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Visual Literacy Seminar (A First Course in Methodology) · Theories of Communication & Technology (A Second Course in Methodology) · Language in Society (A Third Course in Methodology)
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Writing an Informative Abstract · Plagiarism · Why Professors Dislike the "To Be" Verb: A UMBC Writing Center Handout
Journal Log Week 1 · Journal Log Week 2 · Journal Log Week 3 · Journal Log Week 4: Elizabeth Piccirillo's Log/P. C. Paul's Response Log
Journal Log Week 5 · Journal Log Week 6 · Journal Log Week 7: Ryan Dorrill's Log/P.C. Paul's Response Log
Journal Log Week 8 · Journal Log Week 9: Erica Ostrofsky’s Log/P.C. Paul's Response Log · The Final Tutoring Log: Reflecting On My Own Tutoring Skills
Date: 2/13/2006
Time In: 1 p.m.
Time Out: 1:40 p.m.
Length of Tutoring Session: 40 minutes
Class and Professor: ENGL 100 with Professor Burns
Tutee(s): Maleeha Bader and Smita Dey
Native Language: Indie
Assignment: Assignment #1/Compare and contrast essay “On Cannibalism” with a modern anthropological essay.
Tutees Specific Problem: Open-ended and vague assignment, not sure how to start.
The tutees came into the writing center looking like two deer caught in the headlights. Both tutees were in the same freshman composition class, working on the same assignment, and were in the same part of the writing process: determining what was expected of them in the writing assignment. Tutoring Maleeha and Smita at the same time seemed most logical to me. The tutees were complaining that the assignment was open-ended and vague. Three days before, one of their classmates walked in with the same assignment and the same complaint except she was one step ahead. She had another reading in mind to compare and contrast the assigned reading, “On Cannibalism” to. Maleeha and Smita had no clue as to what to use for a comparison reading. I was one step ahead because I was seeing the same assignment for a second time. I had a plan.
For a freshman writer the assignment would appear open-ended and vague. From my viewpoint the essay was close-ended and specific. For me, the assignment sheet was a word problem. One had to extract the given information and extract what one was expected to find. First, “On Cannibalism was written in the 1600’s with an unusual anthropological viewpoint of not being Euro-centric. “On Cannibalism” argued that because a culture did not share the same values as the European culture, one could not conclude that European culture was superior to the observed culture. The author’s viewpoint was 400 years ahead of its time. The tutees thought the modern anthropological viewpoint would be the same. Or would it be? The tutees needed a second essay that discussed the pre-20th century viewpoint. I explained this is where the contrast would come from. We now had one given. I pulled out a sheet of paper and told then to write at the top Assignment, then beneath write in the top left “Given,” explaining this was the way I was instructed to take apart a Physics word problem. “We’re going to generate a list which tells us what we know and what we then want to find.”
Second, the assignment said, “…compare ‘On Cannibalism’ to a modern anthropological essay.” Maleeha and Smita missed the professor’s instruction. In this case, the article “a” meant one essay, not a whole bunch of essays, hence a second given. The assignment was a word problem. Maleeha and Smita asked, “Why not a bunch of essays?” I said, “The clue here is the instruction ‘write a maximum of three to four pages,’ the third given. If the essay comes out to five pages, the essay is overwritten and will have to be cropped back. Three to four pages means the language must be concise and focused. Plus, the professor gave them three focus questions and instructed the tutees to pick one. The focus statement was the fourth given. Professor Burns was giving the tutees a thesis statement. Maleeha and Smita understood what a thesis statement was but did not recognize the professor’s focus statements as leading questions or as theses statements. Professor Burns handed the tutees a recipe in the form of a word problem but the tutees did not know how to read the word problem to extract the recipe.
Together, none of us together understood the first focus statement. “Skip this one and go to the next.” The next focus statement had something to do with focusing on how other cultures were treated in “Star Trek.” I know a little about “Star Trek,” who doesn’t, but I could not easily see how to apply the statement to the assignment and neither could Maleeha and Smita. The third focused on the treatment of the Native American. We all found this to be a palatable choice on the menu and agreed this would be the focus of the paper.
I then recapped for them how we just narrowed the assignment down and made sense of it. “Professor Burns’ assignment is three to four pages long and you have to find one essay in modern anthropology that discusses the treatment of the Native American prior to the 20th century, so where will you look for such an essay?” Once again I saw two deer caught in the headlights. “What you want is a scholarly journal article from an anthropological journal. Where does one find such a journal?” Again, two deer plus headlights. “Well, you have two options, either you can use the UMBC library web link go into the scholarly journals, locate an anthropological journal by subject and then do a search on Native Americans or find a journal in the library stacks.” Maleeha and Smita looked at each other, then back at me. “Where’s the stacks?” they sang in chorus. I had to assume my tutees were freshman or transfer students and that I couldn’t take anything for granted. “Just go up to the second floor. The entire floor is nothing but scholarly journals. When you use the main staircase and walk up look to your right, there is another room other than the one you see with the computers, the entire second floor is filled with scholarly journals. Sometimes just walking through the stacks can have benefits such as being able to tell from the title of the journal what is inside.”
The game plan began to culminate in their minds but not entirely. I took out a piece of paper and drew a picture of the paper. “One paragraph will be the introduction,” they were okay with that. “The introduction would end with the Native American statement which would function as the thesis statement and would be what they wanted to prove in their compare and contrast. The last paragraph would be the conclusion.” Maleeha and Smita were okay with the introduction and conclusion because they explained them to me.
