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.

Just Play

Gyra's blog post about different kinds of intelligences really got me thinking. I posted a comment on it, but still couldn't really get it out of my head and needed a little more room to think about it so I decided to write a post on it myself. It made me think of Good Will Hunting, not sure if you have all seen this movie but if you haven't you should because it is amazing. Matt Damon or Will in the movie is a genius who has never gone to college or had any really good education but is just naturally smart especially in regards to math. He is trying to explain his intelligence to his girlfriend as the conversation goes like this:

Will: Beethoven, okay. He looked at a piano and it just made sense to him. He could just play.
Skylar: So what are you saying? You play the piano?
Will: No, not a lick. I mean, I look at a piano, I see a bunch of keys, three pedals and a box of wood. But Beethoven, Mozart, they saw it, they could just play. I couldn't paint you a picture, I probably can't hit the ball out of Fenway, and I can't play the piano.
Skylar: But you can do my O-chem paper in under an hour.
Will: Right, well I mean when it came to stuff like that... I could always just play.

When I read Gyra's post about different kinds of intelligence this popped into my head immediately. I think that in the way that Matt Damon describes in this movie, some people can just play certain things. I could never just understand math the way some of my friends do, but when it comes to reading and writing, as Matt Damon puts it, "I could always just play." So, I guess my point in bringing this up is coming to the realization that when it comes to reading and writing, other people can't necessarily just play the way that I do. I think to be a writing tutor it is important to understand this. To be a teacher of any kind really it is important to understand this. Teaching someone something that you have never really had to try at, something that you are just sort of naturally good at, is really hard! When I help people with papers sometimes I find myself giving advice and when the writer asks me "Well, why is it that I should do that?" I have absolutely no idea how to respond. This, to me, is the biggest challenge in being a writing tutor. The majority of us are a part of this program because we have a natural talent for writing and English, so how can we really help those who don't have this natural talent? It has always been difficult for me to tell someone how to approach writing and reading because I don't even know how I approach it. I just do it. When I started this class at the beginning of the semester this seemed to be my biggest hurdle, figuring out how to help someone improve their writing when I wasn't even really sure if there were concrete things that made good writing. To me, good writing has never been simply the sum of a bunch of mechanical aspects of "good writing" but instead is in the essence of the writing, in the flow of it. Now I have learned that while writing may still be something that comes naturally to some and maybe never will come easily to others, there are things that we as writing tutors can do to make this process a little easier for other people. Maybe we will never be able to teach people to "just play" when it comes to writing the way that we always have, but I do feel confident that with the skills we have learned in this class we can do something to help those whose natural talents fall outside of the realm of writing and reading. And maybe in the meantime they could help me with that whole math and science thing? Because I am very far from being able to "just play" when it comes to those things. Honestly...I am very far from even knowing the rules when it comes to those things.

Second Boys and Girls Club Visit

I have to say that I think our second visit went considerably better than our first, at least mine did. The kid I've been working with had already started working on his script a bit and so I had him start writing things down that he wanted to say. First we started talking about the basics about the person he interviewed. I had him write down how he wanted his video to start. Then I asked him some questions about the pearls of wisdom he got from her and what they meant to him. I was impressed with his writing and he came up with some very good things to say! We then went on to type out what he had so far and then did bullets of other things he wanted to talk about. Overall it was very successful and I was happy because I felt like I had actually helped this time and we actually got somewhere.

On another completely irrelevant note, I just found this video on CNN and thought it was hilarious. Thought some of you might enjoy it too.

