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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Regular class: Cell phone/Stress, Homelessness, Pot legal, on college writing, spelling

            The students I put in this class all have a relative idea of what writing should be. Parts of their essay could be better organized and some ideas need to be clarified and expanded upon but they know enough about writing to benefit from the demands of a regular English class. I think they would be able to learn without being overwhelmed. They seem to have a clear (or at least better) understanding of written English. Their vocabulary is decent and they don’t have as many problems with grammar such as verb tenses or subject verb agreement.

            I would focus on the thesis statement, organizing and expanding support/body paragraphs, and review basic grammar. Reverse outlining might be a good strategy as well since the students can produce a short essay’s worth of material. They have enough to go back and pull out the main points in their writing. These students don’t have as many grammar issues and some may even be able to fix their own mistakes through a simple proofread. Their writing is beginning to resemble an academic essay.

Developmental class: Students A-I, students 1-3, writing samples, weird Friday, importance of dance

            These students all have repeating errors that impede the reading process. I think I can piece together what they are trying to say but it takes several reads and careful piecing together to do so. Many of their writing samples seem to suggest that they need help with generating content and basic grammar. Their spelling is okay but it is not main obstacle when it comes to reading their essays.

            These students would greatly benefit from reviewing grammar rules such as subject verb agreement, verb tense, and plural vs. singular. Some of these students need to learn the difference between spoken English and written English. The thesis needs to be introduced and studied early on because several writing samples have a general idea but lack a clear thesis. Additionally, their supporting paragraphs are often vague or unrelated to the topic. I think one issue that hampered many students was that they didn’t or couldn’t produce adequate content. I think the PIE format for expanding/developing paragraphs would be very useful. Outlining will later help them set up the basic framework for an essay. 

Notes on School success and failure

The reading was a study done by Guadalupe Valdes that studied the language issues immigrant children are forced to deal with. She had been selected as the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest lecturer for the 1998 AERA annual meeting. Valdes started the study in 1991 that focused on schools in Mission Vista, a city in the greater Bay Area. It is primarily focused on two students: Lilian and Elisa.

Lilian was a bit of a "problem child" while enrolled in school. She rarely participated and spent more time socializing with friends rather than working the assigned activities. She didn't really try so it was no surprise that she was never able to transition out of the ESL program.

Elisa was more like a model immigrant student. She was shy but respected the teacher and tried her hardest to learn English. She strived to make it out of the sheltered curriculum with little luck. Despite her efforts, she was still told to enroll in ESL classes despite her increase in English proficiency.

Valdes reveals that the young students in the school ESL program were expected to learn English quickly, but their exposure to proper spoken English was minimal. There were usually 35 to 40 students in each class and teachers were poorly equipped to provide the instruction the students needed. Classroom instruction usually consisted of copying vocabulary/sentences and coloring. Students rarely progressed out of the program. Teachers who taught the regular courses simply catered to the majority of native English speakers and they weren't willing to adjust to a new student who struggled or had proficient but broken English. The fact that policymakers believe immigrant children are learning English does not help the cause.

Group reading synthesis

My group has narrowed down the overarching issues from our readings to the problems and attitudes associated with student dialects. The mere fact that schools and policies are trying to be more accepting is a nice sentiment, but there are more problems that arise. The members of the CCCC and its opponents alike seemed to agree that there were flaws. There are many issues yet to be addressed (or issues that haven't been addressed properly) and some even argue that respecting those marginalized dialects is in fact a detriment.

An important reoccurring idea was balance. In order for such a policy to succeed, administrators and educators need to be able to find a balance between respecting student dialects and teaching Standard English.

Group Reading Points

Here's what I gathered from the reading.

The CCCC article itself:

The Students' Right to Their Own Language is a theory piece addressing the issue of non-standard English speaking students. Its authors were essentially announcing that the CCCC would honor and "officially" recognize the various dialects of English spoken by students. It seems that this was primarily a response to the growing number of non-standard English speaking students in high school and college. I suppose, however, anybody could argue that is article is a pedagogical piece because it offers insight and recommendations of how to approach education for a diverse group of students. Its statements and arguments wouldn't really be applicable outside an academic setting. 

• Somebody suggests that "we need to discover whether our attitudes toward "educated English" are based on some inherent superiority of the dialect itself or on the social prestige of those who use it

• A dialect is a variety of language used by some definable group. Everyone has a personal version of language, an idiolect, which is unique, and closely related groups of idiolects make up dialects.