The body of the paper was still a mystery. Both tutees said, “We don’t understand the reading because we don’t understand anthropology.” They were getting lost in jargon of anthropology. I pulled out two more sheets of paper and labeled one at the top “On Cannibalism” the other I labeled “Native American.” “Take the ‘On Cannibalism’ essay, read each paragraph, jot down in the margin a word, phrase or sentence that represents the main idea of the paragraph, and do that for each paragraph. Then on the blank sheet of paper list all the comments in the margin. Do the same thing for the ‘Native American’ essay. Now there’s two lists. Look at the two lists side by side. There’s going to be similarities and differences.” I took out two more sheets of paper. “At the top label one ‘Same,’ label the other sheet ‘Different.’ When two things are the same from the list write them down on the same list. When two things are different, write them on the ‘Different’ sheet. Also after the word, phrase, or sentence put in parentheses (OC) for “On Cannibalism or (NA) for Native American so you know which came from where. Now you have two lists again. One list tells you what is the same and the other list tells you what is different.”
“Next step is paragraphs. This could be treated several ways.” Again, more paper. I drew a line across the paper creating a top half and a bottom half. “You could compare the two essays on the top and contrast the two essays on the bottom.” I pulled out another piece of paper and wrote “subject” as a heading. “You might find there are similar subjects such as how do husbands treat wives, wives treat husbands, how do sons and daughters treat elderly parents, how do parents treat children, how do mothers treat daughters, how do fathers treat sons, how do fathers treat daughters how do mothers treat sons, the research will lead you somewhere. It will just be a matter of how the two essays treat the subjects and just remember to be answering the focus statement.” I think they left with a blueprint on how to begin working towards a first draft. When they walked in they looked like two deer caught in the headlights, when they walked out they looked like to hunters looking for deer. If nothing else, I think at the very least showed them how to read an assignment.
Date: 2/20/2006
Time In: 1:20 p.m.
Time Out: 2:10 p.m.
Length of Tutoring Session: 50 minutes
Class and Professor: PHIL 350 Ethical Theory with Dr. Dwyer
Tutee: Li Fei
Native Language: English
Assignment: Assignment #1/The Trolley Problem.
Tutees Specific Problem: Seeking help with grammar
In some ways I viewed Li as problematic. When she introduced herself at the desk, Melanie asked Li if she had been the writing center before, she responded, “Many times, I’ve got this paper and it’s due in an hour. I need help with grammar and I want to work on the computer.” From her body language I could tell Li was in a rush because she was pacing and she made it quite clear what she wanted and didn’t want. I was comfortable with the topic whatever Li was going to pull out of the bag because I studied a few courses in ethics and had some familiarity with Dr. Dwyer’s teaching style from some discussions in “Philosopher’s Anonymous,” the philosophy club. What did bother me was Li’s writing style, that of a procrastinator. My suspicion was she does this all the time: wait till the last minute, bash it out and then walk into the writing center for support. From her approach, I got the feeling she doesn’t want to learn how to write, she wants someone to do it for her. Even so, I made her work for it.
We went into the computer room where she read the document for me, but Li was not focused. She was nervous and anxious about just bashing out the paper. Why? Li was very free with information. She procrastinated to the very last minute and wrote her first draft practically bleary eyed in the wee hours of the morning. She said she hadn’t reviewed the paper and had gotten two hours of sleep before starting the next day. The reading was terrible. Li may not have been an auditory learner or she may have been so tired that she couldn’t even hear the missing articles, the awkward sentence structures or the weak word choices in her paper. I had to stop at times and recite the sentence to her again inserting the missing article and changing tense as necessary. Li was not hearing the differences and I really don’t think she cared to hear the differences. In her mind what I just said was the same as what was written and I knew full well it was not.
I realized this was not working and quickly switched styles by asking questions. Mostly I used small questions that had very little meaning but made her dig for her errors. I turned the tables on her. As a sentence was read I would say, “Really?” or “Does that sound right?” or “Why is that?” or even “That’s a peculiar word isn’t it? Fortunately for me or more likely the both of us, this was a real short paper, two to three pages. If this had been a longer paper and as tired as she was it would have become a wrestling match. By the middle of the second page it was clear she wrote this real late at night because the sentences were becoming incoherent. We worked through it together, my comfort level was fine but I couldn’t determine how she felt about having to work in the session. When the paper was finished Li felt a real sense of relief even though she had to run to print, but I just have a sneaky feeling this is a habitual problem she has in writing and I am not clear at to what she is getting out of the process.
Date: 3/14/2006
Time In: 12:00 p.m.
Time Out: 2:00 p.m.
Length of Tutoring Session: 2 hrs
Class and Professor: ENEE 899 Tulay Adali
Tutee: Hualiang Li
Native Language: Chinese
Assignment: Doctoral Dissertation
Tutees Specific Problem: Recommended
Danny DiCrispo passed me this student as we were both free but Danny was not comfortable with a technical paper. He also warned me it was a dissertation so I knew the content would be over my head and I informed Li of this. His advisor was helping with content but recommended a clean up the text. Regardless of the content, Li had familiar ESL errors such as noun-verb agreement, missing articles, and wordiness. I said to him as a tech writer I could help with the English structure in sentences and high level format. Surprisingly, I recognized many of the buzzwords even though Li’s paper was doctorate level electronics.
