Blog #7 - Harris & Silva and Matsuda

Tutoring ESL Students: Issues and Options by Murial Harris and Tony Silva & Teaching Composition in the Multilingual World Second Language Writing in Composition Studies by Paul Kei Matsuda

Both essays this week talked about teaching ESL students. As I read the essays, I found myself being able to relate to a lot of the things mentioned in them. I can completely understand how teachers could be, to an extent, lost when trying to teach ESL students to write. But I think that those students feel lost in the process as well. I remember being an ESL student and trying to figure out how could I understand all the rules that were being presented to me while at the same time trying to translate what I wanted to write from one language to another. I felt, at many times, that I was more focused on trying to translate everything I wanted to say rather than focusing on the rules of grammar. I felt so confused and frustrated at times because I couldn’t figure out the reasoning behind so many of these “rules”.

Harris and Silva state in their essay that tutors of ESL students feel speechless when they try to explain why “I have many homeworks to completed” is wrong or why we say “on Monday” but “in June.” There were many times when I just didn’t understand those same examples. It was hard for me to see the reasoning behind it.

Harris and Silva also mentioned that new tutors feel like they need to fix everything the ESL writer has done wrong instead of teaching them by sections at a time. Their essay mentioned that tutors should first tell the students what they have done correctly and then approach the mistakes one at a time without approaching everything that’s wrong with their writing. This reminded me of essays we’ve read before where it was said that teachers should let the students know what’s going well with the draft first and then tell them what they should focus on to improve their drafts. 

In Matsuda’s essay, it was mentioned that in writing centers ESL writers were also important. This made think about the fact that ESL students don’t only need help in translating their writing into another language but also in understanding the rules of the language. These students also need help with their writing process just like any other native speaker writer. This makes me think about the importance of individual help where you are focused on having help for what you need specifically. While not every teacher will be able to assist students individually, writing centers play an important role for students as well.