These are a few of my Favorite Things

I like to kill two birds with one stone as often as I possibly can. Naturally, my ESL experience is no exception. I thought about topics that the students could write a composition on for about an hour last night. What do you do when you are upset? Do you think it is ok to grow vegetables with chemicals? Describe someone that inspires you. What is so disastrous about the oil spill in the Gulf?

The intermediate class that I tutor is diverse in levels of English capability. I needed to give them something that they could easily understand, but still respond in a sophisticated writing style. For most of these students, the GED test awaits at the end of this course. And then it dawned on me, "my favorite...". By giving them the liberty to choose whichever favorite thing they wanted to write about, season, sport, food, etc., I could find out more about them personally (one of my goals) while they had fun telling me about their favorite thing.

About half of the class needed some comprehensive one on one time with me before starting the new assignment. The other half was advised to write until the break halfway between class, afterwards we would complete a revising exercise together. After most of the class had something to edit, we talked about specifics: details. Details are the body of every paragraph, which make up the body of every composition. Needless to say they are paramount for a good written work. As a class we discussed different types of details, including sensory and example, and then students went back and categorized every type of detail they had used in their writing.

Lessons like these are super effective for classes with different level learners, because everyone can work at their own pace, and you can always add to a composition. I had one student that was still struggling with comprehending the subject of the main idea from last week, and another handing in a 4 page essay. Both got an A for effort.

One of the books I picked up on ESL tutoring explains that the most incriminating thing to do when teaching ESL is to tell the student they did something incorrectly. I took this to heart, because I want to be encouraging and motivating, not stifling. So when the students handed in their compositions at the end of class, I was very technical in my grading. I only corrected blatant spelling and grammatical mistakes. And I only wrote encouraging comments. Instead of rephrasing every single English idiom they misunderstood, or informing them that something "didn't make sense" in English, I re-typed their compositions the way that I would write them. Then, when they get them back they are able to compare what they wrote to what they meant to write, and decide for themselves what goes in between. Another rule of thumb from the tutoring book: never put words in their mouths. Regurgitating what the teacher says and does is hardly learning, but steering clear of this is so much easier said than done. I think the way I chose to grade their papers was a start.

Seeing them understand their mistakes and improve, now that is one of my favorite things.