Li’s paper contained many equations and most of the English text were descriptors for the mathematical proofs. One problem I noted was layout and a lack of referral to specific places in the paper as with any technical document. Li would create sentences such as “As in the above equation…” or “As shown below….” I would stop him and ask which equation on the page are you referring to? Li would point and sometimes the equation was seven steps up the page, once it was an entire proof he was referring to two pages previous or he was pointing three equations below. I went over and grabbed a calculus text to get a feel for writing conventions. Using the Calculus III. Section, I showed him how the authors when stating things about the equations would always put the number of the line where the equation appeared. I indicated this would aid the reader in finding the specific equation in the text quickly. Li had his equations numbered but using them in the text. At times, a sentence would have a string of equations embedded in the English sentence which is typical of the writing style because the author was describing principles of the equations or concepts. The math string was simply parallel structure in English. There would be “some math stuff,” “some more math stuff,” and “some more math stuff” as I have demonstrated in this sentence. Sometimes Li used too many “ands” in his strings. I showed him what parallel structure looked like in English and then with Math symbols such as A, B, and C I further illustrated the point. I did have to ask him if that was what he was doing because when I wrote out a chunk of his mathematics and then right underneath said, “If I take this stuff here and call it ‘A’ (mathematicians love to do this to simplify things when they get messy), and I take this stuff and call it ‘B,’ and I take this stuff and call it “C” does that disturb what you are saying? His answer was no. Li articulated that he was no longer doing mathematics but simply saying this object is some “thing.” It is difficult to explain because the author is reading mathematics and English as two separate languages but is fluent in both. I think the best way to explain this is it is as through the author is writing in Latin and English in the same sentence.
In his text as with many ESL’s and even native speakers I would find Li would have four or five words where one would do. His other problem was generic words that modify nothing like “very,” “more than,” and “much more than.” I found that as with many tutees, Li was writing in spoken English. I indicated to him write that way when you are trying to get your thoughts out but then go back and reduce the wordiness, which is what I did in writing this text.
The author of "this" log is Elizabeth Piccirillo
Date: Wednesday, Ferbruary 22, 2006
Time: 2:45 p.m. - 3:40 p.m.
Tutee: Kunal Parikh
Course: English 110- Composition for ESL Students
Responding to Question # 6:
Title: “Failure to Launch”
There are two types of sessions to me: those that sail-along smoothly and those that experience a series of stumbles.
When Kunal Parikh walked up to the Writing Center I went for the keyboard, the sign-in sheet and the pen cup at the same time. Needless to say, it was a stumble. He was soft-spoken, so I had to ask him several times what his first language is. What? I’m sorry say it one more time? Can you spell it? Once sign-in was complete, I was anxious to sit down at a sturdy table and start in on the smooth and familiar process. But Kunal kept walking, into the computer room. I asked him if he needed to print out his paper and told him that it was ok and said to go right ahead, just come back out when you’re finished. But Kunal never came. He sauntered in the doorway until some sort of boredom slash concern slash instinct told me to turn around and see what was going on. It turned out Kunal was unsure about the format of his paper, which looked more like a sonnet than an essay. We tried and tried and tried to reformat the paper and Computer Science guy Christopher Paul was called in for reinforcement. Finally, we decided the only thing to do was to manually reconfigure the lines and punctuation on a new screen. This whole part of the writing “process” was something I was no used to. I hadn’t read a skit about this in The Practical Tutor, I hadn’t seen a handout on it, I hadn’t heard another classmate talk about it. It was one of those rare Writing Center occurrences you hope never happens again.
Sitting down (finally) with Kunal’s paper, he provided me with the assignment sheet; another rare Writing Center occurrence, in my experience. The student was being asked to write on one of their passions, to an audience assumed to have zero knowledge on the subject or topic. As Kunal read his paper out loud, I realized he knew everything about the Hindu holiday he was describing as his passion, but he didn’t realize I knew nothing. We went through the revision process in a normal fashion: citing misuse of articles and punctuation, looking at sentence structure and paragraph organization. I waited until the end of the essay to talk to Kunal about the one thing he was missing.
I waited until the end because I wanted his attention to be totally on this issue. I’ve found that often with ESL students, they get distracted by concerns over spelling, articles and punctuation. By getting those concerns out of the way, I felt confident that I could mentor Kunal on this issue that many new writers struggle with: The ability to inform an uneducated audience on a subject the writer is particularly educated on. I started by merely showing an interest in the topic, asking questions about the religion and then about specific parts in the paper. Ok, so first you go here to do this and then you go here… Naturally, when I would ask a question or make an inference like this, Kunal would point to a part of the paper where he explained (or at least thought he had) this part of the process. This led him to realizing he hadn’t explained it well enough. By showing an interest in Kunal’s interest, I believe he was given more confidence to talk about it and then write about it. The more questions I asked the more he realized he needed to write about. He began compiling a list of more things that he wanted to describe or discuss. Then we went through and underlined some of the topics I didn’t fully understand. This often included terms, which in some cases Kunal informed me couldn’t be translated in a way that could be understood in the English language, but he wanted to keep these parts.
Here I saw someone’s passion, I saw something sacred…something that couldn’t be totally understood or translated by someone who wasn’t as passionate about it as Kunal. It was important for the assignment to be written to the audience intended by the teacher, but in the end the essay was really for Kunal. He left some parts of it with me, things that were hard to get to at first, from the computer and from Kunal. By the end of the session, you could tell Kunal had somewhere to go and something to say, finally, something had launched him into this state; he was up and running.
P.C. Paul's Response Log to Elizabeth Piccirillo's Journal Log
03/08/2006
The computer mishap I remember vividly. I think we should move to a “hand-off” policy with stuff like this and just refer the tutee to Tech Support. We should explain to them gently it’s not our expertise and that we’ll be glad to work through the language of the paper but Tech Support is better equipped to handle formatting problems. Maybe we should just admit to our limitations because computer problems always get lengthy. (I get caught up in helping people too, we’re just “helpful people” and that is probably one reason we were chosen as tutors. It is a strength and a downfall, sometimes we quite when to let go, but I think this will come with a little more time in the Writing Center.)
Tutoring on the computer is happening more frequently. In two weeks all four of my sessions were on the computer. I let my tutee make the decision as to what is comfortable for them. Then again, even though all four sessions were on the computer, one person came twice with two different papers: ENGL 393 and EHS 210. I have not had the time to do research on tutoring on or with a computer but I have been thinking about it and will discuss in Friday’s meeting.