• The user of specific dialect employs the phonological, lexical, and syntactic patterns and variation of the given "community." Because geographical and social isolation are among the causes of dialect differences, we can roughly speak about regional and social dialects.

• In specific setting, and because of historical and other factors, certain dialects may be endowed with more prestige than others.
• Edited American English (EAE) refers to the written language of the weekly news magazines, of almost all newspapers, and of most books. This variety of written English can be loosely termed a dialect, and it has pre-empted a great deal of attention in English classes
• Carefully chosen materials will certainly expose students to new horizons and should increase their awareness and heighten their perceptions of the social reality. Classroom reading materials can be employed to further our students' reading ability and, at the same time, can familiarize them with other varieties of English

• There is no evidence that enables one to describe any language or any dialect as incomplete or deficient apart from the conditions of its use. The limits of a particular speaker should not be interpreted as a limit of the dialect

• Concentrating on the EAE with handbooks encourage a restrictive language bias.
• Students can and do function in a growing multiplicity of language situations which require different dialects, changing interconnections of dialects, and dynamic uses of language.
• Students should also be able to recognize the difference between handbook rules and actual performance

Support for the CCCC article:

It was rather difficult to figure out the overall point of this article. While it was relatively easy to determine it was an academic theory piece, it was so long winded that it took a while for me to figure that out. It brought in excerpts from other people's work, I frequently struggled to figure out why that particular quote or example was important. The author has an academic tone that supports linguistic diversity and a heightened sensitivity towards language attitudes, but it took me a while to reach that conclusion. 

Struggle for language rights

The CCCC was not merely being trendy, nor politically correct, in passing the Students' Right resolution. Rather, the organization was responding to a developing crisis in college composition classrooms, a crisis caused by the cultural and linguistic mismatch between higher education and the non-traditional (by virtue of color and class) students who were making their imprint upon the academic landscape for the first time in history.

The resolution sought three goals:

To heighten consciousness of language attitudes

To promote the value of linguistic diversity

To convey facts and information about language and language variation that would enable instructors to teach their non-traditional students - and ultimately all students - more effectively.

The Counterargument:
 

The author of this piece is arguing against the CCCC's decision that ensures the students' "right" to their own language. The author quickly points out some of the weaknesses in SRTOL and often remarks that the CCCC means well but does not do enough or has overlooked critical details.

SRTOL:

• Never begins to examine a "right" to one's own language

• Offers no consistent view on the importance of dialect
• Wildly overrates its "sophisticated" knowledge in sociology and linguistics
• Both draws on and feeds into a reactionary politics of ethnic-cultural chauvinism

• Clumps people into homogenous, internally undifferentiated groups, missing individuals entirely

• Tries to shame English teachers for professional work of which we should be proud 

The readings focus on the issue of having a diverse group of students who do not speak Standard English. This has always been an issue but has gained much more attention largely because of the increasing number of non-standard English speaking students.

Not only does it reveal potential weaknesses in our current educational system, I think it highlights the fact that blanket policies for education are often ineffective. Especially relevant today, there are simply too many students that may have different learning curves and struggle to stay in school. Regardless of what dialect they speak, every student brings a different set of creativity and analytical abilities. Just because a student does not speak or write in EAE does not mean that student should be lumped into a group of "remedial English" students.

My recommendation would emphasize the notion that every student is different, and that not every teaching method will work for all students. I think the best approach for any class to bring a diverse group of activities and perspectives to the classroom. That way, it will ensure that most students will be engaged and actively participate. Of course, no matter how "cool" the instructor is or how fun the activities are, there is no way to guarantee that every student will participate. But it should be better than having all students strictly adhere to one method while learning nothing.

SLIPs in student essays

Here are some examples of SLIPS that I found in the student essays. I only listed a few of them.

Pot legal

This student has relatively few phonological SLIPs but they repeat. "Mariguana" persists throughout the essay.

The essay's main problems were morphological SLIPs. Sentences like "Jim Gray a Republican" are missing the "is." I think the writer also needs to review plurality as "child's" should be "children's."  In the third paragraph, "this people" needs to be "these people." 

There are multiple cases of syntax SLIPs: "For example I had a friend who would smoke mariguana everyday, eventually he got tired of it because it would not have any effect anymore so he got ecstasy as a try on; got hooked on it and now is an addict who dropped school." There are several ideas in this sentence that are just strung together with commas. I think the student was trying to explain marijuana's role as a gateway drug but fails to mention that. The student just assumes that the reader knew what he or she meant. As a result, I would also categorize this sentence under Pragmatics. The writer also abruptly switches to second person and directly addresses Judge Gray in the last paragraph.

