1/30 Blog

In my experience tutoring non-native speakers, I’ve often found their frustration with their own writing to be the most difficult thing for me. Native English speakers often show frustration with their writing, of course, but I’ve generally seen more of it with non-native speakers. Much of this frustration stems from grammar or language use that diverges from the rules, or the rules are flimsy in the first place: when to use articles, i-before-e, prepositions, etc. This frustration is understandable. Often the best or only piece of advice I have to offer is “you will learn it with a lot of practice” or “eventually knowing when to use ‘a’ or ‘the’ will seem natural.” But I’m never sure that is helping. I explain the rules to the best of my ability, but there is always a sentence that doesn’t play by the rules that the students get more frustrated. At this point, I usually get the overwhelming empathetic urge to help them by just doing it for them. I don’t want to see students struggling and the frustration at what they perceive as their inability to understand. It’s frequently hard for me to stop myself from just “doing it for them,” even though I know that is the absolute wrong thing to do. Beyond their frustration, I’ve generally found that approaching tutoring sessions with non-native speakers the same way I would with a native speaker works just fine: continuing to adjust scaffolding to meet their needs and desired learning outcomes. 

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 28, 2018 at 4:35 PM

    I was thinking about this sort of thing as well as I was reading. I've also encountered students' frustration with inconsistent English grammar and spelling rules (even native speakers get frustrated). Whenever that happens, I take a similar approach and say, "I don't know why it is the way it is, you just have to memorize it," which sounds unhelpful, but is true. I wonder if people have tricks for learning which verbs have irregular past tenses or changed spellings?

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