Session as Primary Consultant #3

In this session, I was helping an ESL student organize an essay. Like many of the ESL papers I've seen, all the ideas were very good solid, just getting a little bit lost in translation. I often used the method of explaining to him what I thought his sentences meant, and asking whether I had the right idea. Most of the time, the answer was yes, so we just worked on clarifying the ideas to eliminate any confusion for readers. When the answer was no, I had him explain to me what he was trying to say, and then helped him get that idea across on paper. At the beginning of the session, I asked whether he wanted to work on content development or just structure. Again, like most ESL students, he only wanted to make sure that the paper made sense to a native English speaker. In this case, his content did not really need much work, but it's a little frustrating that very few ESL clients want any help with content development. I know we've hardped on this a lot in class, so I won't say any more about that here. This was a good session overall, because the client was being an active participant in the session and I felt like we were really working together to be productive.