I had a similar paper from a 100A student writing about a personal experience. I had to wait to the end of the paper to deliver the blow. The paper was a freewrite and she was passing it as a paper. The paper was hunting for an existence. It turns out a three word phrase was the entire paper. She used the phrase in the introduction and at the end, placed a crisis revolving around her father in the center and waltzed around it. I asked her if she knew what happened? Of course she couldn’t answer. It’s happened to me to and at the time I can’t answer. Having read Murray Art of Revision I recognized the problem immediately. There was a story to be told that the author wasn’t even aware of, maybe something painful, not sure. The messenger in her mind kept running past the doorway. Either the messenger knew there was something deep there and didn’t want t go in or the messenger went in and slammed the door shut again because of what was seen. Her story was about the relationship with her father before and after his accident. It was a traumatic accident, but he pulled through quite well. It could have been much worse. I asked her if household life had changed, she said no. Did your relationship with your father change, she said yes. I said how? The six million dollar response by my tutee was, “I don’t know!” I sat back and informed her that’s where your story is. This is particularly hard even for good writers let alone 100A and 110. Both tutees found a gold nugget and waltzed around it. Sounds to me Elizabeth learned to find those nuggets and polish them up.
I my only concern would be but I’m sure you did, did you let the tutee know when you would be working next or recommend bringing back the paper? Mine was on a final draft with only three peers as reviewers who chewed it up and spit it out. The professor never commented on the paper and this paper required a major revision. I invited my tutee back and told her when I would be in next and if you can’t make it I would recommend stopping in again before “passing it forward.” Sounds to me other than that Elizabeth was right on target. Some papers are more difficult than others.
Date: 3/7/2006
Time In: 1:15 p.m.
Time Out: 2:15 p.m.
Length of Tutoring Session: 1 hr
Class and Professor: ENGL 291
Tutee: Sao Trinh
Native Language: Korean
Assignment: 1st creative essay
Tutees Specific Problem: test read
Sao Trinh’s paper had at topic that had great potential. Trinh presented to the audience by showing and not telling her conflict of being raised by an aunt with a mental illness. The title of her work “Beauty and the Beast” was colorful and quite fitting. Trinh described her aunt as a woman, who for unknown reasons should have been a model. In other words, her aunt was an attractive woman. The visuals of her aunt were well developed. Trinh also succinctly developed why her parents sent her to America to live with her aunt. On the other hand, the beast was underdeveloped or rather more subtle. I think this was purposeful but I as a reader missed the fact that the beast was the aunt’s mental illness. I thought there was a weakness in developing the beast metaphor. Her climax fell flat because near the end the term the beast came up again and the term seemed to come from nowhere. We practiced developing the beast by drawing a circle with the word beast inside. I instructed her to think of how an adjusted person would behave and draw a spoke to the word outside the circle. Next place a slash after the word and think as though you suffered from mental illness what would be opposite or contrary to that particular behavior. What I was showing her was a sort of brainstorming technique I learned in a comedy workshop. By performing the exercise Trinh could develop ways to show the aunt acting out through mental illness.
Trinh also had a pattern of error in her noun-verb agreement and her count nouns. Here I underlined a few of the glaring ones. I noticed her error was not consistent that many times Trinh would write them correctly so this just seemed to be an indication of rushing towards a deadline. I suggested she may want to re-read the paper with a few of our handouts side by side and check verb-noun agreement and count nouns. Trinh knew what I was talking about because when I underlined a few she recognized them and corrected them herself.
Date: 3/28/2006
Time In: 10:00 a.m.
Time Out: 11:20 a.m.
Length of Tutoring Session: 1 hr, 20 min
Class and Professor: ENGL 393 Professor Kirkpatrick
Tutee: Mina Choudhry
Native Language: Hindie
Assignment: Letter recommending improvements in the operations of some organization
Tutee’s Specific Problem: Wanted to generate more content and the tutee was not comfortable with conclusion
Mina was already patiently waiting for a Writing Center tutor when I walked in at 9:50 a.m. The last tutoring session I had with her I found myself working too hard and not working her hard enough. The sight of Erica in the Writing Center triggered a flashback in my mind to the last tutoring session I had with Mina. I said to myself, “Oh No, not again. We’re not going to have a session like the last one” and we didn’t. I made Mina work for the writing.
Mina said that she had generated 400 words of text which was the minimum. Mina wanted more text but did not know how to generate more. I looked at her text differently and analyzed the kind of work her sentences were doing. When I analyzed her text this way I saw Nina’s text from a new perspective. I found a few sentences in her introduction that were just fill and really added nothing to her text. This of course became disturbing for Mina because now the paper was getting smaller.
The body of her letter had numerous possibilities of text generation. First we had to break one of Nina’s paragraphs into two after I had her gloss the paragraph. We found two topic sentences and only one sentence of support for each topic. Nina’s main problem in writing is self-censorship. Instead of just writing out her thought regardless of how bad the language is, she will stop mid-sentence and attempt to finesse the words. By stopping to form a perfect sentence, Nina could not generate further content. Nina’s letter was an attempt to persuade the Learning Resource Center to provide tutees with more than just one hour per week per subject of tutoring. First, she was discussing how the system is now and informing the director why the one hour of tutoring was helpful for the tutor and the tutee. I had Nina write the topic on another sheet of paper and generate a list of three reasons why one hour of tutoring was helpful. I then asked Nina to write the second topic of two hours of tutoring per week right next to the first. I then asked her to explain what were the benefits for the tutor and the tutee to extending the tutoring session. She easily generated three more pieces of support. By placing the ideas in a sort of comparison chart from left to right she could easily support her position of extended hours. Nina was anxious to write full sentences about her new found ideas but was still censoring herself. I said to her, “No, just write it [the text] down just as you said it to me. Don’t worry about the language at this stage. Get your thought down on paper first, then come back to all the text later to bring the voice up to an academic level. Just say it as it is.” Nina would write some and then start fussing again. I kept pushing her on. “Just write out your thoughts on the topic, finesse later."
