Which Face Do You See and Which One Is Me Im Not Sure if I Know

What this handout is well-nigh

When you ask students writing in English as an additional language what they would like to work on, they will often say that they'd like you to check their grammar. "Checking the grammar" can feel uncomfortably close to proofreading and editing students' papers for them—which writing coaches know is strictly out of bounds. Unfortunately, multilingual writers accept been unfairly denied access to language feedback considering of the very strong prohibition against editing, but the good news is that nosotros can notwithstanding be very helpful without compromising our principles.

This page provides a bit of important historical context for the discussion and offers strategies for responding to the grammar-checking request in ways that respect the pedagogical philosophies of the writing heart and the instructional needs of students writing in a foreign language. The list of strategies is followed by excerpts of coaching sessions, with annotations that illustrate how some of the strategies work in existent conversations between writing coaches and multilingual writers.

1984: The triple whammy for multilingual writers

In 1984, several of the most influential texts in writing center history were published. You will probably recognize the first ii because the vocabulary and the philosophy are all the same driving forces in today's writing centers:

1. Reigstad & McAndrew: Division of the writing process into "higher order" and "lower order" concerns, establishing a value-laden sequence of content and organisation before grammer and punctuation.
2. Northward: Staunch declaration that writing centers were not centers for mechanical remediation and fault correction. "In a writing centre, the object is to make sure that writers, and not necessarily their texts, are what get changed by didactics…our job is to produce better writers, non ameliorate writing" (p. 69).
3. Friedlander: Assertion that writing centers run into the needs of foreign students by focusing on mechanical remediation and error correction. The content of students' essays should exist discussed simply every bit much every bit necessary for accurate error correction.

The writing process was divided, the writing heart's territory was firmly staked, and the perceived needs of multilingual writers were placed squarely outside the parameters of the writing eye's mission, pedagogical philosophy, and standard procedure. No wonder we've struggled then much!

In fairness to the scholars to a higher place, they meant to emphasize that writers should concentrate on developing their ideas before they worried about comma splices, and to emphasize that truly good writing involved the long-term evolution of a complex fix of skills. These ideas are still then powerfully nowadays in writing centers today because they are so very truthful. Unfortunately, they had the unintended effect of marginalizing discussions of judgement structure, word choice, punctuation, and grammatical errors until very late in the writing process.

In truth, ideas can non be separated from the language used to express them. Multilingual writers are advanced language learners who are working toward the control of a sophisticated range of vocabulary, judgement structures, discipline-specific expressions, idioms, etc. Multilingual writers are likewise developing writers, so they practise need the same kind of process-oriented and "college order" feedback that monolingual writers need. Quite ofttimes, though, their power to develop the content of their essays is limited by a lack of vocabulary or by difficulty with circuitous judgement structures. As coaches, you can support the development of writing skills past talking most linguistic communication at any point in the writing process where information technology might be helpful.

Information technology'south skillful to discourage premature concern with nit-picky editing decisions, but it's great to encourage exploration of the right linguistic communication for expressing a great idea. Be flexible and be comfortable with the fluid, back and along movement between discussing the ideas and the language.

What practise y'all do when students say, "Just bank check my grammer"?

1. Respond positively. ("Sure, we can take a await at the language stuff…"). Lectures well-nigh how we teach proofreading strategies or how we don't actually do grammar in the writing center put students on the defensive when they have a legitimate need for feedback on their language use. Simply say yep, and move on to the next step.
2. Elicit other concerns. ("What else would you like to talk nigh today? Are y'all still working on the content?"). Students will frequently identify quite a range of concerns with uncomplicated prompting at the beginning of the session, specially after they've been reassured that you lot'll help them identify problems with a language they're even so learning.
3. Inquire for an overview. ("Tell me virtually what you're working on and where you are in the procedure."). Explaining their writing project (the assignment and the text so far) gives students the gamble to produce "comprehensible output"—a chance to use the English language linguistic communication to limited their thoughts clearly and to make themselves understood. We know that linguistic communication learners are able to understand a lot more than they are able to spontaneously produce in a foreign language, and it'due south really hard work to express complex thoughts sufficiently in a linguistic communication that's non your own. Past asking questions, past listening carefully, and by asking follow-up questions, yous tin help students work through the process of communicating conspicuously in English, and you can give yourself a mental framework of the projection that volition be helpful when linguistic communication questions ascend in specific parts of the text.
4. Read the entire draft. You may find grammatical errors on the showtime or second page, but proceed reading. You'll get a sense of the pupil's complete argument, and you'll have time to recognize more serious errors that may occur afterward in the paper.
5. Stop only for extreme issues. Sometimes a sentence may be so malformed that the idea is completely obscured. You can brand a note to come dorsum to that signal later, but if you do decide to cease, inquire a broad question and and then heed carefully ("Tin can you tell me more virtually this idea?"). Try to be attuned especially to places where the pupil's language employ is truly interfering with your ability to understand what they're trying to say. Clarifying these expressions takes priority over pocket-sized errors that don't really interfere with your understanding.
6. Recast the student's explanation more grammatically. ("Allow me see if I empathise y'all correctly. You lot're saying that…"). If you understood and explained correctly, the student can hear the thought expressed in grammatical English and can make annotation of information technology—they can add it to their English language repertoire. However, if your recasting (your paraphrased explanation) doesn't match the student's intended meaning, or if you lot can reasonably offering two different interpretations of the text, you tin can examine the passage more closely to effigy out why it was unclear. Then you tin can work together on correcting whatever is confusing about the pupil's original expressions. This back and forth process is called "negotiation of meaning" ("Is this what you mean?" "No, I mean this." "Oh, okay. We say it like this." "Oh, okay. Thanks.")
7. Provide "linguistic input"—language that students read and hear. This "input" might be bits of English that are new to them (like a new give-and-take or idiomatic expression), or information technology might exist familiar bits of English being used in ways they've never heard before. You lot are not usurping control if you lot make language suggestions that convey the educatee's ideas. If you've listened carefully enough that yous know what they're trying to express, assist them out.
8. Employ resources. Even if y'all know the grammar, innovate students to language resources they can utilise independently at other times.
9. Document the puzzles. If you encounter specially interesting or disruptive samples of language employ, go on a copy to share with your colleagues and mentors. It may serve as a useful training sample, then you lot're serving the customs well.

