Tutoring ESL Students: Issues and Options

Abstract

For students whose first language is not English, the writing classroom cannot provide all the instructional assistance that is needed to become proficient writers.For a variety of reasons, these students need the kind of individualized attention that tutors offer, instruction that casts no aspersions on the adequacy of the classroom or the ability of the student.We should recognize that along with different linguistic backgrounds, ESL students have a diversity of concerns that can only be dealt with in the one-to-one setting where the focus of attention is on that particular student and his or her questions, concerns, cultural presuppositions, writing processes, language learning experiences, and conceptions of what writing in English is all about.Typically, the tutorial assistance available for these students is provided by writing centers, and much of the personal help available there is precisely the same as for any native speaker of English: the goal of tutors who work in the center is to attend to the individual concerns of every writer who walks in the door-writing process questions, reader feedback, planning conversations, and so on.But also typically, tutors, who bring to their work a background of experience and knowledge in interacting effectively with native speakers of English, are not adequately equipped to deal with some additional concerns of non-native speakers of English-the unfamiliar grammatical errors, the sometimes bewilderingly different rhetorical patterns and conventions of other languages, and the expectations that accompany ESL writers when they come to the writing center.Tutors can be reduced to stunned silence when they try to explain why "I have many homeworks to completed" is wrong or why we say "on Monday" but "in June."Tutors need some perspective on rhetorical approaches other than those they expect to find, such as a direct statement of the topic or discourse with a linear Muriel Harris, professsor of English and