Overcoming ELL Issues

http://sisaljournal.org/archives/mar11/matsuda_cox/

There are many ELL students that come to the writing center looking for help with their papers. Many of these are difficult to read because of the grammar errors that don’t transcend from their native language to English. This article talks about the common issues found in ELL papers and ways to help these students. It says that reading the article is what the session should focus on, how to read these papers and even gives tips to help these writers as well as the tutors. The authors says that the session should start with a quick read through to see what the main idea of the paper is as well as the organizational method that was used. In many of my ELL sessions I had the student read the paper out loud so that they could hear their own mistakes. The article suggests that the tutor read the paper out loud instead so that the student can hear a native speaker read it. The article also mentions teaching about transitional sentences as they are often missing in ELL papers. The last piece of advice is to stay positive and do not let your reactions to the paper influence the writer! I highly suggest reading the article as there are many more great tips that tutors can use.