ESL+Writing

One of the toughest challenges I have as a teacher of English is the ESL student. However, I also find them to be some of the more rewarding students I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Where I teach, the typical community college route of an ESL student is a full year immersion in ESL courses commencing their first year. After they have completed both conversation and grammatical coursework, they test into a standard composition course. The main frustrations I see with these students is that they have spent most of their writing time diagraming sentence structure and studying proper placements. Most of their courses have been about the formalities of the language. When they arrive in a composition class that requires them to write from a more personal point of view, this is often quite difficult because they are hung up on "correct" writing as opposed to expressive writing. The personal narrative papers and stating an argument essays seem to be the toughest tasks for these students. Also, I'm not sure educators keep in mind that the students from certain backgrounds are not particularly comfortable with writing from a personal perspective. The "tell all" approach to writing is a somewhat American concepts and I find that many of my ESL students find these assignments off-putting.