Week 5, Post 2: Serving My Sentence

This is a summary of salient point from Sharon Myers' "Remembering the Sentence":

1. Her paper was written because of a renewed interest in "sentence combining and imitation."  The uptick in interest was due to a) the interest in information processing, which paralleled studies of artificial intelligence and b) a reaction to pedagogical rejection of emphasis on syntax, principally by linguists.

2. Myers feels sentence combining (building) is a useful tool for both L1 and L2 students because many such students struggle in writing academic discourse; sentence combining, says Myers, helps them learn the conventions of this process.

3. It's not enough to learn vocabulary; this, alone, is useless, if students are ill-equipped with relating or collocation phrases that are associated with those words.

4. A key justification for the utility of this method is that English is very idiosyncratic.  Thus, it's not enough to learn the rules, since there are so many exceptions to the rules. 

5. What's needed is exposure to academic vocabulary in context of other useful phrases.  The model of proof for the need for exposure is the computer, specifically "neural networks," which developed a kind of awareness of many words and their collocations by way of high usage.  The proclivity to associate these collocations in humans is called "structural disposition."

6. Formal grammar instruction is seen as less useful than sentence combining; in fact, it's been been proven to be "useless" for both L1 and L2 students. 

7. Rather, grammar must be integrated with lexis, or vocabulary studies.

8. Myers' method is as follows: a) teacher models a sentence, b) teacher erases unimportant words, leaving only a template of key words, b) students write sentences following the template, d) student sentences are presented on the board and "worked out," their work thus becoming the "text."

9. The author tauts the use of "concordancing," that is, having students use "collocation dictionaries," which present academic-level vocabulary in context. 

10. Using these texts gives students ample examples and saves the teacher having to invent them.

Week 5, Post 1: Grammar Confessions

 What are you feelings about grammar?  Unimportant? Important? The foundation of civilization? And what are your feelings about how grammar should be taught?  Drill and kill?  Sentence diagraming?  Lots of red ink from the teacher?  (about 400 words)

I remember my parents' being consistently strict about grammar when I was a kid.  Years later, too, even nowadays, I'll hear them harp about someone using "poor grammar" that drives them crazy.  For example, my mom's mentioned a couple times this year alone that she hates hearing people use "at" at the end of a sentence, such as, "Where's it at?"  Though the "offense" is a dangling preposition, she doesn't see that we commit this "sin" in America all the time, from The New York Times down to the local union hall, with phrases like, "What channel's it on?"  Yet no one's rankled by this.

My friends have similar pet peeves about grammar.  I suppose we all do.  Personally, I find I'm almost entirely resilient to such "abuses" after years of teaching entry level ESL.  I learned through teaching grammar that the English language is damned quirky, plus it's in constant flux; so what was verboten forty years ago is de riguer today.  Does anyone beside English teachers use "fewer than" instead of "less than" for countable nouns?  Seems to me most folks are content saying, "The Express Lane is for ten items or less."  OK, I take it back.  Some phrases do rub me the wrong way. 

As an ESL teacher, my grammar Bible was the three-volume series by Mary Azar.  Any time my students had a tough grammar question, any time I was perplexed myself, Mother Mary comforted me.  It was Azar who clarified the difference between formal English, with its prescriptive grammar, and the more casual conversational English, with its descriptive grammar.  The former grammar stands in the middle of the intersection directing traffic like a cop.  The latter is the linguist/ethnographer under the bleachers, listening and grinning at the reality of American speech, jotting down notes for the next edition of The Redneck Dictionary. 

While my turning a"blind eye" to entry level ESL errors served a purpose, that approach won't cut it when tutoring college level comp students.  Now I'll have to step out on the tightrope and balance myself on tiptoe, mindful of global grammar issues worth a mini-lesson on one hand, and careful to offer advice only when the moment presents itself. 

For example, my current two tutees both need more development on the structural side of things.  For now, there's no hurry to push grammar.  After a week or two of broader strokes, after I've built some solid rapport, I will look over their papers and try to pick the most frequent, most global issues to offer my two cents via mini-lesson, which I'll follow up on with a couple of quick exercises for them to practice what they've learned.  Then I'll have them explain the grammar point.  Additionally, I think it will be good for them to keep a log of certain grammar points we cover.  This is fully in keeping with the concept of context-rich acquisition, since I'll be explaining a point when it comes up, while it's of interest, and not later, out of context.

