Tutoring ESL Students: issues & Options : Harris & Silva       Teaching Composition in the Multilingual World: Matsuda


Both articles bring to light the important task of teaching students who are learning English. There are many challenges to providing a successful learning experience for these students within a composition classroom.

In Harris and Silva's piece they focus on strategies to help writing center tutors feel more prepared and better able to provide assistance to ELL students. The authors feel that there is a lack of communication and guidance provided to the tutors and that open discussion needs to take place in order to benefit the tutors and especially the ELL students seeking their advice.

As I read their advice: prioritize errors, look for patterns, but don't assume all patterns are culturally based, some grammar rules may be helpful, but think more about ways to help the students "stretch" their writing, use multiple drafts for different purposes (one for content and one for linguistics), I found myself thinking I could implement some of these to help my own ELL students. Over the years, it has been one of the biggest challenges for me to find successful ways to best reach this population of students. This also makes me think about Matsuda's piece and how he recommends more professional development for teachers. He states that all writing teachers are already second language writing teachers. I couldn't agree more. However, at least in my district, the ELL kids have their own classrooms and have a teacher with a degree in that field. Therefore, the rest of us are never trained on ways to help those students further when they exit the program and join our writing classrooms. This may be one reason why many teachers hold the same demands for ELL students in their writing classrooms while others who understand the dynamics of their learning. There needs to be consistency.

Matsuda also addresses how there is a stigma placed/felt by many of these learners. They feel separated. One way he feels that the issue of stigma can be dealt with is by providing choice when creating courses in their higher education. If a student wants to take a writing course designed for ELL writers they can, but are not forced to. I think this is very important as ELL students have varying degrees of knowledge and abilities. Not all need the same things in the way of a writing class. Any time choice is given to people, a sense of importance is created. They matter. What they think matters.

Finally, I couldn't agree more that there is a "monolingual myth" about our schools. A monolingual classroom does not exist any more, and teachers need to be better prepared to reach all students, as they all deserve a chance at success. Mastuda's piece shows the history of reaching ELL students since after WWII. We have made some strides, but I think we need to continue to grow in this area. Both articles highlight the need for communication and training. I agree.

Steve North-"Produce better writers, not better writing."