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.