage from the
reading. Even if things seem to be moving at an excruciating pace, it is important for
you to focus on the progress your students are making, and to remain positive in your
interactions with students who are trying hard.

You may need to spend more time talking to your ESL students than you spend
with your other students. Try not to feel too guilty about this. There's no way to point
out a pattern of error and then explain how to correct it without talking. If you feel that
you need to give your other students an explanation, simply congratulate them on their
ability to write and read independently during their tutoring sessions, and remind them
again how important it is for them to produce writing that will be useful when they
continue their work outside the Writing Center.

Save half the session for working on language.

In the Writing Center, we don't often spend much time thinking about grammar. We
emphasize reading comprehension and the development of ideas, But for ESL students
in particular, it is important to save half of the session for working on language. After
you look at the student's paper, you can decide what activity might benefit the student
most in the other half of the session. If the student doesn't have any specific plans for
what to work on, think seriously about working on reading comprehension. Even if the
student seems to have a basic understanding of the assigned readings, a close
paraphrase of one key passage—perhaps one quoted in the student's paper—is a great
exercise for building vocabulary, especially if you make sure that the student looks up
every single unfamiliar word. Keep a dictionary handy to reinforce the importance of
knowing the meaning of words. And remember, it may occasionally be necessary to
explain how information is arranged in a dictionary definition, and what some of the
abbreviations mean.

Try to use formal grammatical terms to describe language problems in papers.

As you begin to work with ESL students, you'll notice that many of them are already
quite familiar with English grammatical terms. This is a huge advantage, but only if you
also have some acquaintance with these terms and concepts, and can use them in your
session to describe what you see in the student's paper. Remember, ESL students
aren't always able to make decisions about revising based on "what sounds right"; they
need to see instead what grammar rule their writing has violated. You may find, though,
that once you point out a few sentences that have the same grammatical problem, the
student will often be able to name and correct that problem without your help.

Look for patterns of error in the student's paper.

The other advantage of thinking about language in grammatical terms when you read
ESL papers is that it gives you a way to look for and describe patterns of error in the
student's writing. If you don't have a way of finding a pattern in the errors, or if you don't
have a way of describing the language problems you see, then you are likely to
resort to simply telling the student what to say in the paper. If you do this, however, you
deprive the student of the chance to develop better language skills, and contribute to
making that student tutor-dependent. Our goal is to foster independent reading and
writing.

Point out one or two patterns of error, and then have the student find and correct
similar errors in the rest of the paper. Start with deep grammatical problems first.

Deep grammatical problems include: Less serious problems include:

Missing subject-nouns Misuse or lack of "a" and "the"
Missing verbs Word choice problems
Subject-verb agreement Mechanical problems (e.g. misplaced or
Fragmented or run-on sentences missing apostrophes, capitalization
Incomprehensible sentences with errors, etc.)
extremely tangled grammar Punctuation problems
Subordination problems Wrong prepositions
Unclear pronoun antecedents Wrong choice of pronouns
Inconsistent verb tenses

The best way to approach deep grammatical problems is to start asking basic
questions: Does each sentence have a subject-noun, a verb, and direct or indirect
objects if it needs them?
If the student's sentences are consistently missing anyone of these, you've already
identified an important pattern of error for the student to work on. When you ask the
student to start correcting this pattern, encourage him or her to stick to basic English
sentence structure, just for practice. Ask the student to start each sentence with its
subject-noun, follow it with the verb, the direct object, the indirect object, etc.
If you can't understand what the paper is saying:
First, remember that all essay drafts can descend into incomprehensibility
and ungrammaticality when the writer is wrestling with ideas. This is also
true for ESL students. If the beginning of your student's paper is really garbled, l see if
the problems improve in the body of the essay, when the writer moves past
that confusing thesis moment and finds a clear direction. If the writing does
improve after that first paragraph, ask the student to proof-read the beginning of
the paper more carefully and see how this task goes. After the proof-reading
is finished, you may be able to understand the paper better and spot remaining
patterns of error more easily.

Second, bear in mind that ESL students often understand the readings well,
have lots of ideas about them, and try to express their complex ideas in
complex sentences that sometimes get out of control. You need to help the
student simplify and untangle the sentences. Make the student identify the subject
noun and put it first in the sentence. Then ask the student to identify the verb and
put it after the subject noun. Have the student make sure the verb agrees with the
subject noun. Next have the student identify the object noun, and the indirect
object, if there is one. Make sure that dependent clauses (starting with "who" or
"that," etc.) come immediately after the the noun they refer to. Ask the student to
avoid the passive voice, which is a good rule for everyone to follow. After this
de-tangling work, you may be surprised to see the paper expressing some
interesting ideas.

What to do if the two strategies described above don't work, and you still can't
understand the paper:
(Use this method as a last resort. It demands that you sit next to your student and talk to
him or her for quite a while.)

Ask the student to describe the main idea of the paper. If this explanation is at all
comprehensible, ask the student immediately to "write that down." Keep asking specific
questions about words, sentences, and phrases in the paper until you get an
explanation of the paper's project you can understand.

Next, go through the paper, getting the student to explain what certain, specific
passages mean. You may need to ask for meaning sentence by sentence, phrase by
phrase
or even word by word. As the student explains each sentence in a way that you can
understand, have the student write down the exact words he or she said. Look at the
transcription to make sure it's comprehensible. Ifit is, go on to the next sentence.

Stop after each paragraph to check on grammatical and editing issues in the re- written
passage. You may only be able to rework one paragraph in the entire session.

After using this method a while, you will start to notice at least one pattern of
error that you can get the student to work on independently in your next session.
CAVEATS:

Have students use the grammar handbook they bought for their course.
Asking students to use their own grammar handbook will train them to be self-sufficient
in using that handbook. Even if there are better handbooks lying around in the Writing
Center, have students work with the one they'll also be using at home.

Do not assume that your student is an ESL student, and do not ask your student
if his or her first language is English.
The writing of students with English as another first language may look like ESL
writing, but you may insult your student by saying so. Instead, talk about working on
grammar and vocabulary, which students often see as a reasonable goal, whatever
their language status.