Wrapping Up

Week 2:

There was an incredible amount of online resources available for tutors and students alike.

However, not every link was particularly useful. There was a good amount of filtering to do. I guess this reiterates the fact that students and teachers both have to do their research carefully

Week 3:

I was initially had a very critical and unforgiving approach towards grammar. I believed that writing a grammatically intact sentence was the key to writing well; an incorrect sentence forces the reader to piece together the information. But after class discussion I realized that this can be a very boring and disillusioning learning process. Students who have good critical thinking skills and better-than average reading ability often get unfairly lumped into remedial English. Consequently, they don't learn new skills that will help them grow as a student so they are stuck in a never ending loop. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. This blog was also interesting for me because I was unaware of the fact that there was a preexisting debate regarding grammar. My assumption was that all teachers generally took an approach similar to mine. The material was useful to me in more ways than one.

Week 4:

I liked the reading that was about responding to student errors. It was a good guide to serve as a base. I didn't think all of the points in the reading were as useful as others. I just listed my favorites.

When responding to errors, tutors and teachers should:

1.     Be selective in marking errors

2.     They should prioritize the most serious errors

3.     Frequently occurring errors should be addressed quickly

4.     Consider the student's: level of proficiency, attitude, and goals

5.     Consider errors that have been recently discussed in class

6.     Decide when to start marking errors

Week 5:

I think a student's ability to distinguish between spoken and written English is largely dependent on the amount of reading and writing they have done in class. Readings help give students examples of sentence structure and a sense of academic voice. Compared to spoken English, academic writing can be "weird" and foreign because many words like "nevertheless" are rarely used in spoken English. Additionally, essay writing is a skill that improves with practice, but if students have never written an academic paper, they are not going to be familiar with the five paragraph essay structure. Students who have a strong sense of voice and oral fluency will have strengths that can help them in class. Teachers who are aware of such strengths and weaknesses will be able to effective adjust and address the issues that students may have.

Week 6:

The reading was focused on a debate regarding students' "right" to their language. Some argued that notion that students even had a "right" was a misconception because it was simply a term that had been invented to make students feel as if they had rights to begin with.

Others argued it was important because students come from a variety of backgrounds and often need a sense of community and identity.

This week's readings could potentially benefit teachers and tutors alike because it emphasizes the variety of needs students are going to have. Not every student will be coming into schools with adequate reading and writing skills. It should help teachers stay attentive and flexible for students.

Week 7:

There weren't any blogs for this week. We talked about AAVE papers and student needs. These students can present a unique challenge because they usually have a very strong oral proficiency but struggle to write academically. They may be resistant to any suggestions or change because their oral and written voice is a part of their identity.

Week 8:

The idea of ear learners and eye learners is interesting. I thought it was important to note that the reading specifically mentions that ESL student writers do not have inferior cognitive capabilities when compared to other postsecondary students. Many ESL students are not "basic writers" because their educational background has provided them with substantial grammar and reading skills. They just need more practice with academic prose and content organization.

Week 9:

The readings were about the experiences and studies about several students who had to go through school as a non-native speaker. The differences were startling. The students who were not put into ESL classes had some struggles but later thrived because they were able to rise to the challenge. The students who were put into remedial English were grouped together and unable to socialize with native speakers. As a result, they were unable to improve and move beyond ESL. It was interesting to note that the amount of parent involvement seemed to correlate with student success. An important detail to remember was that parent involvement doesn't mean that the parents are not interested. They are often unable to schedule meetings because they are too busy working.

Week 10:

Placing students in classes based on their writing samples was very difficult. Some students had one or two mistakes that seemed relatively easy to fix but they were repeating errors. I couldn’t decide whether the errors repeated because the student hadn’t proofread their work or because they were unfamiliar with grammatical concepts like subject verb agreement. Another group of students that were difficult to place were the students that wrote with very informal voice. Some seemed to be aware of academic prose but they had elements of informal voice as well. Some samples made it particularly challenging because there wasn't enough material to make an informed decision. It gave me an idea regarding how difficult it is to place students accordingly. It made me wonder if the diagnostic writing samples should give students more time to write.

Week 11:

The case studies that were most interesting to read were the ones that focused on the process rather than others than simply described individual sessions. The amount of detail provided was useful but it didn't seem to tie back to anything useful for the tutor. Reading excessive amounts of descriptions quickly became tiring.

