Field Report #3

Notes:

·      ESL student

·      Reviewing a highlighted, edited essay

·      Source review

·      APA problems with citations

·      Using websites as an in-text citation

·      Issues with professor edits, changing the POV from third to secondà confused the student

Major theme of this field report:

-Navigating the balance between a professor’s edits (and a peer tutor’s edits)

Preliminary Questions:

·      Which teacher edits should a student implement? Which edits should be ignored?

·      How do you deal with a professor who imposes their writing style in their edits of students’ work?

Synopsis:
This session seemed a bit chaotic, and I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. I believe the student arrived earlier than the appointment time, even though I was not considered late for the observation. From what I gathered, the ESL student received an edited essay from her professor with margin comments made in the Word document.  The essay was in APA style. The student and tutor were reviewing each comment that was made by the professor, and going in depth about whether the edit should be implemented or ignored. This session proved to show me a different side of tutoring in which difficult professors (i.e. those that reword students’ entire sentences) can harm a student’s academic growth, rather than aid it. In this instance, the student was utterly confused about some of the changes suggested by the professor. An edit that boggled both the tutor and the student was an in-text citation. The professor had commented that the website  (no author) in-text citation had to be changed to a different format, but didn’t specify what change should be made. The tutor consulted a grammar book that said the website title can be placed in the sentence, usually included as part of the sentence. The tutor then asked me for my opinion, since I am familiar with APA, however, I mentioned the fact that my biology professors disallow the use of website citations in my line of writing. Therefore, it has been years since I used a website as a source for my papers. Nonetheless, I made a comment that perhaps the tutee should copy the citation style directly from the grammar book they were using and then ask the professor for clarification. The rest of the session discussed other grammar errors the professor had highlighted, and these errors are not worth discussing in this field report.



Afterthoughts/connection to readings:

This session reminded me of our readings, Chapter 2 and 7, in Researching the Writing Center. The tutor’s job is to develop a student’s writing skills, and this does not necessarily translate to a student getting a better grade. This student seemed adamant in sticking with the professor’s edits. The tutor seemed to support this notion of making sure that the edits followed exactly with the professor’s. I think writing tutors should have a different goal in mind. This means sticking with the student’s voice, so long as the student has a clear sentence structure, minimal to no errors in grammar, and each sentence aids in the main idea of the paper. This particular student seemed more concerned with appeasing the professor rather than developing life-long writing skills. The previous statement is to be taken lightly because it is really a hard reflection of my opinion of the session. I find that my opinion is grounded in the fact that the professor was rewording entire sentences in the student’s work that didn’t need to be changed or reworded. Certain edits that contained entire rewording of sentences was looked over by the tutor and me, and we both concluded that these particular professor edits were unnecessary (and quite frankly, an insult to the ESL student).

Unfortunately, I have no clear answers to my preliminary questions. However, I think that as a developing tutor who is actively engaged in English 250, I think that my belief concerning this topic lies in agreement with our readings. I don’t think a professor’s edits are the “gold standard.” The problem lies in the fact that too many students are eager to get a good grade in the present rather than develop their writing skills for the future. As a biology major, and one who has discussed questionable professor grading regarding lab reports I have written, I’ve concluded that I no longer take to heart the edits I receive on my lab reports. Most of these edits are relative and reflect the professor’s style of writing, and what they believe to be “correct.” The only edits I take seriously are edits regarding the main idea (coherence, paragraph order) and source credibility edits.

Possible Solutions:

•       Minimize bias grading by having another student/professor hide the author’s names of submitted work
•       Ask the professor to justify their edits

Week 7+ Week 8 Reading Response

“Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation of Mankind’”

It was observed in earlier years that a symptom of classroom learning was the fact that students were poorly prepared for college-level work, and when college professors offered help, were refusing it. In order to remedy this problem, peer tutoring was born. Students benefitted from being tutored by their peers, and the tutoring act itself helped both parties. Human beings are natural conversationalists, and “reflective thought is public or social conversation internalized.” The act of reflective thinking, Bruffee argues, is learned from others. Since thoughts can become words (writing), then the act of writing is externalizing internal thought. The main goal of peer tutoring is a conversation between knowledgeable peers.

Bruffee makes a good point that tutoring can overcome knowledge barriers because tutor and tutee “pool” their knowledge together. I agree that act of tutoring does in fact help both parties succeed in gaining knowledge, resources for learning, and honing the art of conversation.

“Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center”

The act of collaborating helps in problem solving, learning abstract ideas, interdisplinary thinking, critical thinking, and higher achievement through active learning. This article was advocating for a collaborative writing center in which tutor and tutee learn from each other. Lunsford argues that collaboration can be negatively used because it can contain a hierarchy, and in a writing center’s case, the tutor would pose more power. Also, collaborations can be inhibitory because groups of people must put aside their differences. I think Lunsford makes excellent points in favor of collaboration, and the negative points can easily be remedied. A handful of our class discussions have centered on creating a balance between tutor and tutee so that the tutor does not gain power, authority, or a belittling demeanor towards the tutee.

Researching the Writing Center Chapter 2 and 7

A writing center’s purpose is to improve a student’s writing, but not necessarily focus on the graded results. In other words, writing development is prioritized over a better grade. This, however, can be correlated. It comes as no surprise that one-on-one tutoring can result in higher grades, as quoted in this article. It seems reasonable to question how individual achievement via individually completed work may have hindered writing growth. The point of the 27-page Chapter 7 WC article is research support for the fact that peer tutoring does help students, and collaborative learning is also beneficial to academic growth. Chapter 2 discuses evidence based research/practice, in which previously completed research is used to answer new findings or studies. The chapter explains how ebr has been used in a wide variety of healthcare settings. I think this reading was boring, and too much of it was dedicated to compiling other studies and outside resources to drag out a simple point. However, I understand the reason for this assigned reading, being that we will be researching an area of tutoring that has been thoroughly discussed and reporting the information in a similar manner to these articles. 