On her paper I drew a diagram of what I do. I drew a large square representing my text and wrote inside 700-900 words. Then I drew a box the same width but shorter in height. I wrote inside 500-600 words. I explained my objective was to generate a great deal of ideas no matter how wordy or cumbersome. Then I take a break, come back to my text, re-read it, and now I begin to trim off words and entire sentences to produce short strong sentences. I explained what I am doing is making a big bushy tree out of the language and then I prune the tree into a nice compact shape without compromising my ideas. I demonstrated to her how to generate text and then re-write with a fresh eye. I am hoping this will help alleviate her censorship.
The author of "this" log is Ryan Dorrill
Disclaimer: At this time I am not clear if I have a copy of Ryan Dorrill's journal entry therefore I will show only my response to his log. If I find I have a copy of Dorrill's log I will enter the log here. In the mean time, here is P.C. Paul's response log.
P.C. Paul's Response Log to Ryan Dorrill's Journal Log
04/05/2006
I understand how Dorrill wishes that the tutee had brought in the last assignment with the teacher’s comments. We know as tutors this would be helpful because we could compare the papers for patterns of error. The tutee is not going to think of this. I find myself sometimes explaining to my tutees some of my rudimentary needs as a tutor. I do this in the hope that the tutee will understand why I would like to see the assignment sheet, two copies of the paper, peer review copies, and papers with teacher’s comments. I assume because you were accepted into the university you proved yourself to be a reasoning being. I then try to appeal to a tutee’s sense of reason. I know simply telling me something is not the same as telling me and sharing the reasoning behind why these things are necessary I have a better feel for what we as a tutor and a tutee are trying to achieve. If the tutee brings them next time, I don’t know. I rarely see the same person twice.
As far minimum marking, I have been seeing some papers lately in a very raw stage where there would be too many marks as Dorrill mentioned. I ask if the paper is in the final stage or the “pass it forward” stage. If the paper is now to be “passed forward” I help them as best I can. I feel in an early stage, the tutee has time to write longer and I will concentrate on thesis, content, transitions, and conclusion. In other words, I push them harder. I just had a tutee like your tutee and the paper would have been red. My tutee was a graduate ESL student (Linguistics) who was going on to teach ESL students. This was frightening. The paper suffered terminally from N-V agreement, count, non-count nouns, missing articles, and word usage. I have a sneaky feeling it was written in Korean and dumped into a translator. The problems existed all throughout the paper and I can’t understand how the tutee could get into Graduate school writing this way.
Dorrill was right to push creating a strong thesis because how can one write without it. A strong but simple thesis for some tutees is the best they can do. I find I have to write a solid thesis in order to begin. I don’t know if Dorrill has had trouble writing a thesis. I know I have. I had one last semester that I wrote over for three weeks. The idea was so complex I couldn’t write the thesis in one sentence. The thesis was a paragraph. The paper received its grade but the thesis is still not right for publication. Maybe admitting to the tutee that you struggle with writing and writing thesis statements may help. Some tutees enter so wired I find I have to converse with them about writing problems just to simmer them down where they can work. Because we are tutors, tutees think writing comes naturally for us. I admit to them sometimes I have to write a sentence or paragraph six or seven times till I let it go (I know some have been written even more times, but I don’t want to discourage them either).
I have also had the same problem where the tutee in conversation explains what they want to say in conversational English but lock up the moment the pen comes down to write the sentence. The language sensor turns on as an automatic response. I have had to say to tutees, “Just write what you said.” It’s hard because the language sensor is coming on and I have to bite my tongue because I want to explain what is happening but I don’t want the tutee to loose their train of thought. Once the tutee gets the sentence down I then explain the reason why the tutee can’t write the sentence but can verbally recite the sentence to me. I explain to them I understand the language sensor says, “Wait, this isn’t academic language. The sentence has to be more complex.” I explain to them this happens to me. The way I stop this is to write everything I want to say. Walk away and when I come back, read through the whole text and edit it as I read. I repeat the process. I try to demonstrate that writing is an iterative process. In pushing tutees like this to just write it down and then explaining afterwards I hope to impress them with the fact that we all, “Just get the thought down first and fuzz with the language on a second edit. We always write to rewrite.”
Date: 4/10/2006
Time in: 2:10 p.m.
Time out: 3:10 p.m.
Length of session: 1 hour
Course and Professor: ENGL 100 with Professor Collins
Tutee: Karen Lin
Assignment: Paper #3, the argument/position research paper
Tutee’s specific problems and concerns:
Karen was a pleasant American girl who apparently comes down to the Writing Center quite often because she was anxious to read. I think I threw her off guard after looking at the assignment sheet when I asked her what her concerns were with the paper. I deliberately did this to try something a little different. I was going to focus my mind and look for what Karen did not like about the paper versus what I don’t like about the paper. The writer may have a glaring legitimate concern. Her second concern went beyond the paper at hand and extended into the art of argumentation. Why do I have to even recognize there is an opposing side? I felt that helping her to understand why speak about opposition would help her persuade the reader to act on her position.
I noticed with Karen’s paper she had two paragraphs acting as the introduction and background preparing us for the body of the paper: heart disease, cholesterol and the new class of wonder drugs. Karen had a good introduction but I suggested reducing the introduction to one paragraph just to get to the point of her argument. Karen’s fatal error was there was no thesis statement, nothing telling us her stand on using these wonder drugs. This was the first problem.