Fearless Cat Faces Two Alligators

Directive Approach for ESL students

I have been thinking about some of the things that Professor Grove said last week about ESL students, particularly about the need to be directive. It is interesting that Professor Grove said that the best approach with an ESL student is to be directive because if you give them too many options they will simply be overwhelmed. We have been talking so much about directive vs. facilitative approach and have pretty definitively decided that it is always better to be facilitative. We have discussed the ways that facilitative comments are more appropriate and helpful especially as our role as tutors, but the class with Professor Grove made me realize that this is not always the case. I never thought about the fact that some students might need a more directive approach until Professor Grove pointed it out. She said that in this situation we are like the teacher and they are the student. It took a little while for me to adjust to this idea, since most of the semester we have been talking about ourselves as peers who can help talk about ideas. It is a little intimidating to me that for ESL students we need to assume this "teacher" role. I have been thinking to myself "Why would anyone trust me with such an important job?????" Thankfully, Professor Grove also talked to us about some of the ways to prioritize our concerns with ESL students during one session. We brought up the concern that there are so many things that we could help them with so how do we know which are the most important? Professor Grove suggested that the first thing we work on is grammar. This also was a big shocker to me since previously we have discussed not paying too much attention to grammar and focusing on ideas more. She said that grammar is something manageable that we can work with and it gives the students very concrete things to focus on, which is what they need. All in all, Professor Grove's visit was extremely helpful to me and completely changed the way I view consultations with ESL students. Hopefully, I will be able to follow her advice if and when I am in this situation.

High School Student Mentoring Pt. 2

I have been corresponding through email with the high school student that I mentored about the college writing process over the last few weeks. We were hoping to get another meeting time in to talk about her essay, but unfortunately we couldn't find a time that worked for either of us, so we have resorted to email. I first want to comment and say that giving my comments over email instead of in person was considerably harder. In person I could easily make a comment and give one of my radiant smiles and say it in a nice way so that it doesn't sound too harsh, whereas over email I found that this wasn't quite as easy. I was immediately faced with the problem of how to word my criticisms without sounding too harsh. I read over her essay and was pleased that it had improved so much from the first time we talked and that she seemed to have taken a lot of my suggestions to heart. I told her that I thought it was overall a good essay but that there were a few areas that might need clarifying. I decided to use the track changes feature on word to write little comments about wording and spelling and small errors, which proved to be very helpful. I then attached her paper back in an email to her in which I gave sort of "end comments" about the paper as a whole. I realized my email was quite lengthy by the time I finished it, mostly because I spent several sentences clarifying things that I could have said quite easily in person. My real reason for writing this blog post is not to tell you about this particular consultation, but to reflect on the use of email as a means of writing comments. As I mentioned, it is particularly difficult to write comments over email, and I now understand why the writing center has a policy that students must actually come in to the writing center for a consultation rather than simply emailing their paper. Over email it is much more tempting to tell the writer what to fix rather than discussing with them about their ideas, for the obvious reason that the writer is not present for you to discuss with them. At first, when I heard about the policy of having to do a face to face consultation, I thought it seemed a bit useless, but this consultation has made me realize why that is a policy. As I was writing my comments back to the student, I was very tempted to simply cross things out and change words and tell her exactly what to fix. I realized that the process of an email consultation by its nature sets up an authoritative relationship between tutor and tutee rather than the facilitative one that we hope to have. Despite these issue, I think I managed to keep a facilitative tone rather than an authoritative one, but I'm not sure that if I were to continue to do email consultations I would be able to keep this up. In short, consultations should be in person, not over email or any other type of electronic device.

Reflection on Our Visit to the Boys and Girls Club

I realize this is a week late, but I wanted to reflect on how our visit to the boys and girls club went since I was sick for class on Wednesday. I have to be honest, our visit was not exactly what I expected. I thought that we would be giving the kids practical help on how to create their video and tips on how to make a better video. When we got there I realized that there were only a few students who had even done their interviews yet, let alone even started their videos. I realize these kids are pretty young, but the boy I was working with didn't even know when this was due or when they were going to start working on the actual video. We spent the majority of our time just talking to each other about our favorite things and our siblings, because there wasn't too much to talk about regarding the digital story. I had him tell me about his interview because he was one of the few who had done the interview and I showed him my digital story and gave him some tips on how I did mine. I don't think it was a waste for us to go on Monday, I just wish they had been more prepared so that we could have helped more. I didn't feel like I was able to help the boy I was talking with because he didn't have enough done to work on. I realize this will sometimes be the case with people who come in the writing center, but at least those people seem to have an idea of what their assignment is and we can discuss how they will go forward from where they are. The kids didn't seem to know what their process was going to be at all in this project and I have to admit I felt a little incompetent desperately trying to think of things I could help him with before he had even started the project. You can't keep a 12 year old kid talking for too long about how they intend to proceed with a project, so I felt kind of stuck. Maybe other people felt that they had more success with the kid they were working with, but I wish there was more I could have done or helped with. It just seemed like it wasn't very organized so it was difficult to give him very much help. Hopefully when we visit next week they will be a little further along in the process and there will be more concrete things that we can help with.

