My ESL Tutor, the Tour Guide

Sometimes the duties of an ESL tutor go beyond the typical job description of a tutor. I happen to live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. My ESL students come here to study English and/or to study at the local universities. While they're here, they also like to do some sightseeing.

Some of my entire ESL lessons have been sessions about local, statewide and even national sights. Sometimes I feel a little guilty about talking about all the wonderful places I've been in the U.S. and making recommendations or planning travel itineraries. The English part of the lesson falls to the wayside. But I guess this is part of the flexibility of the ESL tutor. And, especially in private ESL tutoring, the English language learner is ultimately in control of the lesson. If he or she wants information or recommendations about where to travel and what to see, I'm pleased to provide the info.

Visit this page on my website for a more traditional list of the duties of an ESL teacher.

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What is "Metalanguage?"

When English language teachers (and other languages, too) talk about "metalanguage," they primarily mean the "language" used to talk about the target language. A simple example would be if I say "present perfect progressive sentence" to talk about the form and functions of a sentence like "I have been studying English since I was a child."

Using metalanguage is an easy way for teachers (and others) to talk about a language. It's not a great idea to use metalanguage to teach English language learners. It's better to go directly to the target language. For example, if I'm teaching the Simple Present, I would use and elicit the target language. I might ask, "What do you do every morning?" In this case, I am hoping to get something like, "I eat breakfast." I am using the Simple Present, rather than talking about the Simple Present.

I do use some metalanguage when I am teaching advanced ESL students. They usually know all the names of grammar parts, and so it saves a lot of time to use the shortcut of metalanguage.

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Making Assumptions about ESL Knowledge

I was tutoring an advanced ESL student today. He's a doctoral student at one of the top universities in the U.S. He asked me to primarily help him with his writing skills. I always focus on the areas my advanced students want to focus on, as opposed to beginning ESL students who need me to guide the directions of our ESL lessons a lot more.

Some small thing came up today about pronunciation. I started talking about the many vowel sounds English has, yet we only have five vowels (sometimes six with the letter "y"). I wrote and said, "a, e, i, o, u." He asked me to repeat the vowels. He said that this was the first time he'd heard a native speaker say the vowels.

I usually try not to make assumptions about what English language learners know or don't know. I'll often ask about something just to make sure. I never thought to ask about something as basic as the vowels. I learned that I still make certain assumptions and need to be even more conscious.

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Happy St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day is one of many holidays celebrated in the United States. I have to admit that this is not one of the holidays about which I know much. What I do know is probably part myth, part reality, and part childhood pranks.

As a tutor teaching ESL to adults, I am often able to use holidays as conversation topics. I can also use some holidays to discuss certain aspects of American history and culture. Of course, this has me doing most of the talking.

The best holidays are those that are also celebrated in my students' home countries or those American holidays that are similar to those celebrated in their home countries. This gives the English language learner an opportunity to talk about a subject with which they are familiar.

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Words Used by Native English Speakers

One of my ESL students gave me a topical Chinese medicine for sore muscles. I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to read the directions, but my student assured me that the directions were also written in English. Indeed, they were.

In fact, the directions were very well written in perfect English. My experience with products made in non-English speaking countries is that the directions are often a little "off." The grammar or spelling or word choice is usually off.

I was impressed by the very clear and grammatically correct English used for the directions. The one thing that was a clear sign (to me at least) that the directions were not written by a native speaker was the use of the word "sportive." The directions said something like, "for use on sore muscles caused by sportive injuries." Yes, sportive is a legitimate word. And any native English speaker will understand the use of this word. However, a native speaker is going to use the word "sports" in this instance.

Word choice is often one of the things that my advanced English language learners are particularly interested in. They want to know how the "natives" speak. Teaching this type of vocabulary is often a lot easier for native English tutors than for English tutors whose first language is not English.

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"There" vs. "Over There"

I hear many ESL speakers use "over there" when "there" sounds like the better option to me. If I hear it consistently from a student (or even from a friend whose native language is not English), I will try to offer a correction or suggestion.

My difficulty with this particular choice of words is that I myself do not have a clear handle on the reason(s) that one choice should be made over the other. I haven't seen this explained in any of the ESL textbooks I use for my ESL students or for my own reference. It's one of those slight differences that I can discern as a native speaker. I know in the particular situation which is better, but I can't give a generalization of why one is better. So I've just had to try to give examples of when to use which.

If I find something definitive or if you have any suggestions for me, I'll be sure to offer them here.

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Help with Writing College Essays

For ESL teachers teaching writing, the teaching isn't only about grammar and punctuation. It may not even be about teaching structure or how to do an outline first. Sometimes, helping ESL students is about helping them to think about the answer to a question they may not have thought about before. Sometimes, being an ESL tutor is like being a psychotherapist.

I was recently helping two young community college students with a writing assignment for their English class. One student was nineteen years old and the other was twenty years old. The question for which they had to write an essay was something like, "What matters in life at any given time and what really matters in life are often different things. Write about three things that really matter. Give details. How have these three things helped to shape your moral world view." Although these are not the exact words of the question, they are very close.

The first thing I thought about this question was that the question was not written very well. This becomes particularly apparent when you start to take the question apart and try to answer it. Such a question is particularly difficult for English language learners.

In addition to helping my ESL students with an outline, the grammar, vocabulary, etc., I also had to ask probing questions of my students about their values and what really matters to them and why. Initially, they had no clue what to write about. After several of my questions, they came up with some answers. Then we had to come up with the "why" for the answers.

The students' answers to the teacher's question took quite a while to develop. As an ESL tutor, it was part of my job to help the students develop the answers (and of course, to help them to express their ideas in English). I also was very conscious of not imposing my views or moral judgments on the answers they had.

Overall, this was a very challenging writing assignment for both the ESL students and their tutor.

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