Karen continued to read and the paper was well documented and read smoothly providing all kinds of information about these new drugs. I took not that two paragraphs in the paper were a page long. After she was done with the read I had her gloss those paragraphs and explained what we were doing in the exercise and why this method is a useful tool for writers. Karen’s problem was not content. She had the content part nailed. Karen did find her two huge paragraphs were actually four smaller paragraphs and not six or eight little paragraphs. For this paper this was still not the high level global problems. Remember I said the thesis was one problem.
Karen had a large conclusion. Out of nowhere she begins to discuss the advantages of diet and exercise. I could hear the ambulance coming for the terminal patient: the paper. I asked a question about the diet and exercise. Karen realized this was never mentioned in the paper. I knew the paper did not have a thesis so I asked her to show me the thesis. Of course I get, “It’s right here,” pointing to the introductory paragraphs. “No, no, those are introductory paragraphs. You told me you are going to talk about these new wonderful miracle drugs and the rest of your paper basically summarizes a tremendous amount of research you have done. It is as though you wrote a six page summary informing us what these 12 sources said but… so what?” I talked with her at length because she suddenly realized she had written six pages that said nothing. Now how do you revive a cardiac arrest paper? “Well Karen, you mentioned at the end how diet and exercise for some people (we know full well not all because some have a genetic problem with excess cholesterol) will reduce cholesterol.
One way to save the paper is to rewrite that statement as a position or argument. Then argue and counter argue about the alternative of a healthier lifestyle versus using expensive and very likely medication that may have long term damaging effects to the liver later in life. At the beginning of the paper I explained to her I know this topic and I really don’t want to influence your design decisions as to what position you want to take or argue. I told her she could also drop out the exercise and go out on the web and find research about long term liver damage from the use of Staten’s. I said she could argue back and forth on drugs versus exercise. The genetic disposition was not a new topic to her as she has this problem herself. The liver damage was new to her. I added fuel.
I mentioned that there are incredible results for people using dietary supplements such as “Rescue 1250” and Omega 3’s. I had to explain that the Omega 3’s are derived from fish oil but is much better than fish oil. I had to explain that these were not herbal remedies or vitamin supplements but fall into the class of holistic medicine and do not effect the liver the way statons do. Karen had some research in her paper that described how these wonder drugs change the functioning of the liver making it produce more of one thing and less of another. I pointed to this and said there’s another argument right there. By increasing one thing and decreasing another makes the liver work harder. There is the problem. These wonder drugs are overworking the liver in order to satisfy the heart and prevent heart attack. So you may not drop dead of a heart attack but later you’ll drop dead of liver failure. “Karen, how many livers do you have?” “One,” she responded easily. “How many hearts do you have?” Now she became hesitant and not because she was unsure of the answer but because the answer for both was “one.” The light went off. “Ohhhh! By using staton medications we are gaining a few years of life by preventing a heart attack but throwing away the same years because of liver failure.” Bingo! There’s a real argument. I gave Karen a few useful writing tools and explained what I did and that these were writing tools.
Karen was well on her way writing her first argument paper.
The author of "this" log is Erica Ostrofsky
Disclaimer: I definitely do not have copies of Erica Ostrofsky’s two journal entries. This was very close to the end of the semester and I was doing four Shipka projects at the same time. Things became very convoluted at this time and things I did not deem important were ignored. One of them was making copies of Ostrofsky’s original journal entries. Therefore I will show only my response to Ostrofsky’s logs.
P.C. Paul's Response Log to Erica Ostrofsky’s Journal Log 1
04/11/2006
It seems what happened is that the tutee’s physical stature, the tutee’s forceful insistence on what he wanted out of the session combined with no other tutee’s being around at the time placed you in a position not only of nervousness but also fear created a situation in which your communication skills broke down. In other words, this tutee rustled your feathers bad enough that he was able to take control the situation and draw you into the circle of conflict.
This tutee entered the Writing Center with one intent: he was going to get what he wanted regardless of Hell at high tide. Matters were made worse because you were alone. The circle of confrontation is something that is taught in high powered commission sales and looks like this:
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The client wants nothing more than a confrontation with someone and that someone happens to be lucky you. Unfortunately, you are caught off guard because you are in fact working alone. There is no one around you to recognize you are being drawn into the circle of confrontation. You loose sight and there is only you versus the client. The mind becomes to single mindedly focused. You have been drawn into the circle. The problem is you cannot see that you are in the circle.
Because of your state of mind you probably did not see an alternative. Once you’re in the circle it usually takes an outsider, an objective observer to recognize this who creates some kind of distraction to make your mind snap back out of the circle and realize that you were drawn in. The distraction could be a slamming book, someone passing by the tables, a tutor asking you a question, or even better a tutor who is aware of the circle of confrontation phenomenon who recognizes what is going on passes by and either asks a question or gently touches your elbow. What happens is the mind snaps. You realize where you are and you realize that you are the one in control not the tutee. This is your job and your show. You have what he needs. At this moment, you could excuse yourself and walk away to regain your composure. When you return, the tutee might be more willing to work.
The other possibility if you recognized you were in the circle would have been similar. You would excuse yourself, finding the other tutor, and explaining the situation in whispers. Then as co-workers you organize and re-group. You tell the other tutor to give you about five seconds or a five count to disappear then that tutor should come out onto the floor. This tutor is to remain at the desk. You walk over for a drink at the water fountain or the ladies room to compose yourself. Then walk back once you were composed. When you sat down with the tutee I would venture to say that the session would probably proceed as you intended because the tutee will realize something went on there that he doesn’t understand but that as tutors you are both working as a united front. This may sound peculiar but this sounds like a psychological situation where the tutee tried to take advantage of you as a woman. I think at this point you have seen more tricks than the tutees and know how tutees play their tricks. This seems like a situation where team work was in order. This is just a matter of carefully orchestrated psychology. I do think in some ways though it is all easier said than done so I can sympathize with what you went through. As you can see this is an elaborate plan that you may not have thought of while the incident was occurring.
