ELL Students
This blog is designed to help raise awareness of the unique needs of ELL students
Dr. Lin cites the following mixture of linguistic and psychological concerns for ELL students regarding their writing process:
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- Word choice/vocabulary errors
- Adjusting to American thought patterns
- Writing fluency
- Anxiety
- Idioms
- Low-self confidence
- Thesis statements and spelling
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Therefore Dr Lin suggests writing tutors should encourage these students to discuss their feelings about writing in the tutoring sessions.
For this week’s blog, devise an activity/set of questions to help engage a student pair in a discussion of their emotional/psychological connection to writing. Listen carefully to their responses. Extend the questioning to help probe into where these emotional/psychological connections come from. Take notes. After the session, reflect on what these students reveal; identify their major concerns and write about how these insights can help you understand how best to serve as a writing tutor for this demographic of students.
I recently had a student come to me and express – all on his own – how frustrating written English can be. He is trilingual and has a pretty solid grasp on English; it’s hard to tell that English is not his first language. He expressed that he can understand spoken English and he can speak it without any issues, but writing it down can be so frustrating and anxiety-inducing that he sometimes has to stop and take a break from working on papers. He said that he is aware that his vocabulary is not what he would like it to be and that if he sounds like a native, it’s because he’s trying so hard. He also said that he’s afraid of looking and sounding stupid, because he knows he’s smart and he knows how to say what he means in the other two languages; it’s just that English can be difficult sometimes.
I sympathize with him because, although English is my native language, I remember how frustrating it was when I would take Spanish courses and I would have to write entire essays in full Spanish. I was good at it, but it took lots and lots of practice as with anything, and I’m sure my first attempts probably made my instructors chuckle at how goofy my sentences sounded. As native speakers, we know our language and we know what we’re trying to say, but trying to translate it into other languages where there are different rules can be incredibly challenging and intimidating. And even as a native speaker, sometimes I mess up what I’m trying to say and people look at me funny, so I can only imagine how he must feel, being a non-native speaker and trying to figure out how to phrase certain things.
I did assure this student that if he’s ever unsure of what particular words to use, what specific words may mean, or even if he’s unsure of how a sentence sounds, he can ask me; I’m happy to help because I get it. I will also be patient, as it does take time for these students to mentally translate everything so that they understand what I’ve said and then they have to translate a response. I would certainly never try to make any students feel stupid just because they may take a little longer to think of a particular word or for asking for clarification on what suggestions I may make in terms of paper errors. I think the best thing to do would just to be patient, try to see things from their perspective, try to explain why something is an error and give an example, and maybe reassure them that they’re doing well/they’re improving on certain aspects.
Ultimately, I’m hoping I can help these students feel less anxious about writing and to help them improve; I don’t want any students to feel so anxious over their writing that they begin panicking. No one should feel that way over coursework and I’m hoping that in the future, he will become more confident in his writing skills. Most of these students work hard and they deserve to feel confident in the effort they’re putting forth. In future sessions, I will also extend to other ELL students that if they aren’t sure how to phrase something, or they need to describe a word that they can’t think of, I’m happy to help and I’m not judging; at one point, none of us knew English ourselves (when we were very young, all we could make were sounds that kinda-sorta sounded like English… maybe?), and the fact that these students know more than one language indicates just how hard-working and intelligent they are. It’s not easy, but they’re doing it!
Ashley,
This is a very thoughtful reflection. In fact, you may want to save this and come back to it as a topic for future research (?). I remember a piece of advice that I received years ago from a colleague about why students react differently to being struggling writers as opposed, let’s say, to being “bad at math.” In my classes, I often told students that I was not good at math—as if that was analogous to having difficulty expressing ideas in English. The colleague said, no, the analogy does not hold as we all use language. In a sense, our language = who we are. That was a powerful lesson for me.
Rachel