Non-traditional Students in the Writing Center

Sorry it has been so long since I have blogged! I have been absolutely swamped with work. Anyways, this is a bit of my free writing from class today and my thoughts on some things that we talked about!

          We read about a lot of non-traditional students in the writing center, but it seems to me that these students don't frequent the Richmond writing center the same way that they might at a big university.  Smith specifically references older people who go back to school after being in the workforce or not completing their degree originally. As a small, expensive private school, I wouldn't expect that many people would choose Richmond to finish their degrees. I would expect they would choose larger public schools. This being said, I wonder if this article really applies to the Richmond writing center. The one thing that I thought did apply to our writing center was the issue of some of the students being product focused rather than process focused. I think regardless of whether someone has been in the workforce or not, the majority of people are product focused, especially in a competitive environment like Richmond. Both traditional and non-traditional students are driven to succeed and because of this many people are product-focused, with the exception of those who are genuinely concerned with writing, such as English tutors. What does it even mean to be a non-traditional student? Does this mean people who are not college age? It seems to me that we should have an individual approach for everyone who comes into the writing center, rather than grouping them based on their age or whether or not they fit our traditional stereotypes of a college student.  I think if you go into a session with pre-conceived notions about the best way to go about a consultation just because of the person's age, you are already discrediting the fact that he or she is an individual with his or her own writing needs. Rather than saying "Oh this is a non-traditional older student, so I need to approach our session in this way," we should be saying "Oh this is an individual student that I need to approach in a unique way just like every other student that comes into the center."

Gardner says,

"Given my earlier linkage between 'several non-traditional students' and the label 'quickfixer,' the terms themselves may lead us to practice based only upon generalizations and stereotypes."

        I think this is a very important point and one that we need to remember. We need to be vigilant in trying to avoid consulting based on stereotypes rather than individuals. 

         Also, we touched on the issue of the power struggle with a non-traditional student. Since they are older, it seems a bit awkward to be telling them what to do or acting smarter then they are. They are our "superiors" and most of us were raised to be respectful to our elders, but just because we are helping them with their writing doesn't mean that we are disrespecting them in any way. They are coming into the writing center because they are acknowledging that they need help and that we have the skills to help them, so I seriously doubt that they will be offended when you try to help them. Of course, it may feel awkward, but we should remember that we are facilitators of writing and are not given this position to be authoritative. As long as we keep the same respect for the non-traditional students that we are expected to have for traditional students, there is no reason that our consultation should feel disrespectful or uncomfortable. These people want to learn and want to improve just as much as anyone else and we shouldn't withhold our comments or wisdom for fear of insulting them. 

The Concept of Control in Teacher Response

In this article, Straub quotes Rebecca Rule saying, 

"As [a] teacher, I must be careful not to take over—because the minute I do, the success (if there is one) becomes mine, not his—and the learning is diminished. I can contribute; I can guide; I can brainstorm with him; I can suggest exercises; I can offer models; I can tell him where the comma goes; I can support him wholeheartedly. But I must not take over." 

I think this is a very important point for us to remember in our role as writing consultants. I think anytime you are talented in a particular area (most likely writing for most of us since we are in this class) it is difficult not to take control in situations regarding that area, but as consultants, it is extremely important that we don't. I know that sometimes when I read people's writing I have the urge to cross out all sorts of things and change it to exactly how I would say it or write it, but this is not the point of being a writing consultant. We have to suppress that urge to take control and instead support, guide, and help, as Rule suggests. It is not simply about having a good end product, if it were, perhaps people would just bring us assignments to the writing center and we would write it for them. But that is not what the writing center is about. It is about learning. It is about the process. 

