ENG250 FA2018 Course Blog

Prospectus: What can peer tutors do to make ESL students feel more comfortable in the learning center? Annotated Bibliography: Jones, Rodney H., "Interactional dynamics in on-line and face-to-face peer-tutoring sessions for second language writers." Journal of Second Language Writing , Volume 15, Issue 1, Pages 1-23, March 2006. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1060374305000561.  This source compares how peer-tutoring sessions with second language students have different interactional dynamics if the sessions are conducted face-to-face vs online. This source is valuable to me because it also discusses online tutoring can sometimes result in more equality between peer and peer tutor, while face-to-face sessions sometimes result in a more hierarchical session, similar to what would be expected with a non-peer tutor. This possibly something to consider implementing in the Learning Center, depending on other factors. This source comes from a journal a...

Field Report #3: Pre-Tutoring Questions: 1. How did the tutor encourage the student to participate more actively in the tutoring session? 2. Did the student seem to have any specific questions or concerns regarding their paper, or did they want a more general look at their paper? 3. What did the student seem to feel their priority should be vs. what did the tutor seem to feel their priority should be? Observation Report: The tutor began the session by asking the student what their assignment was and what they wished to address about their rough draft. The tutor then read the student's paper aloud, making notes on it as he went after asking permission to write on the student's paper. As he read, the tutor asked for clarification on certain points of the student's paper and suggested other points that could be made. The tutor also mentioned that the student should try reading their own work aloud sometimes and to approach things from a reader's perspective. This ...

Reading Reaction Assignment: "The Idea of a Writing Center" This reading begins by addressing some of the common misconceptions about what writing centers do, including the ever-popular "fix my grammar" request. The reading then moves on to discuss the misconception that a writing center is only for "special problems" as well as the idea that only very challenging or very problematic assignments must needs benefit from a trip to the writing center. The reading also laments how writing centers are often seen to serve as a solution to a problem, and not as a way to build better writers and betters students. The reading then goes on to discuss what the purpose of a writing center should be. Namely, "not . . . to serve, supplement, back up, complement, reinforce, or otherwise be defined by any external curriculum.", but rather to simply talk to writers, encouraging them and building them up as writers and as people. The writing makes it clear t...

Field Report #2: Pre-Tutoring Questions: 1. How often were awkward silences present? 2. Who spoke more, the student or the tutor? 3. Did the student seem more confident at the end of the lesson? Observation Report: The tutor began the session by asking the student the open-ended question: "What can I help you with?". The student presented the assignment and the tutor proceeded to review both the assignment and the student's writing. The tutor read the the student's writing aloud and the tutor and student discussed and refined the student's hypothesis. The tutor asked the student what other concerns they would to address. The tutor and student then reviewed the student's sources and discussed how to analyze the articles rather than simply summarizing them. The tutor and the student then discussed the deeper points of the student's paper and how the structure of the paper should be refined further. The tutor then mentioned than the student was free ...

Field Report #1: Pre-Tutoring Questions: 1. How often were awkward silences present? 2. Were they any things that the tutor did not know how to address (unfamiliar subjects, etc.)? 3. Were there any other unexpected problems?  Tutee Report: The assignment that was brought it was a short one, and thus the tutoring session was unfortunately shorter than it ideally would have been otherwise. Nonetheless, quite a bit of useful feedback was gained and the tutoring session was on the whole successful. Due to the short length of the assignment, we were able to cover several different aspects of it, and of writing in general. I was able to implement several useful pieces of feedback into revisions of the assignment, with positive results. Overall, this session was limited by the short length of the assignment, but was still a successful demonstration of the basic principles of tutoring. There were no major problems during the session and several useful pieces of feedback were obta...

Reading Reaction Assignment: This week only one reading was assigned, however it was one of the most useful readings so far. The article's discussion of how to read like a writer was a very detailed and informative piece. Reading like a writer is something that I have already done before—examining a piece and trying to figure out what the author might have done differently—however I did not know until now what the term for doing this was. As a writer, I often find myself doing this whenever I read something—either for school or leisure—and have found it to be very helpful at times to break down what the writer tried to do, what they actually did, and what they could have done differently. This article goes even more in depth into the various ways readers can learn to read like a writer, and lists many different questions the reader can begin to ask themselves when reading the piece in order to better understand the writer and the piece alike. This article was very useful to me, ...

Reading Reaction Assignment: This week's readings seemed to be more focused and less generalized than the previous weeks, but seemed to be of similar value, containing a moderate degree of useful information. Overall, they were fairly interesting, if somewhat overly lengthy. The article "When Responding to Student Writing, More is Better" provided an interesting and in-depth analysis of how teacher feedback to written assignments can often do more harm than good. I can't say I entirely agree with the article's conclusions that students are unable to comprehend simple terms like "focus" however, or agree that many students are simply too lazy to read large amounts of feedback and will ignore it. I personally always go over any written feedback given on essays, and have sometimes wished for more, not less, feedback. Perhaps this is simply a matter of addressing students in general, and not those who are English majors, and thus more inclined to improve ...