Reading the case studies helped me organize my own case study in terms of what parts of our experience to highlight. Because my students were relatively advanced, there wasn’t a great deal for me to talk about. I decided the best thing for me to talk about would be my original plan of action, and then my adjusted approach.

My group noted that it was important to emphasize what others could learn from our case studies.

What I learned from our presentations:

The main thing that stood out to me was Greg's response to his student. His student had done an incredible amount of work but he still did not know why he was improving. The fact that the student may not know why that they are improving was not expected.
I also noted that many tutors had some kind of interaction with their students' professor. Looking back, I probably should have done the same. It would have cleared up a lot of confusion for me.
I like Von's strategy that got the student involved. One of my main concerns when it comes to tutoring and teaching is an unmotivated student. Just getting the student to become invested in some way is a great idea.
There was also a repeating theme of non-academic work. Several people highlighted the importance of simply being supportive to their student.
The tutor and the professor may have different definitions for the same concept. Although this can tie back to the idea that tutors should communicate with their students' professors, it emphasizes the importance that students, tutors, and professors alike need to have the same expectations.
Lastly, tutors shouldn't try and force anything. Whether it's a specific lesson plan or an unmotivated student, tailor the session so that it matches the pace of the student.

Lesson plan draft

Please excuse the terrible writing. I was trying to write down ideas before I forgot them

Context:

This lesson should take place after students have turned in their first or second essay. I think this should provide the teacher with a sense of the students' writing. Since this is after they have turned in one or possibly two essays, it is safe to assume that students have already done quite a bit of formal writing. It is meant to be a way of strengthening their writing. Afterwards, students will further practice refining their writing by eliminating wordiness and limiting their usage of common verbs such as "to be."

Student Population/needs:

ESL Students - I think they will quickly recognize the differences because they are traditionally adept with grammatical structure but may fail to understand why it is considered "stronger" writing. They may use it simply because they were told by their teachers that it is better

Gen 1.5 - They may already

AAVE - May have difficulty understanding/distinguishing the difference. Could also be generally resistant to change

Native speakers - if they aren't already familiar with it their existing competence/idiosyncratic tendencies may take time for them to fully grasp new concepts

Objectives:

Students will be able to distinguish active and passive voice.

They will be able to determine which voice works for the given condition.

Being able to distinguish active and passive will help students improve their writing and prepare them for further skills they will eventually learn

Opener:

The lesson will start by providing an example sentences where one is active and the other is passive. Students will then be asked to decide which sentence seems "stronger." Students will also be asked to determine which part of the sentence they think is more important and why. The proper explanation of active and passive voice will then follow.

Outline:

Students will spend some time generating pairs  (one active one passive) of sentences (10 min)

With a partner or in small groups, each student will explain why his or her particular sentence of choice works better in active voice or passive voice. (15 min)

Materials:

The primary source for materials will be the students themselves when they come up with example sentences in their given exercises. The instructor may provide a sheet with some basic information regarding the cases in which passive voice is acceptable or preferred.

Follow-up:

Students will go back and look at their previous writing and identify and re-write any sentences in passive voice into active.

Concluding thoughts:

Case study draft

I was focusing on content rather than style so my writing is not very good at the moment. I will be addressing that issue shortly.

Abstract

This case study will focus on my struggles to adapt for students who are already proficient in their basic writing skills. As a first time tutor with little overall experience and no formal experience, I started the process nervous but felt adequately equipped. I was also looking forward to exchanging ideas with my classmates so I could use their experiences to refine my tutoring process. I quickly realized that I was a bit of an anomaly because nobody else had students like I did. Most people had at least one student who did not speak English fluently and exhibited the classical signs of students who would be referred to the English tutoring center. I was worried about the typical problems a tutor might face: uncooperative or unmotivated students. My "problem ," however, was much different. Both my students, J and D, were native speakers of English who had spent years in academic writing. My notes on pre/during/after reading strategies and writing strategies were suddenly obsolete.

My Original Plan of Action

I thought I would be taking the role of a mentor; I was expecting myself to be someone who could give them advice, explain their professor's rationale/assignments, and help them generally improve as students. I suppose I could have romanticized the whole thing. But because I had spent so much time in class discussing how to things the typical remedial or ESL student would need, I was assuming that I would be spending time practicing and explaining reading and writing strategies. I was eager to try my hand at explaining my suggestions and strategies the student could use to improve their abilities. I thought I would be using graphic organizers like KWL+ and outlining strategies to help students generate ideas.