Tutoring a high school student

On Friday I went to Hermitage High School to help a senior with her college application essays. When I got there, the first thing I noticed was that we were wearing the same shoes and I immediately knew we would get along. Ok, I admit, the shoes thing wasn't the ultimate ice breaker, but still we got along well. She hadn't had much of a start on her essays so a lot of what we did was brainstorming. She asked me about whether or not I thought an idea would be a good one to write about and I gave her general tips about what colleges are looking for in the essays. We finally decided that a good topic would be her move from Italy to America when she was younger. I told her the best thing to do was to just start writing and see what comes out. Initially, she took the same approach as I always did in high school, which was to make some very broad statement about the nature of life or love or people or something far too broad to start an essay with. I advised her that she needed to immediately get to what she was trying to say and not waste time talking about things that she would never be able to prove or back up. She decided to start out with it being sort of a story and told about the day she found out she was moving. She wrote her introduction and I read over that and we talked about it and then we talked about how she would structure the rest of the paper. I think we got a pretty good general outline of how it would go. We moved on to a few other supplement essays and really only got to talking about what she would write about and how she would structure it. I also helped her set up a Common Application account online to make it easier to have all her essays in one place. Overall, I think I helped her at least get some direction in the process and it was actually kind of fun for me as well. I told her that if she has any questions or wants me to look over the essay she can definitely email me so hopefully she will take advantage of that, because I feel like I could really help her with this stuff. It was sort of a strange feeling to feel like I could actually make a difference and help her with her essay where other people haven't, and I admit, I liked it.

Shadowing

I went to the writing center for my second week of shadowing (the first week my person didn't show up). Once again, the person who I was supposed to be shadowing was not there. I'm thinking I am going to need to get into contact with them and make sure that they meet at the writing center and not the library or something. Anyways, the situation was remedied because I just shadowed someone else that I know who had some consultations at that time. I sat in on one of her consultations which was for a girl in a sociology class who was required to go to the writing center by the teacher. She said that everyone in the class was required to go. Her writing prompt was to apply a theory to a film that they recently watched in class. The consultant started by looking at her paper while she filled out a form. Then they went over together piece by piece parts that may need some work. For the most part, the essay was good and only needed a little bit of work on transitions and clarifying some things. The session went well and I learned how to deal with people who maybe are required to go to the center by the teacher and who have a pretty complete paper when they come in. All in all, it was a good learning experience for me.

Grammar Mistakes

In class today we talked about grammar and common mistakes. I identified my most common mistake as the ambiguous pronoun reference. I have a lot of trouble with making sure that the pronouns that I am using are clear. I always think: well it makes sense to me so why shouldn't it make sense to everyone else? I just hate it. Why do I need to make it clear which he I am talking about. I think it is pretty obvious if you read the sentence. Oh well, at least I know that it is something I need to work on, doesn't mean I have to like it though. We also talked about the thesis statement and how central it is to a paper and how important it is to have a clear thesis. I think ambiguous pronouns can definitely contribute to making a thesis unclear, so I'll try to avoid that. Specifically, we talked about how a thesis should make the reader question some previous belief they may have had, but they shouldn't have to question what you are trying to say in your thesis. We also discussed whether your thesis should be the most precise accurate thing in your essay or whether you should leave some room to explore and maybe go off in a different direction. Our discussions definitely gave me some things to consider further.

Professor Interview

Today I had my meeting with my core professor to do the interview for the digital story project. We had some really good conversation about the process of writing. We talked about several things that we have touched on in class, one being that she is a part of a writing group of professors at Richmond and they get together once a month to exchange writing and peer review it. Professor Dolson said something about this when she told us that most teachers are totally fine with the idea of exchanging writing and ideas. Also, I asked her whether or not she thought that ideas are formed by writing or that writing is formed by ideas (we touched on this a bit in class) and she said that she definitely thinks that people learn from writing. She said that the majority of the time she isn't even sure what she will write until she writes it. This was something I thought a lot about at the beginning of the semester. I talked about it a bit in my bullshit post and I was glad that she agreed with me and my lack of ideas when I first start writing is not just laziness. Anyways, we had a very good discussion and I think it will definitely be good content for my digital story. I am a little worried though about how I will put these questions and answers together in the form of a story though. If anyone has any ideas about how to do this or how they plan to do it I would definitely appreciate some tips because I'm not really sure how to start.

