Adventures in E.S.L.

My experience with ESL, or English as a second language tutoring to date has been fabulous-it’s really something I’ve fallen in love with. The staff member Bruno (not actual name) I have been set up with is from West Africa and speaks a dialect of French. This is a great match for me because I do have some background in that language in particular. From the first moment Bruno entered the neat, new, room and organized his papers I could tell that he was ready and eager to learn. His broad smile and sense of humor bridged the gap of our differences easily.

The first and foremost thing I initiated before we dove into the workbook he was equipped with was basic conversation. Here my understanding of learning a language came into play. While his sentences were basic at best, I remember the frustration of understanding conversation and not being able to respond. Listening generally comes first, and then comes speech. He told me a little about himself, and talked about his family, all the while eager to begin the workbook- perhaps I thought conversing put him outside of his comfort zone.

The workbook exercises that we began were basic. We practiced together with prepositions: under, over, behind, below, next to, …etc. He seemed comfortable with this and I had him draw pictures to illustrate the ideas he was learning from the book. “Draw a turtle under a tree,” I would read, and he would sit and ponder for a moment or two but presently draw a turtle under a tree. Before I knew it, it was time to go and I wrapped up the session by asking him about animals he knew of. Shyness forgotten Bruno carried on for quite some time about African animals he couldn’t find an English equivalent for, that sounded both thrilling and terrifying like a creature that might leap out of the game board in Jumanji.

These sessions are much more based on learning the language of English, rather than utilizing it, and Bruno offered different concerns to me  than an ESL college student might present. Mosher, Granroth, and Hicks suggest in their article Creating a Common Ground with ESL writers, “to avoid becoming the teacher in our writing conferences; we would rather be the listening ear. Greater directness, we fear, could com- promise our goal of creating a better writer through talk”. I think this statement sounds good in theory when applied to any ESL student but might be much more difficult to implement if the ESL student is shy or reluctant to speak. I will try to continue to engage Bruno in conversation he finds interesting, (I’d love to hear more about those crazy animals) and I think that he and the other staff members engaged in the program, are incredibly trusting and dedicated people to devote as much time as some of them do to an entirely student operated organization.