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Leanin’ In Close « Jacosta10’s Weblog

jacosta10 — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:44:57 +0000

Leanin’ In Close

jacosta10 — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:09:20 +0000

I had an ESL student come in the other day that was different than all the other ESL students I have helped. She apparently was very comfortable either in the setting, or with me. I feel I am fairly conscious of other people’s space, and try not to invade their space or put them in a position where they have to invade mine. With this in mind, I usually anticipate a passive session where I ask questions and it is low-key. This client caught me by surprise. She was very talkative and dominated the conversation. She was ESL, and did ask for help on grammatical errors in her paper. It was a short paper, and I thought it would be a short session. Perhaps it was the mood set up by all my other sessions in the Writing Center that caused me to think of this one as significantly different. When I reflect on my other sessions, I recollect that the mood was generally one of comfort with a focus on a paper or topic that did not really interest the student. This particular session shattered all conceptions I had of how a session should go. The client placed her elbows on the table and leaned in for a good portion of the session, almost putting her body over her paper. She very eager to talk-not just about her paper, but her whole class. Without me asking she went on about the class she was writing for, and the topics she liked and didn’t like. What threw me off the most was her tone. While other students spoke in a neutral tone, my client appeared enthusiastic about talking. If tone reflects one’s interest in being somewhere, then she is the only person I have encontered that truly wanted to be in the Writing Center. Her paper was a summary of a class session, and it did not flow well at all. It skipped from topic to topic which made it hard to determine a focus. I mentioned this to her and we worked on it for a while. When I pointed out areas she needed more explanation or where she needed transition she made comments on her paper and then asked for more help. I felt she was rushing me, which may have forced me to overlook more HOCs. Whether or not I felt rushed, we got to a point where I felt comfortable with the progress on HOCs and with time left felt I could help her with her questions on grammar. When our session ended, she expressed that she enjoyed working with me because I helped her with her grammar, which other tutors had avoided. I told her that I did not want to focus on grammar, and that was why it came last. I felt bad hearing this from a client. And then I felt bad for felling bad. Should I feel bad that I did help with grammar, even though that is not the prupose of the Writing Center?

ESL hit me in the face

jacosta10 — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:09:10 +0000

I have worked with ESL students before, but have not truly been frustrated with the communication barrier until recently. I helped a client that needed work on the computer for the whole session, which was fine. Unfortunately though, I had to kick a client I had recently worked with off of the computer in order to use it for my current session. My client said she was not sure if her paper was good, and asked me to check for grammar. Once we got on the internet and had her assignment sheet up I began reading it. It was very specific about the structure of the paper, but vague regarding some of the content. I asked questions about what her prof had said about the assignment, and in trying to explain the instructions she experienced difficulty. When she did, she would smile and look up and make an “um” sound. When she did this I felt I needed to rephrase the question to get the info I need to help her. I decided that I would compare her paper and the instructions and see if she was missing anything. I found that while she addressed the questions of content she neglected the specifics of structure. Also, the answers she gave needed clarification. When I tried to tell her she needed to address the questions in a certain way specified by her prof, it just didn’t seem to get through. She just nodded. And I didn’t know where to go from there. What specifically did she not understand? Was it that there was a structure to it? Was it my direction? Did she expect me to just tell her verbatim what to write? Did she just want to get out of there? Did she not know what I was asking? Could she not formulate her answers? I had her show me where the sources of information she cited. Once we were there, I had her find additional information to address the prompt more fully. She put the info into her essay and I helped her structure her sentences. I noticed throughout her paper how she missed some of the little things a profesor would look for. An example being the difference between a major in Speech as opposed to a major in Communication Studies. Had she not been thorough in her analysis of the sources? Or had she assumed the two terms were synonymous and felt it irrelevant to state in her paper? I avoided these questions because I was afraid she would not know what I was asking her. Instead, I chose to work on her paper with her and simply tell her where she needed to add information and how it should be formatted according to her prompt. I felt like we had not accomplished anything, because we had only covered half of her one and a half page assignment.

Low Self-Esteem Affects Writing (not surprisingly)

jacosta10 — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:47:55 +0000

I had a session with a client that had said she had seen several other tutors. She said she needed a computer to work on her assignment, so we looked around for one. Allt eh ones in the Writing Center were taken, so we ventured over to the Computer Lab next door. I asked her what progress she had made on her assignment. She not only had nothing, but she hadn’t picked a topic to write about. She had a choice of 10 prompts and an option to make one up. She debated over which topic she was going to write about for ten minutes while I went to the search engines on the online library page. I was getting way ahead of the game, but I didn’t want to tell her what to write. Honestly, I got bored waiting for her and decided to get ready to show her how to look for stuff online. She knew how to look for books online and do a basic Boolean search, but not a whole lot else. By a stroke of luck, I have been using the online library fairly extensively for the past 2 semesters and even took a class on how to do intensive searches on specific topics using the E-Library. Once she picked a topic I showed her a couple nifty tools, but she was very focused on writing down the sources I found. I wanted to tell her I was showing her how to find sources, not just examples of sources. She repeatedly said how she didn’t know what she wsa doing and how bad she was at writing, deciding what to write about and other writing-related things. I negated everything she said and told her writing is a process, and all of these things she thought she was bad at were in fact all a part of one big good product. I don’t think it helped much, because she kept beating herself up about it. And she said she is dropping out next semester. This was personally discouraging to me. How am I supposed to be enthusiastic about helping someone write better when they are leaving the university? Despite these discouraging words I continued to show her around the library catalog. At the end of the session, she said she was very grateful for my help! I was in shock. I did good? Because I showed her how to use a source? That’s all? I felt like she was giving me praise I did not earn, but nevertheless I enjoyed it. In fact, she said I was so helpful she wanted to work with me again. She asked me to reserve my next appointment for her. And I did.

