ESL Students

It's important, I believe, to remember how intelligent the ESL students who come to the lab actually are. Today I had a student who had a very detailed technical paper involving double capacitators and whatnot, and he needed help with his English. Well, I know the English, but he knows the electronics, so we truly had to work together to understand each other. I try to imagine how hard it would be to go to a university in a foreign country and write papers in a foreign language and I'm amazed at what the ESL students have accomplished.

I'm very aware of the "don't write on the students' papers" rule, but I don't know if our writing center rules help us to help the ESL students in the best way possible. Instead of writing on their papers, I've taken to writing out examples on a separate sheet of paper (instead of, for example, a chalkboard). This way, I can explain things to the student and they can keep the paper for reference. If this is against the rules, please tell me now!

Ali mentioned that we need a separate lab for ESL students and I agreed; I had just been thinking the same thing myself. Wishing won't make it happen, I know, but at least we can put the idea out there and maybe one day we'll have an ESL lab.

I would say that most of my tutoring experience here so far has been with ESL students; they're smart enough to know when they need help. Out of respect for them and what they're trying to do, I want to help them as much as I can.