Leap over the line or straddle it?
It's a common experience by now: I sit down with a student expecting only the greatest experience and after the logistics of taking down his name and birthday I pose a very simple question. "So what are you working on?"
From his response I can generally tell how the rest of the session will go, independent of myself. I find myself most often expecting too much out of the students I work with. I mean by that, that either I push the student too far--seeking for more than the student was prepared for--or I find myself using language the student doesn't seem to be familiar with.
This is especially evident if I'm working with a student for whom English is not his/her first language. At times it's difficult for me to use other words. I think, in general I notice when the student is not with me, or other words of when I've "crossed the line" but I don't always know what to do differently.
For example last week I worked with a student who handed me a paper with absolutely no sense of punctuation, spelling, organization, or, in general, any sense of the language. I did recognize certain words from which I was able to, in some instances, gather a general idea of where he wanted to go. But that was it. What I do? I think I told him that I thought that he had some good ideas (the only piece of positive feedback I could think of). I then showed him, trying to involve him as much as possible by asking questions like" "It looks like you have two ideas here. Can you think of any way of combining those so they form a sentence?" But that wasn't clear enough for him.
I wanted to help him; I really did, but is there a point at which are help become counter-productive? I worked through two sentences with him which took half an hour. I showed him how to present his paper the way his professor probably would like it to be presented: with sentences and clear paragraphs, and told him to come back if he has any further trouble.
It's those types of interactions that trouble me. What should I do when the student takes little to know responsibility for his paper and is just relying solely on my limited knowledge of sentence structure to "fix" his paper? I guess the thing for me to do is to be more assertive in explaining what we are really hear for: to help writers become better writers. We're not expected to be miracle workers are we?
From his response I can generally tell how the rest of the session will go, independent of myself. I find myself most often expecting too much out of the students I work with. I mean by that, that either I push the student too far--seeking for more than the student was prepared for--or I find myself using language the student doesn't seem to be familiar with.
This is especially evident if I'm working with a student for whom English is not his/her first language. At times it's difficult for me to use other words. I think, in general I notice when the student is not with me, or other words of when I've "crossed the line" but I don't always know what to do differently.
For example last week I worked with a student who handed me a paper with absolutely no sense of punctuation, spelling, organization, or, in general, any sense of the language. I did recognize certain words from which I was able to, in some instances, gather a general idea of where he wanted to go. But that was it. What I do? I think I told him that I thought that he had some good ideas (the only piece of positive feedback I could think of). I then showed him, trying to involve him as much as possible by asking questions like" "It looks like you have two ideas here. Can you think of any way of combining those so they form a sentence?" But that wasn't clear enough for him.
I wanted to help him; I really did, but is there a point at which are help become counter-productive? I worked through two sentences with him which took half an hour. I showed him how to present his paper the way his professor probably would like it to be presented: with sentences and clear paragraphs, and told him to come back if he has any further trouble.
It's those types of interactions that trouble me. What should I do when the student takes little to know responsibility for his paper and is just relying solely on my limited knowledge of sentence structure to "fix" his paper? I guess the thing for me to do is to be more assertive in explaining what we are really hear for: to help writers become better writers. We're not expected to be miracle workers are we?
posted by Anonymous at 11:22 AM
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