Katherine and I have been working on an essay for one of her classes.
Today she brought an essay a classmate of hers had written for the same class. She pointed out to me phrases and words he wrote and she asked me "How can I learn to write like this"? She wants to learn to write more descriptively. The trouble with this, is her current attempts to write more complex sentences end up not making any sense. She mixes up the structure completely, leaves out pronouns and puts adjectives where nouns should be, etc. SO I really get what she's struggling with, but there's no easy solution. My advice to her was that she needs to read more literature in English on a daily basis and always carry a small dictionary in her bag. She needs to make reading a part of her daily routine, and the words will start to come more naturally when she has to write. I also advised her that for now, she should keep her answers simple and to the point for her classes. She is able to give me the straight forward answer when we talk. The trouble comes when she writes the answer and tries to lengthen it to sound more articulate. She's trying to compete with her classmates who are native English speakers with a MUCH larger vocabulary to pull from. No wonder she is frustrated.
She didn't seem thrilled when I told her to keep her answers simple. So I told her to write the first draft simple and straight forward, then her and I could work on adding to the answers to make them more descriptive. But honestly, I can't do that for her. She has to come up with it on her own. Maybe I can give her a vocabulary list of adjectives and have her write a fictional essay using those new vocabulary words? Hmmmm, I'll have to think of an activity that will be helpful. Although, I gave her some exercises to help her with pronouns and articles and she didn't do them : (
Now I know how teachers felt when I didn't do my homework!
I find this is a common problem among a lot foreign learners who are in grad school. They don't want to learn the basics and learn naturally. They are somehow convinced that it is possible to cram twenty years of knowledge by cramming. I had a Chinese guy in Japan, who didn't speak good English, who wanted to learn how to write good business level English. I gave him some reasonable goals but he didn't like it. So that is one path I avoided walking down.
ReplyDeleteGood luck convincing her to do things the simple way. If you can find a way to convince them not to compare themselves to native students, I'd like to know!