This is my third, and in my opinion most interesting, link about tutoring ESL students. This is from the Dartmouth writing center.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/tutor/problems/esl.shtml
This is how I hope to structure my final project. I want to make an advice page with very clear dos and don'ts for ESL students. One of the most interesting things I read on this page was about the different rhetorical conventions between our culture and other cultures. Specifically, they touch on the idea of a thesis sentence. In other countries, thesis sentences are not understood and perhaps even found to be offensive. As Dartmouth's site puts it, "Why would a writer want to announce to his audience what he is going to say , and then put the audience through the rather dull process of hearing him say it?" It is almost considered offensive to put the thesis out there in such an obvious way because in other cultures it suggests that the audience is not capable of deducing the main point of the essay. Another really interesting issue they touch on is plagiarism. I never thought of it this way but they explain that the reason foreign students don't fully understand the concept of plagiarism is because they come from places where ideas are not owned by one person but shared by everyone. In some countries there is no such thing as copyrights and ownership of an idea. Foreign students often don't see plagiarism as stealing because in their country ideas belong to everyone. These are just a few small things that might help us understand how to help and tutor ESL students and I think they are very beneficial to increasing our mutual understanding.
Your comment that ideas are viewed as being shared by everyone in many foreign cultures is really interesting to me. I had never really thought about it in that way before. I can't say that I agree with this concept; maybe this is because I am so accustomed to our own way of thinking.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that the mindset of international students influences their perception of writing. It never really crossed my mind that international students may limit their personal voice or opinions because their government enforces censorship and freedom of speech. Adapting to the standards of what an paper that analyzes involves must be difficult, especially for the Middle Eastern students that the site referred to who are used to digressing from the topic they are righting about. Tutoring an ESL student must require a great deal of patience.
ReplyDeleteI think you bring up a lot of great points. It's really interesting to see how culture affects writing and thus how international students might need to be approached differently in the writing center. I thought your discussion of thesis sentences was especially interesting! Are you considering working in the ESL center?
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