Burning the Fondue
My fears are of course that I will look totally stupid the the tutee. I actually had my first two tutoring sessions today…big day for me. I hope their papers get better. How upset would they be if they made the changes I suggested and received a worse grade. That reminds me of a time where (and my mother will officially hate me for this) my mother basically wrote a paper for my little brother when he was in seventh grade and when Brandon brought it back home he was livid because the teacher gave him a D. That was the day the whole family became convinced that the teacher wasn’t even reading the paper. Brandon was a slacker, but he deserved a teacher who was willimg to read what he wrote and grade accordingly and not jus tassume he didn't try. I don’t know. Maybe the teacher knew mom had written it and was trying to be funny, but it didn’t seem like it.
One of the students I helped came in with a research paper and the writing was already a pretty decent writer, even for a rough draft, so it was interesting trying to improve the paper. Actually, and this is embarrassing, the student made the same mistakes that I tend to make. I suggested he turn his over use of questions into statements and defining the “its” of the papers in hopes that it will ground his research in the paper. Thank you Dr. Rogers, those were all tips you gave to me. At first I was nervous, but I sort of just fell into it. One thing I will say is that I know I did way too much talking. How to engage them without giving them all the answers is a tough question. Because just telling the student what to fix is easy. The best thing it seems is to give the student some main pointers and hope they carry that into other papers. I was looking at some citing today and I didn’t know if it was correct or not. Note: look at my Writer’s Manual. I was actually kind of proud of myself. I didn’t have some panicked moment full of um…um…ums. And thank god. I just want to at the very least seem like I know what I’m saying…just some validity to what I am trying to fix. My very first student was an ESL and I found myself, as I thought I would, fixing grammatical errors that I could not explain. “The word “by” just needs to be there, okay?” I did wing one pretty well when the student asked why college wasn’t plural in the sentence “They went to college.” And I related it to school and how school isn’t plural even though there might be more than one student because there is no specific number of schools, but instead school is more of a general idea.
My fears are still a concern, but less of one now that I’ve gotten two session under my belt. Now I’m just waiting for someone with fifty pages to walk in wanting a brief look over. I did get a little advice about how to deal with those which is to look at the first and last paragraph and if there is time look at the first sentence of each paragraph to make sure the paper flows. I remember trying to apply the papers we have read so far. Not crossing boundaries, but keeping the student comfortable and trying not to talk too much and overwhelm them. I think this goes double for ESL students and if they have particularly good wording let them know. I think they get excited when it is noted that they are grasping the language well. And English really is a brutal language.
Okay and real quick because it is totally unrelated, but I’m watching the first season of Extras, Ricky Gervais’ new show (creator of The Office) and it is brilliant!
Gina
One of the students I helped came in with a research paper and the writing was already a pretty decent writer, even for a rough draft, so it was interesting trying to improve the paper. Actually, and this is embarrassing, the student made the same mistakes that I tend to make. I suggested he turn his over use of questions into statements and defining the “its” of the papers in hopes that it will ground his research in the paper. Thank you Dr. Rogers, those were all tips you gave to me. At first I was nervous, but I sort of just fell into it. One thing I will say is that I know I did way too much talking. How to engage them without giving them all the answers is a tough question. Because just telling the student what to fix is easy. The best thing it seems is to give the student some main pointers and hope they carry that into other papers. I was looking at some citing today and I didn’t know if it was correct or not. Note: look at my Writer’s Manual. I was actually kind of proud of myself. I didn’t have some panicked moment full of um…um…ums. And thank god. I just want to at the very least seem like I know what I’m saying…just some validity to what I am trying to fix. My very first student was an ESL and I found myself, as I thought I would, fixing grammatical errors that I could not explain. “The word “by” just needs to be there, okay?” I did wing one pretty well when the student asked why college wasn’t plural in the sentence “They went to college.” And I related it to school and how school isn’t plural even though there might be more than one student because there is no specific number of schools, but instead school is more of a general idea.
My fears are still a concern, but less of one now that I’ve gotten two session under my belt. Now I’m just waiting for someone with fifty pages to walk in wanting a brief look over. I did get a little advice about how to deal with those which is to look at the first and last paragraph and if there is time look at the first sentence of each paragraph to make sure the paper flows. I remember trying to apply the papers we have read so far. Not crossing boundaries, but keeping the student comfortable and trying not to talk too much and overwhelm them. I think this goes double for ESL students and if they have particularly good wording let them know. I think they get excited when it is noted that they are grasping the language well. And English really is a brutal language.
Okay and real quick because it is totally unrelated, but I’m watching the first season of Extras, Ricky Gervais’ new show (creator of The Office) and it is brilliant!
Gina
posted by Scorpiongirl87 at 9:54 AM
1 Comments:
ESL sessions can be difficult, but also rewarding. (They're probably some of my favorite sessions.)
It's okay to not have an answer for everything you help fix. Most will trust you in the corrections.
You're a native speaker and you know when something doesn't sound right. Trust your instinct. It's best to give reasons why something in their paper should sound one way and not another, but sometimes it is okay to say, "that's just the way it is..."
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