Class Performance Thus Far

We were just asked to think about how we have done in class so far and if we are satisfied with our performance. I honestly am not all that sure how I am doing in class. That seems like an easy way out of putting real thought into this, but I am actually serious. Since we don't have very many concrete grades, I have no idea what I am going to get in this class or how well I am doing. I don't have that many blog posts to this point, but I think that is because I put a lot of thought into each post. The last one I worked on for several days before actually posting it. In that regard, I think there should be some sort of point system for quality of posts rather than just quantity. If I had wanted to write 20 blog posts that I didn't put much thought into just to get all the possible points, I easily could have. But, for me, these posts should be about more than just doing as many as you can, they should be about putting real thought into the things that we discuss and read in class. Because of this it is a little bit frustrating to me that the point system is based on number of posts rather than how much deep unique thought has gone into each post. I suppose there wouldn't really be a very concrete way of measuring this, but still I think the quality of posts should hold some value when it comes to our grade in this class. I think I talk a good amount in class and make comments that contribute to the conversation, so in that sense I know that I am doing well. It's just the whole point system regarding the blogs that I am a bit worried about. Oh well, I guess from this point on I'll just have to make a point to post more, even if the thought isn't fully developed yet. As a writer though, I admit that I do have a bit of trouble doing this. I don't exactly enjoy the idea of publishing something that doesn't really mean anything or just to get a few extra points in a class, but I think I'll have to get over my perfectionism when it comes to writing and just start posting more.

Written Literature vs. Multimedia

Last week in class we discussed the pros and cons of multimedia having a larger role in classrooms and in the world. In 20 years will the next generation even be reading books (in the traditional sense) or will the concept of a bound book seem ludicrous to them? Will everyone have a Kindle or an iPad and never hold a newspaper or a book in their hands? We talked about this a little bit in my journalism class last year with regard to newspapers. Most newspapers in the past 20 years have seen significant decreases in their number of newspaper subscriptions as people have switched to the easier online versions of them. But, the question is, in this transition from print to multimedia what, if anything, is lost? If you were to read the newspaper every day online or every day in print would it really make a difference? As long as the content is the same it shouldn't. But, there is certainly something to be said for sitting down in the morning, flipping through the newspaper and passing the different sections around the kitchen table. Though I can't exactly pin down what is lost in the transition from print to electronic or print to books on tape, it seems to me that somehow in this switch, the life is drained out of the content. This may be because I have grown up with books and newspapers in my hands and have yet to come to terms with the Kindle or the iPad as replacements for my childhood memories. Maybe nothing is really lost at all as long as the content remains the same, but I am afraid that as generations to come rely more heavily on multimedia instead of print, some of the joy of reading will be sucked out of the world. For me I guess it comes down to tradition. I've always reveled in thoughts of reading the same book to my children that my mother read to me or passing the sections of the newspaper around the kitchen table in the morning with my family. I hope these feel-good traditions aren't wiped out as new cool technology takes their place.

Do the goals of the student contradict the role of the writing tutor?

In class today we discussed the goals of the writer vs. the role of the writing tutor. It seemed that most people agreed that the goal of the student was to get an A on whatever paper they brought in and the role of the writing tutor was to make the student a better writer. These two things create a conflict between what we as writing tutors should be attempting to do in our sessions. On the one hand, we are there to help in whatever way the writer needs us to, and so if what they want help on is getting an A on this paper, isn't that what we should help them with? But on the other hand, we are all in this class because we care about writing in one way or another and want to make a difference in people's writing, so we feel a strong desire to make the person a better writer. So we are presented with the question of what should we really be helping them with? Creating a better individual paper or being a better writer in general? I think there is a fine line that we should walk when it comes to this delicate balance. We need to keep in mind that the reason that the student came to the writing center was for help with a particular paper, so we should remember that and do our best to fulfill that. We also should find some ways that help them with their writing in general. Last year, my core teacher would write comments on my essays that were about that particular paper but also about writing in general. She would for example circle a transition and tell me that it needed a little work and she would also give me an additional sheet about how to write good transitions. This was extremely helpful because it improved not only that individual paper but it also gave me a sense of how to avoid that mistake in the future. I think this is something that we should attempt to do in our consultation sessions. Not just circle something and tell them it could use fixing but also explain why and how that contributes to a better paper. Of course, we also discussed the possibility of the writer not being willing to fix their work or be a better writer, in which case, we may simply be out of luck. If someone doesn't want help there probably isn't much sense in continually hammering writing knowledge into their head. But, for those who genuinely want to learn and want to be better, we should give them the tools to improve in anyway we can, not just for that particular paper but in general as a writer. It reminds me of the saying, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Cheesy, I know, but I think that if we just give them the knowledge to do well on that particular paper, sure they will be better off for that paper, but they will constantly rely on someone giving them that knowledge and won't be better off in the long run. Though everyone can always use more improvement, as a tutor, I want to help get someone to the point where they don't need to come to the writing center anymore or as much. If in their sessions they learn something about writing and not just that one paper, they will be better off. So, long story short, there is a balance that we need to strike between helping with one paper and helping them become better writers, and this balance will most likely be different for every person that we work with.