The Students

J is a first year student at SFSU who is enrolled in English 114. She has a solid understanding of what an essay needs; she knows how to come up with a thesis and strengthen her argument/position with  the supporting paragraphs. Her chief concern was that she tends to run out of material and ramble on about unrelated sentences that does not help her essay. She did, however, admit that she hates the drafting and revision process. She can be a bit reluctant but will take the time and effort to further polish her writing as necessary.

There are little to no errors in her writing and most of the them are idiosyncratic. She does occasionally have sentences that are choppy and awkward because of unnecessary wordiness. We have spent about a third of our time revising her literacy narrative and she has gotten better with simplifying and clarifying her sentences.

D is a junior who is a transfer student from a community college enrolled in English 214. Like J, he is familiar with academic writing and also has a keen sense of audience (I am not sure if this is because it was recently covered in class or because he has been writing extensively). His range of academic vocabulary is slightly wider than J's but that is understandable. D had some similar issues with wordiness but his instructor noted that his use of pronouns tends to confuse the reader.

The only frustrating issue with D was that he tended to wait till the last minute to bring in the material. Many of his drafts he brought in during our sessions were due later that day. Given his ability, going over and making changes to his essay was relatively easy but it still felt a bit rushed because we had an hour to do so. He was enthusiastic. He often requested to meet on Thursday mornings so we could go over the changes we talked about during our sessions on Tuesday. On an interesting but slightly insignificant note, both students are Kinesiology majors. 

My adjusted approach

As I mentioned before, everything I had planned was now unnecessary. Since they already knew how to prepare and start their assignments, I decided to use their assignments as material for our sessions. I asked them to bring in anything that they were working on. I figured that those assignments would be a good opportunity for them to practice and refine any skills that they would need. This is where I encountered my second problem: using their homework as the primary source for material works well most of the time, but there were inevitably times where they didn't have any immediate assignments due, and therefore, nothing to work on. But my main concern was that I was beginning to grow disillusioned with my role as a tutor. I felt like my role had been reduced to a glorified editor. I was just another pair of eyes to look over an essay before handing it in.

Despite my complaints, my time and efforts yielded measurable results as both J and D returned with A's on their essays.

In my case, I had become a collaborator rather than a tutor. For instance, J had a biology paper assigned but the circumstances of the assignment was rather odd. She had no idea how to successfully complete the paper according to the professor's instructions. I was able to give her some hints/suggestions and she was able to successfully come up with material that we both felt complied to the professor's rubric. I think the main "problem" with becoming a collaborator is that it often feels unnecessary. The student will often already have an excellent idea of how to proceed and the best one can do is nod and say "that's great." I think we often feel compelled to say or do more as tutors, but when the student is already capable, there will be less to do.

Conclusion

Regardless of the students' abilities, I was lucky in that both my tutees were willing to learn and motivated. While the time spent in our sessions didn't produce results as noticeable as an ESL student might, they have told me that our sessions have helped improve their writing; both students are now more aware of their writing habits and now know how to proofread for more than just grammatical errors. J is now willing, albeit begrudgingly, to go over and revise her writing. D's use of pronouns and sentence has greatly improved. I suppose my idea of being a tutor was skewed. In conclusion, as painfully trite as it sounds, a good tutor will tailor his or her skills depending on the needs of the student, and depending on those needs, a tutor's input/overall role will fluctuate. Some students will need another teacher while others just need a few words of wisdom. 

The inductive opener

Some students think that flowery writing equates good academic writing, but that isn't true. Since wordiness often obstructs meaning, I would have students read example sentences or paragraphs where they must identify key ideas. I would present one sentence that is wordy and another that is concise (but not necessarily in that order). Students will be expected to explain the difficulties they had when trying to decipher a particular sentence and why. The student feedback will then serve as the transition into the lesson.

The SWBAT

Students will be able to:

• identify key ideas or phrases that repeat unnecessarily
• use active verbs rather than passive verbs
• grow familiar with using stronger verbs than forms of "to be"
• start a sentence without saying "it is" or "there are"
• eliminate qualifiers like "very" or "extremely" 
• identify nonessential information
• write a sentence without referring to what they think will be people's thoughts or reactions
• become familiar with words that can take the place of a phrase

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