Reaction to Myers

Learning a second language takes a lot of time, especially if you are older. English in particular is a very difficult language to learn. ESL students are very capable of forming intelligent thoughts, they just have trouble verbalizing them or writing them down in English. It is difficult for someone who is foreign to English to learn our colloquialisms, all of our rules of grammar, our culture, and especially learn to write in an academic style. With ESL students, you can’t just focus on the writing and ignore the grammar; the two go hand in hand. Myers is saying that the grammatical mistakes that ESL students make are common and that tutors should be both writing instructors and second language teachers in order to help the writer and the writing. We need to take a step back from “minimalist tutoring” because ESL students need a little more. Meyer’s is saying that ESL students are aware of errors, but they just don’t know how to fix them. You can’t just tell someone they have a problem with verb tenses; they already know that. Most of the problems are with vocabulary. In order to understand what an ESL student is trying to say, the tutor should use conversation and bring in new words to add to the student’s lexicon and try to understand what the student is saying. Tutors should suggest new ways of wording a sentence. Improving the writing in this case, is improving the writer because you are helping them express their thoughts.