Semantic SLIPs are not as prevalent but they do show up occasionally: "this people developed symptoms of anxiety and panic attacks so why would we want to live in a world like these."

I had trouble with a few sentences. I couldn't determine whether "the symptoms that families within develop are a thousand" was a syntax SLIP or morphological. It sounds like awkward sentence structure but I wasn't sure. There were also some instances where it sounded like "Jim Gray" or "Gray" was randomly inserted into a sentence. Sentences like "Jim Gray but that does not mean …" or "The children Gray are expose to this…" I wasn't sure whether these sentences were morphological SLIPs or semantic SLIPs.

Weird Friday

This student's writing is heavily influenced by spoken language, and as a result, contains multiple morphology SLIPs. Spoken language affects spelling when it comes to words like "damn," "where," "blanket," and "through." There is a case where the student wrote "stared" when it should have been "started" but this could have been a typo. Names of stores such as Foot Locker and Champs should be capitalized. The student misspelled "and" but this could also be attributed to spoken language; the "d" is often hard to hear.

The most persistent and prevalent SLIP were semantic. The writer uses colloquial spoken words and phrases such as "hella" and "I was like." Another good example of colloquialism would be "so then we went to champs and see if they had my size and yupp they did had it so I got my shoes and left to the house." The writer's ability to continue thoughts or start sentences without saying "so" seems to be very limited. It also sounds like the student's knowledge or vocabulary is limited in the sentence "then like at 10pm we left to the airport and got our things register to the thing, after that we were all set to go in."

Endnotes for students

Response to Pot Legal

I like that you have a specific paragraph for each problems such as drug lords, problems, and politicians. You bring in good examples like Jim Gray but look up proper citations so you can make your essay more reliable. And for one last thing, I recommend that you review possessive form and plural vs. singular. I noticed that those problems repeat through the essay.

This student has a pretty good idea regarding overall essay structure and paragraph content. I think the paragraphs are mostly focused with relevant information but could use some expanding. I am hoping that the student will be able to understand what I am trying to suggest when I mentioned possessive and plural forms. There are other topics that the students needs work on but I feel like it would overwhelm him or her if I brought up everything. I figured this would be a good place to start.

Response to Weird Friday

You have very good descriptions and little details like the way your mom calls you mijo. I definitely know what you mean when the alarm clock goes off like that. I was hoping you were going to tell me what happened in Mexico. I wanted to know!

For next time, let's work on spelling and starting sentences. I feel like you have so much to tell me as a writer so I think we should start with spelling and exciting and interesting ways to start new sentences.

I didn't really know where to start with this student. The writer clearly has a story to tell, but isn't very sure how to go about it. Unlike the Pot legal writer, he or she isn't familiar with written English. I also suggested that we go over everything together since I get the feeling that the writer doesn't have a clue about written language. I figured that correct spelling and sentence variety would be some progress.

Spoken and written English

I think it all comes down to how much reading and writing students have done. Reading will help students expand their vocabulary and sample different writing styles. Even without the imitation exercises we talked about in class, reading will inevitably give students examples of sentence structure and a sense of voice. 

I'd say students who struggle to transition from oral language to academic writing either haven't had a whole lot of homework, or they didn't do it. Academic language can be "weird" and foreign. It's very formal, full of words the average student rarely uses (when was the last time anybody said "nevertheless" in a sentence), and can seem borderline archaic. I can't imagine what it would be like for ESL students because they have to write in an unfamiliar language. Foreign countries do seem to emphasis vocabulary memorization when teaching English, but it's different when you actually have to use it to convey an effective message. Picking words out of a dictionary/thesaurus doesn't guarantee proper academic language. There's an interesting line between knowing the definition of a word and the proper context in which to appropriately use it. ESL students would likely know the definition but misunderstand the context while fluent or native speakers will understand that context even if their vocabulary isn't as extensive. 

Essay writing is a skill that improves with practice, but if students have never written an academic paper before, they are not going to be familiar with thesis statements or transitions. And it's not that the material or essay prompt is particularly difficult, but I think it's that those students simply aren't used to thinking academically. Ultimately, I think the primary reason students struggle is their limited vocabulary. Yes, I know there is more to an essay than fancy words, but if a student already has a comprehensive vocabulary, then they can move onto content and organization.

The importance of dance discussion

Here are some ideas and thoughts my group had:

1. What issues/questions does this essay bring up in light of the reading
1. What are the students' goals?
2. Can you make error correcting more engaging and not so dull?
1. How well does error correcting work?
3. How can you improve help students become interested in the editing finding process?
4. How and which errors are going to be marked?

