Serving Non-Native English Speakers


These were interesting readings for this week because today I had two very different non-native English speaking students back-to-back as enrollments. I've worked with non-native speakers before, as an instructor in class and one-on-one in office hours, but this was the first time I've tutored non-native speakers. To add another layer of newness to this experience, neither one of the tutees was from China or Korea, where the majority of the ESL students I've taught are from, and in both cases, I realized, I was trying to adapt my active listening to different pronunciations, and my reading to different constructions and errors than those I have had in the past. One student was quite removed, seemed unclear in her expectations of the meeting and my role, and only wanted me to check her grammar to make sure her computer program did it right (but would NOT accept any higher order concerns even though organization and clarity were problems). The second student was excited, hopeful, and very invested in the enrollment program, working together on all aspects of her writing, and even interested in the library's database, which she didn't know existed.

I point out all of these differences because I learned so much in two hours. But I was not without a little anxiety when the first person rejected nearly everything I offered. I erred on the side of conservatism in the first case, since I thought it would be better to let the student decide and come to me with concerns later than forcing a change that is simply stylistic. In the second case, we ended up discussing the student's home country since the student was writing a paper on it, and when the student expressed her concerns about being a poor English writer, I attempted to assuage her fears by saying "I only know a tiny bit of French. I can't imagine writing whole papers in French!" And she reciprocated by giving me language-learning advice. What struck me in both cases was the point Carol raised in "Serving ESL Students" about non-native speakers often being accomplished writers in their native languages. They were aware of expectations and conventions of their writing and of their participation in class/with their advisors, they just needed a certain American way of doing it to meet the standards of the field in the US. It felt odd to provide such narrow guidance, but it still seemed productive.

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