P.C. Paul's Response Log to Erica Ostrofsky’s Journal Log 2
04/13/2006
I am going to argue against your statement that “maybe [the suggestion of major] should not have occurred during the session.” I think what happens is, I know this happens for me, is that we get caught up into the intellectual process especially when someone is writing about something we are familiar with. If you remember the journal article I brought into class was discussing this very point.
One of the tutors was approaching the tutoring process as two intellectuals from different disciplines meeting at the kitchen table. In this case, the disciplines are similar to each other: English and Linguistics. I understand that one is more interested in the art of language and the other is more interested in the science of language but there is a bridge that crosses over to the two islands. In other words, there is a direct communication link and neither of you can avoid using the link (It does not say in the log if this was ENGL 226 or 326. I wrote a similar paper in ENGL 326 for Professor Oshner). I think it is difficult to not get caught up in the enthusiasm. I had a tutee walk in writing a paper about the generation of “myth” in an American Studies class at the 100 level. Two weeks before we had an online discussion about the same topic in the reading of an article by Roland Barthes in ENGL 488. Obviously, we were at two different levels on this topic. I did have to restrain my enthusiasm but on the other hand, the tutee was not confident they were on track because of the complexity of what was being discussed. This became more like a pinball game. You know what direction is the right direction but you don’t want to be giving the tutee all the ideas. What happens is that you act as a bumper in the machine gently guiding the tutee in the right direction. I asked questions that weren’t leading but were definitely targeting the subject matter.
This was difficult stuff and I knew that. We, in 488 beat are heads against the wall together post after post refining ideas against each other. Through an online discussion we were whittling away at the subject matter. I had to do the same for my tutee. In a way I don’t see it as cheating or that you are pouring ideas into the other person’s head but that you are discussing a topic that you can discuss on an equal plane. Remember both of you are students, no matter how you try I don’t think you will be able to argue it the same as the professor. I think at this point even if you are at different levels of understanding you are dialoging and attempting to reach understanding together through the Socratic method.
As was pointed out in the article, the tutor is carrying the toolbox of writing tools and the tutee is carrying the toolbox of the intellectual content. It just so happens you as a tutor were carrying both. In the article the authors were suggesting that the tutor they were writing about was not doing a bad job tutoring. What they were suggesting was that the tutor had taken all the academic knowledge she was given in instruction and texts but applying what she knew differently in the field. This is not unusual in most fields. What is happening is the tutor is developing a hybrid method that is not documented by the scholars. The article did suggest that we, as tutors, because we are doing all the work that we should be consulted more, invited to conferences to speak, and should be urged to publish our knowledge because we are the ones working in the field. Fieldwork is very different than theory. In essence, I think your decision in the first place was correct and sometimes an unexpected bonus does come out of a tutoring session both for the tutee and the tutor.
Date: 05/09/2006
Time In: 12:30 a.m.
Time Out: 2:45 a.m.
Date: 05/06/2006
Time In: 11:00 a.m.
Time Out: 12:00 noon
Time In: 1:30 a.m.
Time Out: 3:30 a.m.
Length of Tutoring Session: 5 hours 15 minutes across three sessions, version 2.0
Class and Professor: ENGL 495: A Rhetoric Internship with Professor Hickernell
Tutee: P.C. Paul
Native Language: Mathematics/Saturn-ese
Assignment: The tutee’s final assignment was to reflect on his tutoring skills over the spring 2006 semester.
Tutee’s Specific Problem: The tutee’s specific problem was working with tutee’s till they felt satisfied with their papers to a fault.
“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
Thomas Mann
“We write to re-write”
Donald M. Murray
I ask the usual questions of each tutor, “Have you ever been to the Writing Center before… do you have your assignment sheet… do you have two copies with you today… we do not concern ourselves with punctuation of grammar unless it is a repetitive error. We do…yada, yada, yada.” Yes, yes we have heard it for three sessions times two days times 13 weeks equaling 78 times before but I added a new question to the repertoire: “What do you dislike about the paper?”
This sentence does specific work. First, it reminds the tutee “this isyour paper, not mine, therefore I expect you to take ownership for your work and to have some pride in this paper even if you don’t like the paper. Second, it says to the tutee “Look, I write too and there is always something I do not like about a paper. We both know I’m here because I have written a great deal and for me to admit that there are things I don’t like about my writing, there must be something you don’t like about your writing. Last, this says to my tutee, “I am concerned about what you are concerned with. I am here to help you make the paper do the work you want it to do.”
We dialog about ideas, thoughts, and concepts. We didn’t always see where we wanted to go. We are playing with raw clay. You see something that wants to be relieved from the clay or the paper but it’s not always clear as to what the paper wants to be. As a tutor I may throw out a word or point to a place to look or just sort of poke the clay in a specific place and suddenly it becomes clear from that new indentation what the clay or paper wants to be. Too many times we focus on the topic and go in to prove it through someone else’s research only to find that the research is telling us something else. We have to expect at times that the research will sometimes guide one as to what the topic is not the other way around.
I had only on tutee who did not respond well to the question. He was really on edge. He seemed totally removed from the work. Halfway through the session, I couldn’t take anymore, excused myself, and told him I’d be back. I went for the “tutor’s walk. When I returned he looked at me a little oddly and I chalked up my disappearance to some fictitious medication I was taking that was making me go more frequently than usual. My tutee took the bait two ways. He accepted my excuse for disappearing and he was more focused on the task at hand. It was the first tutee I had used the disengagement technique with and it worked.