Field Report #2: Live Tutoring Observation in Learning Center

Summary of Session:    

Sits next to her, rather than across from her

·      Student is facing tutor, but tutor had his hands crossed for some of the appointment, actively works on her laptop with her

·      Was already familiar with parts of the assignment

·      First questions asks:

·      What course is it for?

·      Who is your professor?

·      Tutee starts explaining: child Gambino video and about a media that shows a problem in society

·      Stops her, and asks if it was a chosen assignment and if you could choose it?

·      Description assignment, and student asks if he wants to read the prompt

·      Student explains she needs help with revising the essay

·      Tutor spends a few minutes reading the assignment

·      Tutor has a notebook in order to write out assignment requirements, but asks tutee if she has this all in her head or else he will have to remember it

·      Tells her she can stop him at any point, he reads the essay out loud, and stops to fix some minor punctuation (commas—eludes to a the difficulty of the professor)

·      Tutee explains that she doesn’t believe the essay is “good as a whole” tutor says he didn’t feel that, and continues reading

·      While reading it out loud, he stops and says “comma” out loud, as a cue where a comma should be added. Mentions that the voice is passive, and most professors want active voice (and asks if the student would like to change it or keep it)

·      Asks for clarification for some parts of the essay “people rioting against the police” and after pointing out some parts that do not fit, he fixes it for her on her laptop

·      Take out semicolon, and put in period, but asks permission first to change it

·      Breaks down thesis statement, and shows what evidence has for the assignment (separation of foreground/background, warehouse representing America, and people rioting) and why it is effective media.

·      And says thesis is clear, but if you want to make it clearer, can add more

·      Tutee explains that the assignment she wanted to focus on gun violence, touched on police brutality, and how America was represented by the warehouse (two body paragraphs total)

·      Student said that teacher had read the thesis and said it was good

·      Said professor said to make the ending more specific

·      He continues reading the assignment out, only stops to fix major grammar issue: Comma

·      Stops to fix words that may be missing from the sentenceà example, “that”, “where”

·      Points out sections to be changed in active voice

·      Fixes punctuation like period

·      Involves me in the session, concerning a section of the essay that the student didn’t like but tutor said was good

·      Word choice and gives words that can replace a word that wasn’t strong “similar” to “mirror”

·      References the assignment’s video to find details that neither could recall

·      Pointed out that not to use the same words in the same paragraph

·      “I would keep it like that., but it’s completely up to you.”

·      Omit some details from a paragraph that don’t fit in that paragraph

·      Always put in punctuation in quotes, makes light joke about it

·      Fixes sentences to get rid of the “ing” in the paper

o   Explains why: Professors like it

·      Clarifies what the student said, “So you’re saying...”

·      “I can’t give quick answer off the top of my head”

·      Asks tutor for quick ideas on how to fix some paragraphs, “big idea stuff”

·      Quickly in three minutes, reads another paragraph, says it is good, no problem

·      If there was a part he doesn’t remember clarifying earlier, puts the blame on himself, as a job

·      Clarifies a paragraph idea, and says a sentence in that paragraph doesn’t follow the main idea of the paragraph, and asks the student to tell him “show me how this fits with the paragraph idea.” Student explains why it belongs

·      Ran out of time:

o   Told her he would be happy to continue after his next session

Pre-session questions:

How are you able to make split-second corrections, and have confidence about your suggested correction?

How do you pace the session so that you can get through the entire paper, but do so in an effective way?

During the session, I realized how important it is to know how to make quick decisions while reading a paper, and understand how to explain those changes to the tutee. Understanding that tutoring is a time-sensitive process means that learning how to make a craft from it would greatly benefit. Making a craft refers to making a routine out of tutoring, and this can be done by knowing what works and what doesn’t work (through lots of experience/practice). For example, a tutor might use the same greeting or have a list of greetings in their arsenal that they can use without fumbling or making the session awkward. A tutor can prepare for each session by having grammar rules printed out that the tutor could refer to at any time during the session (visual aid) in order to clarify something. This, I believe, comes with practice. Tutoring is essentially honing a skill.

         The tutoring session I observed spoke a lot about a rhetorical analysis approach. The tutee had to make certain that her essay had ethos, logos, and pathos. These ideas were mentioned in the Backpack vs. Briefcases assigned reading. During the session, I also observed the tutor expressing many roles, such as ally, commentator, and collaborator. The ally role came out when the tutor had mentioned really specific requirements of the professor that the tutee didn't even know was essential. The commentator part is especially crucial in the sense that the tutor should make comments on the paper, but not be the one to act on them. The collaborator refers to the fact that the tutor should never enforce their beliefs or ideas into the paper, and squash the voice and tone of the tutee. These concepts were mentioned in The Bedford Guide reading Chapter 2. At first, I didn’t see how the tutor had to take on such roles, but after observing the session, I realize Chapter 2 made an excellent point about the dynamics between tutor and tutee.  

         Some criticism I had about the tutoring session was the fact that the tutor did not delve into explanations when he inserted a comma or swapped a semicolon for a period. I think it would be invaluable if he were to explain why he made those changes for the tutee. In each 250 class, we stress the importance of establishing life-long writing skills, and this is an effective means of practicing that ideology.