The Inadequacy of Language

"Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars."-Gustave Flaubert "Madame Bovary"

In my English 297 class we just finished reading the book Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. One of the novel's motifs is the inadequacy of language and the way that it serves to trap people in words and emotions dictated by the culture that they live in. The protagonist is Emma Bovary, a woman of the middle class who lives in her own fantasy world of books. She is extremely idealistic and romantic and is constantly searching for the perfect man to sweep in and rescue her from her mediocre life. She cheats on her husband with two men, both of whom she speaks to in the same way with the same phrases and romantic jargon. Flaubert frequently points to the insincerity of her language and the language of everyone around her. This insincerity is largely due to the fact that they express feelings and thoughts in the same overused cliches. We discussed in our class how one of the fundamental flaws of language is our inability to ever say exactly what it is we are trying to say and exactly what it is we mean. Have you ever said something that came out totally wrong? Have you ever groped for some combination of words that could express a feeling so deep or a thought so profound and come up with nothing sufficient? It seems to me that this is something we, as future writing tutors, should really think about. We need to understand that there are some thoughts or feelings that perhaps cannot be accurately summed up with words or language. It makes me wonder whether, in my role as a writing consultant, I can ever really help someone to say what they are trying to say. I guess it all comes down to what we talked about during our first class, communication. We are constantly trying to find ways to communicate what we are thinking or feeling with other people and through writing perhaps we can find ways to bridge the gap between our language and our thoughts. Hopefully we can bridge this gap ourselves and more importantly help other people bridge this gap so that they can learn to convey their thoughts in a sophisticated and educated way. Maybe we will never be able to really say exactly what it is we are trying to say, but that is a challenge we need to take on, rather than settling for crude rhythms that are as empty as they are false.

Bullshit

I just read the article entitled "A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing" and my reaction to the frequent use of bullshit in writing is something like this: so what? For me, writing has often involved some sort of bullshit, whether or not we choose to classify it as such is subjective. Papers are interesting when they make some sort of absurd claim, and then through careful argument and rhetoric, prove it to be true. I have never read an interesting paper that started with an obvious and/or boring statement about a book and then proceeded to give the obvious points to back it up. The ability to create a thesis that is to a certain degree bullshit and convince your readers by the end of the paper that not only is it not bullshit, it is one of the truest things ever said about the book, is part of being a good writer. In college, our essays are supposed to be arguments that challenge the readers' previous views about the topic and provide a different insight. Any time a radically different view is suggested it is at first thought to be bullshit. The art of writing, to me, is not about taking an easy conventional idea and using jargon to make it sound intelligent, but instead should be taking a difficult and controversial idea and making sense of it. I would more quickly define bullshit as the former writing style rather than the latter. I guess what I am trying to say is that what starts out as bullshit doesn't always end as bullshit. Often, when I sit down to write a paper and finally think of some bullshit thesis, I have absolutely no idea how I am going to tie it together or how the argument is going to unfold. As I continue to write the paper and make connections and tie my argument together not only am I creating a more persuasive essay, but I also learn things about the book that I may not have understood before. One of the things that I think is truly wonderful about writing is being able to use it to prove points that otherwise would be seen as totally insane. My English teachers over the years have always said again and again and again that our theses need to be arguable, not obvious truths that no one would dare question. So in some sense, these arguable theses are partially bullshit, but as long as you are able to make clear and effective points to back up your bullshit and convince the reader, it is good writing. Frequently I find that these essays that began in bullshit actually open up my eyes to a new way of seeing the book that I wasn't able to see before. Through trying to convince others of my bullshit, I often end up convincing myself, suggesting that maybe it isn't bullshit at all but just a different/slightly strange way of looking at things. Maybe I'm crazy or maybe have just become so good at the art of bullshitting that I am convincing myself that bullshitting is a good thing, but there you have it.


“A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them."-William Stafford