Faculty Resources: Working with ESL Students
One approach:- Interview the student:
- What's the topic? (Assignment sheet)
- When is it due? (i.e. what stage of writing is the student in: Brainstorming? Organizing? Developing? Proofreading?)
- If in the proofreading stage: Has the student proofread yet? How? For what errors?
- Does the student have a particular error/structure she wants help with? (A particular error instructors have found in past essays, or a sentence-level requirement of the essay)
- Analyze the student's pattern of errors for one or two paragraphs:
DON'T CORRECT THE ERRORS
In the margins (of one or two paragraphs), write the type of error (vt, vf, wf,..... ) - Decide what to work on: not line-by-line, but by type of error.
- Teach something about that error type, using 1 - 2 errors in the paper as a starting point.
- Have student apply what you taught her to another error of that type in the paper. Let the student find the error on her own.
- Write down what the student has learned (on yellow/pink reporting form, folder, or preposition log)
- Next time, check to see that she proofread for those errors.
What Can You Teach ESL Students in 15 minutes?
Rule Driven:
Type of Error | What can be Taught | Proofreading Strategy / Exercises |
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Vt (Verb tense) |
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Vf (Verb form) | How to make a specific verb form:
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Sva (Subject-verb agreement) | Circle subjects, underline verbs, check agreement | |
Art (Articles) | See Below | Box around nouns, check articles. Exercises in Binders |
Sentence Boundary Errors:
Type of Error | What can be Taught | Proofreading Strategy / Exercises |
---|---|---|
Frag and RTS (Fragments and Run-Together-Sentences) | Look for subordinators, circle subjects and underline verbs | |
Wf (Word Form) | Example: He is a success man. | Look for problem words in essay and check |
Ss (Sentence Structure) | Complicated! Case-by-case:
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Case-by-case |
Not Rule Driven:
Type of Error | What can be Taught | Proofreading Strategy / Exercises |
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Non-idiomatic / Wc (Word Choice) | Case-by-case:
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Prep (Preposition) |
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