ESL Tutoring

Under Rosemary's persuasion, I am blogging for the first time in my life and doing it about my experience with ESL tutoring.  I honestly don't believe I've accomplished as much as I expect I should have.  However, my anxiety about tutoring ESL students has faded. 

I have found, in my life experience, that even in a business relationship an element of personal connection makes for a better work environment. So, I approach the encounters as I would with any person I form a relationship with.  I connect with them in a personal way. What I feel is beneficial about this approach is that I'm learning about their background.  I learn about the languages they have spoken and  have been exposed to.  I learn about the culture they come from.  I learn about what is important to them.  I feel this is significant because it is allowing the client to trust me.  They don't just see me as another college staff person but as someone who is really interested in their life and their success in it.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all college staff are impersonal, many are just busy and overwhelmed.  As a tutor, we have the opportunity to fill in the gap.  This applies to any student receiving tutoring services.  Yet, more so, it applies to the ESL student. 

The anxiety for the ESL client as a learner outweighs the anxiety I have as a tutor.  By acknowledging how they must feel, I realize that worrying about being "perfect" is just pointless.  We are both going through a learning process.  This viewpoint has helped ease up my nerves, which has brought about a more relaxed experience for both the client and me.  The fact that they do not see me being anxious helps them to feel more confident in themselves and me.  I think that combining the previous approach with this one is working.

Grant it, I do have concerns about my performance.  Really though, that's just about refreshing my knowledge regarding the fundamentals about the English language, which I haven't had to think about in years.  I am using resources at the WLDC to assist in that.  One of those is the green book that Rosemary suggested. Studying the materials between clients is advantageous.

The approaches I have taken are what seem to be successful at this point.  It's not technical.  My tendecncy is to overcomplicate.  I don't know if anyone else does this.  But whether you are like me or not in that way,  I think it's best to start where I did and move on from there.

George Orwell

"Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end."

Uber-tutor challenge

Work with a student on a piece of his/her writing without reading every sentence in a straight line from start to finish. You may ask the student as many questions as you want.

1. Read the first paragraph to try to find a thesis.
2. STOP reading.
3. Only skim subsequent paragraphs, in particular looking for topic sentences.
4. Read the last paragraph, in case the thesis got put there.

How did that go?
Are there any disadvantages to doing this? What are they?
Are there any advantages? What are they?
What questions did you ask the student that helped this work (or might help this work next time)?
Will there be a next time?

And last, why in the world would I ask you to try this?

Welcome to fall semester 2012

You've barely had time to get to know your workplace and a couple of your fellow tutors, and already we're asking you to start blogging!

This blog enables you to read about what other tutors are doing--what worked and what didn't (that time, anyway). You can share frustrations, epiphanies, or successes. Respond to each other with encouragement, empathy, questions, suggestions, or random song lyrics. Not really. No lyrics. Unless they are pertinent.

Really, this blog is what you make of it.

What about grammar?

While it is true that we don't proofread papers, addressing grammatical problems IS part of what we do, especially errors that are pervasive in a paper. We don't want to simply ignore those issues or assure students that their papers are wonderful if their sentences truly are tangled up with errors. This can give students the wrong impression that they are doing just fine when they may have many sentence level errors that impede understanding.

Since it isn't your job to know all the ins and outs of grammar (they just don't teach you a lot of those rules in k-12), but since you also want to be honest with your students, what do you do?

Here's what I suggest:

1. Browse the green ESL book to see how they explain some of those rules you never learned in school. You'll pick up few useful ones, I guarantee.

2. Don't gloss over messed up grammar. Say something like, "Gee whiz, what a great topic, and what great organizational strategies you used. However, are you aware that you make a lot of mistakes with verbs? Do you feel pretty confident that you will be able find your verb mistakes once you get around to proofreading?" Or how about, "Golly, you did such a good job with this synthesis. I can tell you worked really hard. However, do you remember learning about sentence fragments in your ESL/high school English class? What do you remember about them? Do you see that this one is a sentence fragment?" Or, if you know it sounds weird but you can't put your finger on why, how about, "I really like your topic and how your developed it. Some of your sentences seems a little awkward to me, like this one. I'm not sure you can say it like that....can you think of another way to say it? Do you remember the rules you've learned about using phrases like this? Is there a name for this?" This might get the student looking more closely and connecting their ESL grammar class with their writing--THEY are in the driver's seat, using what THEY already know to self-correct--and inform you along the way, which makes them feel good, too.

3. Try to brainstorm a way the student can learn to identify the problem area. Try to find some kind of signpost in the student's writing that seems to mark the type of error you're working on. Get creative. Ask someone else for ideas.

4. Work on only one or two grammar matters in a session.

Because while it's not our job to make a paper perfect, we do want to give realistic feedback.

Writing prompt

"Tutors who never blog are ungenerous, secretive sorts who keep their good ideas to themselves and do not fail to deprive others of the encouragement they might be hopeful of being the beneficiaries of in a community of practice such as that of the WLDC."

Respond. Do you find this claim a little cheeky, or do you find it downright insolent? Do you find the double negatives off-putting? How about the awkward constructions ending with "of"? Can you revise them for clarity? Explain your answers, using your own experience and evidence and examples from the text.

Something about reading

I am guessing you run into students who misunderstand their reading or claim to have poor comprehension no matter what they do....

...so what do you do with that?

Do you feel that you have enough tools to help them with their reading comprehension? Or do you think we need to add more to our tutor training? Or is this not a problem in your experience?

One thing I try to encourage (not just by talking, but by demonstrating it) is to WRITE SOMETHING in the margins rather than highlight or underline. Highlighting/underlining can be just as passive as the passive "reading" that is the problem in the first place. You don't have to think very much or understand very deeply to underline. (Just ask a student WHY he underlined THIS sentence, right here, and see if he doesn't say something vague like, "I thought it might turn out to be important.") Point is, underlining seems as likely to identify something puzzling or just some minor thing the student "gets" as it is to identify something important in the piece. Writing something, on the other hand, is active and requires that you actively process the information at least enough to figure out what you want to write.

What do you do?