Research Pt. 1 ESL students composing process

http://we4mf3mv5e.scholar.serialssolutions.com/?sid=google&auinit=A&aulast=Raimes&atitle=What+unskilled+ESL+students+do+as+they+write:+A+classroom+study+of+composing&title=TESOL+quarterly&volume=19&issue=2&date=1985&spage=229&issn=0039-8322

I was looking back on my blog posts to find a topic that I wanted to research further, and the one that struck a chord in me was the ESL post. Professor Grove's visit was extremely eye opening and I was really interested in her advice to be directive with ESL students and to take on the role of the teacher. This article isn't exactly about being directive but it does give some insight into the process of writing of an ESL student, which can help us figure out how to approach the consultation. This article is a study done to find out what are the composing processes of unskilled ESL students in writing. Students were asked to think aloud into a tape recorder as they were writing. One of the important points that I pulled out of the article was that we cannot treat ESL students like typical native speakers. It is important to understand what they do differently as far as composing and generating ideas goes. Also the study says that we need to give ESL students a lot of time to compose writing because they frequently write a sentence and then read it over a few times to make sure it is right and so on. It takes them more time to come up with their ideas and then translate them into English and then be sure that they did it correctly. This makes me think of what Professor Grove said about the importance of meeting with the ESL students more than once for consultations. There is a lot to work on and they need time to thoroughly process all of it or else it can just be overwhelming. One thing I found particularly interesting was that the study found that ESL students for the most part did not take into consideration their audiences or purpose. Different audiences did not alter their process of writing and so the product was an ego-centric writer based paper rather than a reader based paper. Professor Grove mentioned that ESL students tend to take for granted the fact that the readers understand what they are trying to say because of similar cultural backgrounds and mutual understanding and this article reiterates that fact. It is important for us to understand these cultural differences that lead to different processes in order to truly be able to help ESL students. I'm still trying to piece together the information Professor Grove gave us and some of what I read in this article to figure out how exactly to approach a consultation with an ESL student.