Throughout the Fall ’19 semester, we were assigned to work with a person whose native language is something other than English. This could have been in solely a conversation aspect, but could also be a tutoring experience. I work as a student tutor at ODU, and I had the opportunity to work with two ESL students. I tutored one student in a beginning level composition class and tutored another student in a beginning level American literature class. Although those were the main focuses of our meetings, we also spent time covering grammar, cultural differences, pronunciations, and research based and literary essays. I really enjoyed working with both of these students, and I am grateful to have this first-hand TESOL experience.

It was so interesting to learn about both of their cultures, education systems, and experiences learning in the United States. I had a great connection with my literature student as her native language is actually my target language. We are second language learners in each other’s language, and this provided for some really great cultural discussion. I am a native English speaker who was taking a Spanish literature class, and she is a native Spanish speaker who was taking an English literature class. We talked about all of the literature we have read recently and how we thought they were similar/different. It was a lot of great insight to both of our academic cultures! For both students, it was so great to see how much of our experiences are universal. We talked about our struggles with different classes, assignments, and outside activities. All three of us are young women getting an education at the same university with three very different cultures, yet we have so much in common.

TESOL is a very particular branch of education. A teacher could have a class of 30 students and every single student could come from a different language, culture, or background. With my composition student, we spent some time talking about her course and whether she would have preferred to be in an ESL specific writing course as opposed to a beginning composition course for all college freshman. As a future instructor, this was a really great perspective to hear coming straight from an ESL student. It gave me an opportunity to learn that she struggled with formatting essays since the structure was never explained. She was simply expected to know what the other college freshmen knew, even though her education system was not the same. This experience has really shown me the important of cross cultural communication and understanding, as well as the need for TESOL.