The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

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As the semester winds down, I have the opportunity to reflect on shared experiences at the Writing Center. I hope those with whom I worked found value in the sessions, and I am grateful to the writers and other tutors who shared their insights and thoughts on the process of writing with me. Reading out loud is a practice that may not succeed in all tutoring situations, but I found that it has distinct advantages when working with some ESL students. Rapport seems to come more easily, students can’t disconnect as their work is being reviewed, and most importantly, it puts the writers and their words front and center in the tutoring session. If you’re struggling with some of the issues that I did, try it out and see if this approach can work for you. 84
Are There Proof-reading Traps Regarding ESL Students? 85 Keyko Torres Spring 2010 As writing center tutors the discussion over Lower-Order Concerns (LOCs) vs. Higher-Order Concerns (HOCs) becomes a not very exciting one. Why? Because we are repeatedly told that though important, our priority should not be to edit papers and just proof-read for missing commas and other sentence-level problems. Instead we are supposed to look at the “big picture” and talk about ideas, analysis, brainstorming…etc. first and then proof-read. Ok I get it. Even the sign at the front desk tells students that we will not just “edit” a paper. But what happens when an English as Second Language (ESL) student walks in, and you realize he/she has the best ideas but cannot get them across because of sentence-level issues? What if they keep forgetting articles, or they have fragments galore, or they confuse words and make up their own? Do we ignore them because it is not “our job” and try to move on to “more pressing issues” that don’t exist? Of course not, and I’m not the only one that thinks so. Sharon Myers agrees with me in her article “Reassessing The ‘Proofreading Trap’: ESL Tutoring and Writing Instruction.” Myers also has issues with “writing center scholars and others who view sentencelevel revision for ESL students unethical” (219). I would find it even more unethical to expect ESL writers to learn in the same ways or at the same rates as native writers. Thinking back to Stephen North’s “Idea of the Writing Center,” he tells us that it our “job to produce better writer’s not better writing” (38). Therefore we have to ask ourselves, what would make our tutee a better writer? Myers calls for tutors’ recognition “that so-called ‘sentence-level’ errors actually involve deeper levels of creating and processing meaning. By helping ESL students correct these errors, then, tutors can help students gain deeper insights into English syntax – an important step in becoming better readers and writers of the language” (219). This means that with our help in paying attention to the sentence level errors, we will help students become better acquainted with language and its lexical and syntactic conventions. The problem here lies when tutors and writing center scholars refuse to see the “the depth of the ‘sentence-level’ problems involved in second-language processing” (Myers 221). It seems contradictory to say that “sentence-level problems” are deep, but when it comes to ESL students that can be the case because those problems may stem from their language barriers and cultural writing differences. For native speakers, grammar is second nature; we do not have to think about the differences between the past participle and the past imperfect, but they do. The hardest part is that sometimes they are aware of their mistakes and they do not know how to fix them. That’s where we come in. Native writers do not need the sentence-level editing to be a priority because if they read through their writing carefully, they will catch their mistakes and fix them. Unfortunately, non-native writers do not have these skills and sometimes think that they way they wrote something, although grammatically incorrect, is the correct way of doing it. Also, these small mistakes are a reflection of the problem they have communicating their ideas. Their ideas might be there, but they do have the skills necessary to express them. So when to us it might seem like their word choice is just “awkward,” it could actually be a bigger problem than anticipated. It is important to keep this in mind and try to help them better express their ideas, because in this case their LOC’s are their only concerns and should be treated accordingly.
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The Tutoring Book Fall 2011 Edition
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�� Diverse Students and Cont
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Helpful Strategies 5 Savannah Corti
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Draw Upon Other Tutors Experiences
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and that even the sessions that did
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What is one thing you wish you had
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eceiving tutoring. But don’t let
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helped me see that. As a result, ex
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One Time Wonders: 30 Minutes to an
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No Draft? No Problem! 19 Kathleen U
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10-4, Little Buddy: Two Way Convos
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her paper, I noticed she hadn’t a
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mentors and sounding boards for the
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�On this page, the top link leads
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Purdue OWL (http://owl.english.purd
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• Argument • Writing about Lite
Page 33 and 34: The WAC Clearinghouse (http://wac.c
Page 35 and 36: “This exercise, popularized by Pe
Page 37 and 38: active problem solving and critical
Page 39 and 40: Directive or Not? Adapting an Appro
Page 41 and 42: essay meet the page limit is no lon
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Page 45 and 46: was to trust her own knowledge and
Page 47 and 48: Step 2: Learning to Praise Equally
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Page 51 and 52: Despite the fact that their struggl
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Page 61 and 62: thinking about it and without reali
Page 63 and 64: Conceptual Learners: Students who a
Page 65 and 66: Tutoring Hearing-Impaired Students
Page 67 and 68: Writing Tutors. Boston: Bedford/St.
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Page 71 and 72: try reassuring them that writing is
Page 73 and 74: Tips for Tutoring Reading 73 Kathry
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Page 77 and 78: Theory to Practice At our writing c
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Page 91 and 92: experience on the tutoring road. I
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Page 99 and 100: My Personal Experience with Tutorin
Page 101 and 102: Worldview: the Continent, Asia and
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Page 105 and 106: grammar. After free-writing, a tuto
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Page 109 and 110: developed in the American Academic
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Page 113 and 114: 113 Niccole Scrogins Fall 2008 Afri
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Page 119 and 120: Like other immigrant groups and Nat
Page 121 and 122: 121 Katie Johnson Fall 2004 The Wri
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Page 125 and 126: It Is Ok. I Am an Expert. 125 Gordo
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available. Students need to make su
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Essay #1 (60 minutes/90 minutes for
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“Learning to write is a complex p
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Analyzing Rhetorical Situations in
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word choice and the attitude that r
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Social Constructivism in Action 145
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Social Constructivist Strategies fo
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The Writing Center as a Bridge: A P
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Situated Acts of Writing and Tutori
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Kastman Breuch, Lee-Ann M. “Post
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The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

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