ESL Students and English Term Paper Writing
I Taught Them English Term Paper Writing They Taught Me How to Be a Better Teacher
I was an English as a Second Language, ESL, teachers for Korean students one summer in college. It was really very fun. I just taught English basics. We went on a lot of field trips restaurants, museums even rode on trains just to get the use to everyday American culture. I really learned a lot from them and I know they did from me. My job was just to go through various topics and to really just immerse them in English. This was harder than it sounded. They were really very nice but at first I always thought they were talking about me when they spoke in Korean. I was a little insecure around them at times. After all there were twenty of them and just one of me. I had a syllabus I had to follow for the class. It was all pretty basic vocabulary words and ideas. I even had to get them to do some English term paper writing.
If you have ever spent any time with foreign students you know how nice and generous they are. They are really very genuine people who want to be liked and want you to like them. It seems to me that they know little of jealously or combativeness. They are mostly very go with the flow kinds of people. They have a strong sense of loyalty and have a tendency to really stick to their own but are more than welcome to except you if you decide to join their group. People who are not from the USA are very different from those who have lived and grown up here. They don’t have a sense of entitlement they are spoiled or rude. They are generous and gracious. Because of these things I felt that teaching this ESL class would be a piece of cake. I was wrong.
If you want to live in the USA you have to read and write English pretty well. I can read and write five languages fluently so I know English is really unlike any other language out there. I really do understand how hard English can be so I really sympathized with these Korean students I knew doing various forms of English term paper writing would be a real struggle.
In the beginning I learned not t expect too much. Many, many misspelled words, botched up conjugations and little to know transition words. I read their term papers with very little bias and I tried to be as encouraging as possible. I focused more on the positive than the negative points. Instead I passed out various copies of different research paper samples. I really thought it would be in their best interests to see some college term paper samples to draw from. They slowly got better.
Towards the end of the semester their college research papers had collectively gotten a lot better. Obviously it wasn’t perfect but the best part was that they were good students who never gave up on what they were trying to do. These ELS students ending up doing a totaling of six different forms of English term paper writing. Honestly most of them never complained, talked back or were mean spirited. They just did the best that they could while writing their college term papers. They were a pleasure to teach and I hope they learned as much from me as I did from them.