The Lost Session

jacosta10 — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:41:11 +0000

Not really lost, but it happened a week and a half ago and I kept forgetting to post it. It was honestly a good session. A guy brought in a paper he had to revise for a class and we went through it. The teacher caught a few grammatical mistakes so we didn’t worry about those. We focused on organization and content. He talked most of the time. I asked a few questions and he was on top of it. I was taken aback. We finished in half an hour and I sat back and asked if he had any other questions or concerns and he said no. With that, it was over.

Um, I don’t know

jacosta10 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 04:37:46 +0000

I recently had a client that was an ESL student that brought in a paper she wanetd to work on. She asked immediately for help with grammar. She did not mention anything else, just grammar. I asked her for a description of the assignment, and since she did not have a hard copy we went to the computer. When she pulled up the syllabus that described the assignment, I found it very vague. I had her describe what her professor had said about the assignment, and it was basically what was on the syllabus. She had to use research from previous assignment to do a self-analysis (it was a psych paper). Having a general idea of what she had to do, we began to go through her paper. She pointed out a couple spots she felt oculd be corrected for grammar, and I made some suggestions. I told her that in addition to doing this, however, I wanted to make sure she addressed the prompt. She said this was fine, and we continued. After going through the first two pages in which she described the intention of the analysis she was doing, I asked her if she talked about herself in the paper. She informed she had, yes, but not significantly. I looked back at the prompt, and it said she needed to do a self analysis. I asked her what previous work she had done in the class and if this assignment is part of a larger project. It apparently was, so I began to see an issue in the focus of her paper. She said previous assignments involved picking a topic and researching studies done on that topic. If that topic was all about the research, was two out of five pages in this paper necessary to describe what she was doing? I asked her opinion on it, and she said “I don’t know.” This frustrated me, since it is her paper and she should decide what to do with it. I want to avoid directing the paper, but I wanted to have her explain why it should be one way and not another. At this point I began asking her more questions about her paper, trying to figure out what exactly she was doing. Frequently when I asked “What do you think about this?” I recieved in response “I don’t know.” I remained pleasant throughout the session, but found myself wanting to tell her to just take control and tell me what she was doing with the paper. I worry though that I made her second guess herself that will result in her editing the paper and taking out relevant things or adding irrelevant things. This was the first time I had a session with an ESL student where I became frustrated, all because “I don’t know.”

Jake Acosta-Sorry, I cannot write your paper for you

jacosta10 — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:03:43 +0000

This past Monday a client came in and wanted help with grammar. She was an ESL student that had concerns pretty much only with grammar. And she asked me to proofread and edit what she had. I suggested we go over her paper as a whole first, and she was reluctant but obliged. She expressed serious concern that I would not edti her paper. I told I would after if we had time. After we went over her paper and I felt she had addressed the questions posed, she asked me to edit for her. I began looking over her paper for grammatical mistakes, and when I found one I pointed it out to her and asked her what she thought she could do to change it. She paused and looked off into the distance, but made no suggestions. She asked me why I wouldn’t do it for her and I told her my job does not involve writing her paper. She replied that other tutors in the past had rewritten parts of her paper for her. I informed her that people have different styles, and that was not my style. I encouraged her to rewrite her sentences, pointing out things that she could not do and giving her a lot of freedom. I felt frustrated because she kept telling me she didn’t know what to do. I told her She had other sentences that were fine and I knew she could-it went back and forth for a few minutes. I noticed she had used a part of an article and had not cited it as well. It was its own sentence, and I suggested she paraphrase to avoid plagarism. She rewrote part of the sentence, but left a big enough chunk of it for it to still be considered plagarism. All in all, progress was made, but I would like to know if there is anything I can do about people who are persistent about tutors writing their papers for them.

Jake Acosta-Helping a Friend

jacosta10 — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 11:38:27 +0000

I am an RA in the on campus dorms, and another RA came in to ask for help on an assignment. I was thrown off because I kept thinking about my relationship as a co-worker. I had known him personally for a year and had never had an interaction with him strictly as a student. He wanted to outline and draft for a paper that was coming up. We went over what he had already prepared, and then I tried to apply some theory. I focused on HOCs as we drew up plans for his paper. I made notes about what he said he wanted to talk about, and we examined those together to determine if he wanted to adjust anything. Everything went well, and he went on his way. However, he called me over the weekend and asked if I could go over it with him. I told him that we could in the Writing Center.

Hello world!

jacosta10 — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 07:27:50 +0000

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