Other times, I find myself teaching. One tutee had no idea how to write an argument. I asked if she ever wrote one in high school. I know I never wrote one but I had to ask because education constantly changes. She said she never did write one in high school. I outlined what was expected in an argument. Sometimes tutees were so lost I would draw out concept maps for them. The maps were never specific to their content but were general forms. They were happier receiving the information from a warm body versus a sterile textbook.
I would say most times, what the tutee connected with was a writer dialoging with another writer about writing. Many times my tutees said, “Oh, you don’t struggle with writing…” and I had to admit, “No, I do struggle with writing. I’m not a better writer because I’m gifted, I just struggled with more papers for longer periods of time.” The secret is that I write longer, more dense papers and I write them more often. I explain to my tutees as Donald M. Murray said, “We write to rewrite.”
I also try to get out the secret that I don’t write in one sitting, that I write in spurts or chunks of time. Two maybe three-hour sessions do something else and come back to write in another solid chunk. I guess the best way to explain it is I developed a “chunking method” or writing. This is a common practice in other writer’s writing process. It provides the mind the ability to distance themselves from the writing so one can see the writing from a readers perspective when they return to writing.
Since December my confidence has significantly increased. I switch on and off tutoring styles like flipping a light switch. I remember may of my different tutoring sessions that I did not write logs on. One memorable tutee was a theatre major. He was writing a review on Dr. Frankenstein. The paper was awful and terribly incomplete. The was two sentence paragraph discussing lighting and something struck me as incomplete about the paragraph. He was discussing the motion of something in relation with the actors. Anything dealing with what I will term mechanics my eye will hang on and spot that something is wrong with the description immediately. This had to do with motion and in my mind’s eye I could not see the motion of his characters. I stopped my tutee mid-sentence because it bothered me and I asked, “Please explain this motion of the actors as I can’t seen to visualize this as a reader.” My tutee said that the actors were dressed completely in black and the puppets… “Puppets?” I exclaimed, This is adult puppet theatre? Nowhere in your paper did you mention that this production was adult puppet theatre. Do you know how unique and important that is to us as readers?” We were working on the computer while we were tutoring and a whole discussion broke out about adult puppet theatre. We came to an agreement that he was thinking with an American cultural bias that Adult puppet theatre is rarely seen but in other cultures puppet theatre is an ancient and treasured art form. I informed him that this was extremely important. In America our minds immediately think of children’s puppet theatre. I did a tremendous amount of study on semiotics and Japan over the winter 2006 session break and had some familiarity with Japanese adult puppet theatre. I explained to him how important this form of entertainment is in cultures other than our own. From our discussion he began to generate several more paragraphs analyzing the puppet production. I helped my tutee find a nugget he had completely taken for granted.
There was my biology tutee who was so afraid to show me his junior level biology lab report on his laptop. I knew exactly what he was assuming. “What do YOU know about science, you’re just a DUMB English major.” He tested me by allowing me to see only a small minor section of his text. He didn’t want to read aloud so I read it. I came against a five-word phrase, which I pronounced exactly as it was meant to be pronounced. He was a little bit impressed by this but somewhere in his text it showed up again and I said it as an acronym. He stopped me dead in my tracks. “How did you know that? That’s what we call it.” I said to him, “I’m a science graduate, words like that we write them out once. Because it’s so cumbersome to repeat the phrase over and over, in science we always reduce it to an acronym. That literally smashed the ice. We backed up to where he first used the word, inserted the acronym in parentheses and throughout the paper used the acronym. From this point on he was proud to show me the rest of his work. We began to discuss things dealing with nerve bundles as to whether the correct terminology was in or through and is it one nerve or several nerves. He was absolutely impressed. I said to him I took biology and a great deal of other sciences but I admitted he was far above me in this subject but mechanics, singular, plural, and strings are always the same whether it’s in literature, economics, social work, mathematics or any other discipline.
I found many of my tutees to actually be excellent writers. They just lack confidence. They are just not confident about what they write. I find myself always being sensitive with their writing and discussing their choices in applying language. I look for those awkward sounding sentences because I know those are the ones that are deadly. I see them in my own writing. When I find them I know there is usually some treasure trapped in there that I am struggling to explain. These are the sentences I try to get my tutees to discuss with me. I usually find there is a difficult concept that the tutee is struggling with trying to explain. They seem to think that one sentence satisfies the explanation when written. When I ask them to clarify the meaning, one sentence turns into several oral sentences then the light bulb goes off above their heads. They realize there is much more content there than they originally though.
There are several reasons for this. One, the academic language sensor kicks in and they try to perfect the sentence at the same time they are trying to write the thought process instead of just saying what they want to say in oral English and coming back to it later and finessing the language afterwards. Two, tutees are trying to push through too much writing in one sitting. This always works against any writer. I find that most of us can only write in blocks of time meaning maybe a good solid productive write for an hour or two before we begin to burn out. Tutees have to learn to break up their writing periods into chunks of time and I explain this to them because as writing tutors we discuss how we write. As people in other disciplines they seem to think we are gifted writers and eight, ten, twelve page papers just literally pour out of our heads in one sitting. Any writing done in one sitting is nothing more than a freewrite.
I try to offer my tutees as many techniques as I possibly can that will help them with the task at hand but also techniques that are not normally found in their textbooks on writing. These techniques that are revealed in journals and advanced books discussing the social aspects of the writing process because writing is a social process. When writer with a gifted imagination like Jonathan Deanne walks up for a “test read” and the dialog becomes less about high order concerns and more about “reader response” one realizes that writing is a social activity. So what is your writing process?
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