Research Pt. 3

This is my third, and in my opinion most interesting, link about tutoring ESL students. This is from the Dartmouth writing center.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/tutor/problems/esl.shtml

This is how I hope to structure my final project. I want to make an advice page with very clear dos and don'ts for ESL students. One of the most interesting things I read on this page was about the different rhetorical conventions between our culture and other cultures. Specifically, they touch on the idea of a thesis sentence. In other countries, thesis sentences are not understood and perhaps even found to be offensive. As Dartmouth's site puts it, "Why would a writer want to announce to his audience what he is going to say , and then put the audience through the rather dull process of hearing him say it?" It is almost considered offensive to put the thesis out there in such an obvious way because in other cultures it suggests that the audience is not capable of deducing the main point of the essay. Another really interesting issue they touch on is plagiarism. I never thought of it this way but they explain that the reason foreign students don't fully understand the concept of plagiarism is because they come from places where ideas are not owned by one person but shared by everyone. In some countries there is no such thing as copyrights and ownership of an idea. Foreign students often don't see plagiarism as stealing because in their country ideas belong to everyone. These are just a few small things that might help us understand how to help and tutor ESL students and I think they are very beneficial to increasing our mutual understanding.

Real Consultation!

My friend approached me earlier this week and asked me if I would be willing to do a consultation on her English paper for Professor Carleton. She said that she had cleared it with him and he said it would be alright. I told her I would help her, as I have on her previous papers because I figured it couldn't be all that different. We did our consultation earlier today and I think it was very successful! I was really proud of her because she wrote a very good paper and we had a really good discussion about where her paper was going and some concrete things that she could do to improve it. Most of the issues with the paper were wording and clarity things so we worked those out easily. She also frequently did her in text citations for quotes wrong so we discussed how to do those properly and I even pointed her towards a Writer's Web resource that would help! Then we discussed her thesis a bit more and I recommended that she include a very important point that she makes throughout her paper in her thesis. I thought it was the most interesting point she had made and that it should be included. She said she wasn't quite sure about how to do that though since that wasn't really what the paper was about. I discussed with her that from a reader's perspective that was a very large portion of what the paper was about and it would provide an interesting contrast in her thesis. We brainstormed some concrete ways that she could include this part cohesively in the thesis and I think she has a good idea of how to do that now. I think our consultation went really well and I am honestly really excited about it!!! It was so cool actually doing a consultation and I think that I actually really helped her and I have to admit it feels really good!

Dr. Essid's Visit to Class

When Dr. Essid visited our class on Wednesday I have to admit I got very excited about the prospect of being a writing consultant. Finally! All our hard work has paid off (or will pay off). I can't believe the semester is over already and when we get back to school we will officially be writing consultants! I am really excited, but also a little nervous. It seems scary that students will soon be trusting me with reading their writing and helping them to improve it. Though our class has prepared us well, I still feel a little nervous about it. I think that it might be more frustrating that we have yet realized to be a writing consultant. Though we will be able to help a lot of students and that will be very rewarding, we also have to be prepared for the disappointment of not being able to help everyone. We will all have some hopeless cases and we will all have difficult consultations. We have all we need to be prepared for those moments though and I feel confident that everyone in our class will handle the difficult situations with grace and maturity. Some of Dr. Essid's stories freaked me out a little bit, like the one about the teacher who brought a student to tears. It occurred to me that this job is not merely about being a good writer or helping other people with their writing, it is about learning how to handle people, which is a very useful life skill. We need to do our best to communicate with not just the student but also the teacher and Dr. Essid. This seems like a pretty big task, but I am confident that we all can do it and I can't wait to get started!

Handling A Writer with Offensive Views

During our discussion of Sherzel's paper we talked about how to handle a consultation with a writer who wrote a paper with very harsh or offensive views. I thought this was very interesting because I had never really thought about what to do if someone comes in with a paper that I find offensive or too harsh. We discussed whether or not we are responsible to tell them that this kind of an argument might offend their teacher and suggest that they make their argument less harsh so as to earn a better grade. Sherzel's paper focused on a particular instance in which a student absolutely refused to change or remove any of the opinions he presented in the paper. I have to admit I am not entirely sure how to handle this. I don't necessarily think that as writing consultant's it is our place to tell a writer that his or her opinion is wrong or offensive, but it is our place to help a writer do as well as he or she can on a particular paper, and a paper with an offensive tone probably won't get a very good grade. I pointed out during our discussion that you would assume that someone who writes something like that would know that it is offensive but wants to take that risk and we can't really stop them but one of my classmates pointed out that maybe they don't know it is offensive. In that case, maybe you should say something to them so that they don't get a bad grade because they didn't know that they had said anything offensive. I really don't know. I came to the conclusion that for situations like this there isn't really one particular reaction that we should have that is right. We need to assess the situation and asses the person and decide whether or not we think it is best to point out that their argument might be offensive. If we decide that we should point this out, I think it is extremely important that we respect the person and do not make them feel uncomfortable coming to the writing center and talking to us about their paper.