2. What options does a teacher have for responding to the essay and working on grammar
1. Focus on the errors that impede the overall meaning of the text
1. Frequent and distracting errors
2. Start a collaborative assignment where students have to share and discuss information
3. Proofreading training
4. Indirect feedback
1. Highlight or just circle errors and allow students to figure out the error on their own (the check mark in the margins)
5. Direct feedback
1. Locate and label error with appropriate symbols
2. Fix the error (most direct method)
6. Positive reinforcement
7. Average out the grades for potential rewrites so it forces students to carefully proofread and edit
8. The teacher could assign separate grades for grammar and content. Grammar and content could be weighted evenly or separately (grammar 40% content 60%)

3. What I suggest:
1. Work with the student's proofreading techniques
2. Help the student work on sentence level corrections (local errors).
3. Give global feedback regarding grammar
1. Many of this student's mistakes are repetitive. I think the student would benefit from a grammar lesson on past tense, plural vs. singular, and subject verb agreement.
2. I would recommend that the student try some exercises to practice such material and then return to the essay and attempt to self-correct.
4. If I were tutoring this particular student, I would want to know the essay's primary focus. It seems like the student wants to talk about two different topics
1. The part about the health benefits of dance is informative but I found it a bit distracting; the main focus of the essay seems to be centered around its cultural significance.

Some things I need to remember for tutoring

Jasmine is enrolled in English 114 and Dustin is enrolled in English 214

My main concern is that I won't be able to address their questions effectively or I'll confuse them because I'm giving conflicting information or I'm unable to articulate my point very clearly

The grammar editing tips are useful but I feel that they would benefit students who are in remedial English classes. Dustin and Jasmine's writing isn't grammatically perfect but they have a decent understanding of subject verb agreement and verb tense.

Their primary issues are excessive wordiness or lack of focus.

I like the tip that suggests double checking little words such as "or," "it," and "is." I have already found mistakes like this in Dustin's writing. They aren't serious, but they are mistakes that can be eliminated through proofreading.

I think both students could benefit from reading their essays out loud and slowly as they both tend to lose focus.

Reading aloud also helps with finding grammar errors or rewriting awkward sentences. Dustin has been able to identify and rewrite certain sentences

Asking internal questions could help narrow down their focus and get to the main idea.

I would recommend that both students take the time to carefully proofread.

Certain phrases can be eliminated entirely or replaced with a single word.

Jasmine could certainly use the listed proofreading tips (listen to music or chew gum) as she has already told me that she hates the proofreading process. Anything that can help her focus and get through the process would be helpful.

Searching for pronouns is a good idea because sometimes students use too many pronouns and they forget which noun the pronoun is replacing.

Watch for apostrophes. Distinguishing contractions and possessives is an easy mistake to make but also easily avoidable

Make sure each sentence has an independent clause. I found a couple of comma splices in their writing.

Some notes on responding to errors

Main points:

1. Be selective in marking errors
1. Give top priority to the most serious errors; those that affect the comprehensibility of the text
2. Give high priority to errors that occur frequently
3. Consider the student's level proficiency, attitude, and goals
4. Consider marking errors recently covered in class

2. The most serious errors
1. The ones that impede global understanding; usually involve more than one clause
2. Those that do not affect overall comprehensibility are local errors

3. The frequently occurring errors
1. If the student has few global errors but multiple local errors, focus on the local errors and the repetitiveness will become a distraction

4. Consider the student
1. Consider her or his level of proficiency
1. If a student is relatively advanced he or she may be able to cover several errors with no problem
2. Consider the student's attitude
1. How confident, resistant, or discouraged is the student?
3. Consider the student's goals
1. Does the student want to improve their overall writing or just eliminate the errors?

5. Consider marking errors recently discussed in class
1. Locate the error
2. Identify the error with a symbol

6. Decide when to start marking errors
1. For earlier drafts, focus on content
2. Mark and refine sentence level errors on later drafts

7. Who will identify and mark errors?
1. Other readers such as peers can be an active part of the editing process
2. Afterwards, give them ideas and help them understand how they can benefit from the feedback

8. For grading
1. Determine whether the errors and primarily global or local
1. Use this information when determining a grade
2. Strong content but too many local errors can bring the overall grade down
1. It's better to assign an overall grade than separate ones for content and structure; students will overlook what they need to work on and fixate on the higher grade
3. Justify the grade they got with an explanation
4. Give them positive comments regarding their strong points and improvements