Blog 6 ESL Writers and the Writing Center

Here is what I have so far: 
The ability to write a well- developed professional essay in college is a technique that requires practice and an openness to change.  While in college, many students attend Writing Centers to aid in the refining of writing skills in order to fulfill the expectations of their professors and college philosophies.  In these writing centers, students of diverse backgrounds and academic abilities have found the necessary assistance needed to create acceptable college essays.  Some students require more help in writing than others.  For this reason, Writing centers have changed their methods of instruction drastically during the years.  One group that has benefited from this change, are Hispanic English as a Second Language students.

The demographics of ESL students have grown in number since the Fall of 2006.  In the Fall of 2006, the Hispanics population of students was10.8% and has steady increased to 11.8% up to the Fall of 2009 (http://ir.kean.edu/irhome).  The increase in these of Hispanic numbers has led to a change in how typical students write.  ESL students demonstrate different needs than a typical native English speaker.  For this reason, the method in which this subgroup is serviced by the Writing Center has been modified.

Many ESL students have acknowledge that seeking help of a Writing Center is important to refining their writing college techniques (Bruce & Rafoth 2009).  All ESL students do not write the same.  Some students have issues of codeswitching the home language with the target language.  Other ESL students may have issues that start from sentence structures to having no idea how the English essay should be organized.  More and more Hispanics students have requested assistance in Writing Center for these array of problems.  These concerns vary from ESL student to ESL student and can be summarized in 3 characteristics of students, United States ESL High School graduates, International/ Visa college professionals and International Graduate students. 

The rest of the essay will give a closer insight to what ESL students think a writing center should be.  I will also use some personal opinions from some ESL students who have attend the Kean Writing Center.  I will give a more specific description of what the Kean WC has to offer.  I will end by given my personal experiences.  I have to also check my citations.