ESL Tutoring Articles

Although I have been taking Spanish for quite some time now, I have just recently begun writing lengthy essays in the language (yikes!). I am used to writing short compositions, but writing an academic essay in another language is proving to be very difficult. I wonder how are we supposed to help the students who are like me, who are non-native speakers. I thought the approaches suggested in the articles were very helpful and could even be applied to my own writing in Spanish.
In the article "Influence of cultural and linguistic backgrounds on the writing on Arabic and Japanese students of English," the author discussed how different common expressions could be in other language. Although the author uses examples of Arabic and Japanese, because of my knowledge of Spanish I will use common expressions from Spanish instead. In Spanish, you're welcome is said "de nada" which literally means of/from nothing. Of course if we try to literally translate anything from one language to another, we can end up making a mess. Just like not being able to literally translate, we cannot expect as writing tutors to just be able to translate the paper correctly for ESL students.
As "Tutoring ESL Students: Issues and Options" discusses, it is likely that the students will not only have issues with vocabulary and verb tense, but also with the meaning itself. Our job as writing tutors is to help them with what they want to say, which is similar to the consultation of any writer, English speaking or not. These articles stress the importance that ESL tutoring is different, but that the students are looking for the same thing as non-ESL students, and that is to improve their writing.