Courses, clubs and tutors support language learning

By SOPHIA TORRES LUGO and XINYU JOANNE HU Sun Contributor and Sun Assistant News Editor

Many of Cornell’s undergraduate and graduate students consider English to be their second language. The ESL population includes individuals from many different cultures with varying degrees of English comprehension, and the University offers a variety of programs and multiple on-campus clubs to accommodate these students’ needs.

For graduate and professional students, the English Language Support Office offers peer tutoring, classes, workshops, a conversational English program and summer writing support.

Peer tutoring includes two types of tutors — some focus on writing and presentations, while others specialize in pronunciation. These tutors are usually also graduate students that have received training from ELSO. Michelle Crow, the founder and Director of ELSO, emphasized the importance of tutors’ training.

“At Cornell, there's no applied linguistics and there's no writing studies, so we have to give [the tutors] training in all of it — how to support writing, how to support speaking, how to tutor, how to support language [and] how to support pronunciation,” Crow said. “We do a lot of intensive training. This year, we have the most tutors [that] we've ever had.”

ELSO’s main offer is their half-semester courses, which students can take on a pass/fail basis for 1.5 credits — including classes on improving pronunciation, having discussions and delivering presentations, as well as four writing workshop courses.

These courses have a maximum of twelve students in order to ensure each student receives individualized attention. Although around 22 sections are offered per year, Crow noted that ELSO’s courses often have long waitlists.

Crow emphasized the significance a lot — they really see them as valuable.”

Additionally, ELSO offers a workshop series, which is not credit-bearing. Each workshop focuses on a specific area of reading and writing — such as last week’s session, titled “How to Critically Review a Paper.” The workshops are interactive and offer multiple strategies and resources for the students. They include writing exercises as well as reading comprehension exercises in order to teach students new methods of reading and writing.

“I was terrified,” Ansari said. “It was unexpected and early in the morning at 4 a.m. or 4:30 a.m. — so, I didn't expect that. And I was terrified to see them with shotguns and rifles, and the seriousness of the situation.”

Once the police verified that the residents present were not armed, they proceeded to interrogate them about the incident. After verifying that there was no real threat, the police left the scene.

“Cornell Police, like all police, have an obligation to respond to all calls alleging a threat to our community,” wrote Anthony Bellamy, chief of the Cornell University Police Department, in a statement to The Sun. “In this case, we rushed to go to the specific suite the caller mentioned to make sure that no one was injured or being held against their will by someone with a weapon. We then had to search the rest of the building to make sure residents were safe.” of these courses to graduate and professional students.

“We don't test students on language proficiency and then require certain students to take these courses. Students take these courses as electives, often on top of their regular course load,” Crow said. “For them to make time for these courses means

The Speaking Groups Program, ELSO’s conversational English program, is a low-stakes way to help students develop English fluency in a group setting. The program has around 30 groups of three to five students. The group leaders are volunteer community members, which include retired faculty, graduate students, undergraduates and other volunteers.