Research Pt. 2 Literature vs. Writing

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pedagogy/v010/10.1.bousquet.html

The second article that I found is in no way, shape, or form related to the first article that I found, and I apologize for this but I just found this very interesting and wanted to share it. The author, Bousquet, recounts the decline of literary studies and the possibilities for a new sort of English that is tied closer to writing in the future. Bousquet references North, the author of one of the articles we read in class. The article talks about how the study of English is in a decline, but the study of writing is continually more relevant in subjects across the curriculum. With this decline of the study of literature in the traditional sense, comes a need for English to be more focused on writing and rhetoric that is more relevant to other courses. I don't know if I am explaining this as well as I hope to, so you all should really check out the article because it is very interesting.

Boys and Girls Club Visit 3

We had our third and final visit to the boys and girls club last Monday and I can't say that it went quite as well as the second visit. We got there and ending up sitting around for a while because none of the kids were there and when the boy that I have been working with finally got there it was around 4:30 leaving us only a half hour to get some work done. Last time I had asked him to bring his sheet with the answers to the interview on it and upon seeing him last Monday he immediately informed me that he lost that entire sheet along with all of his answers. I don't know if it is just me, but I feel like this kids aren't taking this project very seriously and don't really care about it all that much. I really liked the kid I was working with and while we worked together he always tried hard but it seemed like outside of our meetings he really didn't do any work on the project or even think about it at all. We still had what we wrote from last time on a flash drive so we downloaded that and tried to make it a little longer, since at this point it was only a half a page. We managed to make it about another quarter of a page but then I really couldn't squeeze any more out of him. We decided to start the recording, which he seemed excited about. He did pretty well on his first try and I noticed that he didn't read directly from the script but instead improvised some of it, which I thought was pretty impressive. All I ever managed to do was read directly from whatever I had written. But , this improv approach created a bit of a problem because he ended up repeating himself and jumbling the order of it a bit. Nonetheless, I was happy that was trying and seemed interested. Overall, I'm happy I could help him at least a little bit, but I wish that the kids seemed a little more interested in the project and I'm not entirely sure if we accomplished that much. I hope the end of the project goes a little bit better than the beginning has and the kids start to get some enthusiasm about what they are doing, otherwise I am a little worried about how the stories will turn out.

Research Pt. 1 ESL students composing process

http://we4mf3mv5e.scholar.serialssolutions.com/?sid=google&auinit=A&aulast=Raimes&atitle=What+unskilled+ESL+students+do+as+they+write:+A+classroom+study+of+composing&title=TESOL+quarterly&volume=19&issue=2&date=1985&spage=229&issn=0039-8322

I was looking back on my blog posts to find a topic that I wanted to research further, and the one that struck a chord in me was the ESL post. Professor Grove's visit was extremely eye opening and I was really interested in her advice to be directive with ESL students and to take on the role of the teacher. This article isn't exactly about being directive but it does give some insight into the process of writing of an ESL student, which can help us figure out how to approach the consultation. This article is a study done to find out what are the composing processes of unskilled ESL students in writing. Students were asked to think aloud into a tape recorder as they were writing. One of the important points that I pulled out of the article was that we cannot treat ESL students like typical native speakers. It is important to understand what they do differently as far as composing and generating ideas goes. Also the study says that we need to give ESL students a lot of time to compose writing because they frequently write a sentence and then read it over a few times to make sure it is right and so on. It takes them more time to come up with their ideas and then translate them into English and then be sure that they did it correctly. This makes me think of what Professor Grove said about the importance of meeting with the ESL students more than once for consultations. There is a lot to work on and they need time to thoroughly process all of it or else it can just be overwhelming. One thing I found particularly interesting was that the study found that ESL students for the most part did not take into consideration their audiences or purpose. Different audiences did not alter their process of writing and so the product was an ego-centric writer based paper rather than a reader based paper. Professor Grove mentioned that ESL students tend to take for granted the fact that the readers understand what they are trying to say because of similar cultural backgrounds and mutual understanding and this article reiterates that fact. It is important for us to understand these cultural differences that lead to different processes in order to truly be able to help ESL students. I'm still trying to piece together the information Professor Grove gave us and some of what I read in this article to figure out how exactly to approach a consultation with an ESL student.