What if students really hateful, "Just check my grammar"?

There does come a time writers are ready to concentrate strictly on their grammar. They're satisfied with everything else, and every bit writers, y'all know that's a happy place to be. Normally we teach proofreading strategies to native speakers at this stage. Nosotros tin do this with multilingual writers too, just nosotros also have to adjust our strategies to accommodate their status every bit language learners. These suggestions are meant to help you with that adjustment.

At that place's a strong misconception that there will exist "patterns of error"—certain types of errors that occur repeatedly in the text. Sometimes that does happen, only more oft, at that place volition only be one or two instances of 20 five different kinds of error. That's okay. You lot tin still exploit the educational value of an mistake, having confidence that students will try to employ what they learn to their subsequent writing.

Two things to notation: First, fifty-fifty though the strategies listed below concentrate more on straight proofreading and grammar checking, remember that you can also use all of the strategies listed in a higher place for correcting the grammar by clarifying the intended meaning. Second, when y'all practice find an error, you can ask, "How do you normally proofread for this kind of error?" or say to the student, "Allow's try to observe a few more examples of this structure, simply to double-check them." Look for correct and incorrect examples considering we demand our successes reinforced likewise! It's a great opportunity to assess the student's proofreading skills and do some strategy building.

Call up of these strategies as being listed in the order they should be used in, but feel comfortable to experiment with the order, depending on the educatee, the writing project, and your ain judgment. Play with them to run across how each strategy helps enhance the students' learning experience.

1. Enquire students to place specific feedback targets ("Show me what you lot're not certain about."). You tin ask a variety of questions: why they're not sure about that judgement, if they can think of other ways to express the idea, what rules they know well-nigh the particular grammar structure, if they checked a reference book, if they tin bear witness y'all the page and so yous can look at the rules together, etc. In other words, you tin learn a lot about the students' thought processes that will be helpful in working with each of them. I caution: exist sensitive to how much time you lot're spending on these questions. It can be frustrating to students if every single error is interrogated at length, as yous tin can imagine. Idioms and prepositions are great candidates for a jitney's quick corrections because they're so idiosyncratic. Structures that follow a ready of rules more systematically, like verb tense or gerunds vs. participles, are good candidates for more questioning. (Locate the grammer references in the Writing Heart if you didn't understand "gerunds vs. participles"!)
2. Ask where they struggled to make language choices. Sometimes they actually do believe they've written everything in right English language, so they can't betoken to a sentence they think might be wrong. If you ask them to testify you where they had to work at information technology, you lot accept a chance to interrogate their decision-making process ("Why was this a hard pick? How else were y'all thinking of maxim information technology? What made yous choose this way?") and to either congratulate them and reinforce a correct selection, or to right them and perhaps teach them a play a joke on for making the right pick next fourth dimension (a mnemonic device, a great page in your favorite reference volume, etc.).
3. Identify "loftier gravity" errors–errors that truly interfered with your comprehension. Work with the student to effigy out how/why the sentence structure or word choice is obscuring their intended meaning. When they've explained their idea enough that y'all empathise it, offer them the linguistic communication they need to express their thought grammatically.
4. Move on to repeated errors. Ask questions near their choices or their general knowledge (e.grand., "Why did you cull this verb tense?" or "What do you know virtually verb tenses?"). Ask the educatee if they take a favorite grammar resource and/or share your ain favorite grammar resource. Work through correcting the mistake together, helping the pupil understand and apply the rules. Observe a couple more than examples of the same kind of mistake and let the pupil utilise the resource to attempt correcting the mistakes. When they experience confident that they tin discover and correct that type of error, motility on to some other.
5. Give prepositions away similar candy. Introduce students to "learner's dictionaries," which include information about discussion + preposition combinations, but feel comfortable freely offering up these of import little words. Learning to utilize "upward" correctly in one judgement volition not ensure that students will utilise information technology correctly in another sentence in the aforementioned way that learning nigh other structures will, and this little act of kindness tin can help students stay more engaged with the rest of the process.

The strategies in action

These transcripts are excerpted from sessions with second language writers. They accept been annotated to explain a bit about what was happening, what the students were trying to accomplish, what the coaches were trying to attain, and to illustrate a few of the concepts and strategies listed above. Read each excerpt without reading the comments, merely to become the menstruum of the conversation. Read them again, looking at each of the marginal comments as you lot reverberate on the information on this page.

Resources

See our English Language Resources page for several learner's dictionaries and other language learning resources and strategies.

You can find very clear explanations of grammar structures and an EXCELLENT drove of idioms and phrasal verbs, which ESL students unremarkably struggle with, at UsingEnglish.com.

References

Friedlander, A. (1984). Meeting the needs of strange students in the writing center. In 1000. A. Olson (Ed.) Writing centers: Theory and administration (pp. 206-214). Urbana, IL: NCTE.

North, S. (1984). The thought of a writing eye. College English, 46, 433-446.

Reigstad, T. J., & McAndrew, D. A. (1984). Training tutors for writing conferences. Urbana, IL: National Quango of Teachers of English language.

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