Sentence diagramming strikes me as far too "mental" an activity.   I'd like to keep things as simple and organic as possible.  So far as red marking goes, according to the research of Ferris and Bates, error marking with red ink, though it appears we've mortally wounded the tutee's paper, is generally deemed totally acceptable by students; ink color in such studies was found to be a non-issue.  Still, for the above reasons, I prefer a bold BLUE tint.  What's more important in error marking is to limit the focus to the most global and the most frequent issues, and to explain my markings, since most students tend to be baffled by teachers' scratches.

Week 4, Post 3: Blog Heaven

After perusing people's blogs, write a couple paragraphs in your own blog about how you think we might structure the blog process in this course.  Questions to think about:
What makes a "good" posting for you as a writer in your own blog?
What's useful for you in developing your own thinking? 
What make as "good" posting for you as a reader?
What's useful for you in developing your own thinking? What kinds of comments would you like to receive on your blog? What kind of comments would you like to give others?    
And finally the thorny question: How should we evaluate and grade the blogs?

I'm not sure I'm even qualified to suggest how blogging should be structured, frankly, having only begun blogging with the start of this course.  As a writer, it varies widely.  Sometimes I have little to say about a topic; gazing at a few other blogs, though, can often stimulate my flow of ideas.  At other moments -- for example, after reading TDOC -- it wasn't easy to turn off the spigot.  At times like these, I'm thankful for a forum to "dip my oar in the water."

For me, a "good blog" has posts that tend to answer the prompts and take the conversation in a fresh direction.  For example, Julie Wilson's post on TDOC struck me as uniquely strong and well-informed.  Chloe's are often a succinct distillations of the materials read with a couple of stimulating questions, and they're quite open and inviting; that is, her use of bullets makes it all reader friendly. 

So far, I've gotten some comments on my blog that are simply comrades checking in, some saying that they like what I've posted, some trying to take the conversation in a slightly new, challenging direction.  I find each of these beneficial in its way.  It's nice to be greeted and saluted; I for the purposes of the "academic conversation," it's great to have someone like Will Loving pick a slightly novel direction after reading my post.  I try to give comments along those lines, too, when visiting my colleagues' blogs, hopefully starting some two-way feedback.

I tend to agree with the student (Chloe? Jennifer?) who suggested that we ought to be included in the grading end of it by weighing in with specifics on what we learned from the writing end of it.  This hadn't even occurred to me, but it makes total sense, and seems in keeping with student-centered approach in materials like Goens and TDOC.  Included in the grading rubric, there ought to be some reward for effort expended and unique viewpoints contributed as well. 

Week 4, Post 2: Tutoring Case Studies

Aurora
Though she had hoped to develop Aurora from a writer struggling with sentence structure to a confident communicator tackling more local issues, this tutor found she had to scrap her initial action plan.  The tutor concludes that the weak spot in the sessions was not the student's lack of motivation, as she originally felt, but her own strategy.  She found it most useful to refrain from pointing out Aurora's errors and to remain tacit at times, allowing the reticent tutee's communication to unfold naturally, at its own pace, without persistent motivation/prodding.

D.K.
This tutee, transplanted from Korea, suffered from having a very stunted English background, including no ESL courses, as his parents feared this would provide him an unnecessary "crutch."  D.K. was barraged by stressors once he arrived to SFSU as well.  Faced with a tough composition course, his first essay was returned to him ungraded and with so few marks on it, not even D.K.s tutor understood what the teacher wanted.  The tutor learned, much like the tutor above, that often the best course of action is to refrain from excessive commentary, and to encourage the tutee to persevere.

Robert
Robert, a first-generation college student steeped in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), had been sent for tutoring after failing his JEPET.  The tutor surmises Robert might have felt self-conscious about discussing his process in the earshot of strangers in the room.  In addition to this, my take is that he may have felt controlled by "the system" after being "judged" by his teacher, and was only coming to tutoring as a kind of "punishment." This seems apparent since his teacher and the tutor were offering to help him -- for free -- yet he failed to show up on time or, occasionally, at all.  When he did, he was usually incommunicado, unwilling or unable to "buy in" to the program.  Like both tutors above,  this tutor had to adjust his standards, stop being so "innovative" with devices like reverse outlines, and simply assist the tutee in inching along at his own pace.  Considering the force of resistance coming from the tutee, I was impressed that the tutor was able to simply adapt, and not take it personally.  If I had been in this situation with Robert at ETC, I would have immediately reserved one of the sound-proof rooms for tutoring; in fact, this is my preference in general, since we're dealing with sensitive information and even more sensitive people.

Justin
The tutor had been prepared to work on reading and writing strategies, but found all the tutee required was polishing up his essays.  His only significant "handicaps" were his lack of control with regard to academic tone (he haphazardly tossed in vernacular) and a quirky misuse of pronouns.  This tutor's biggest lesson, he says, is that he ought to have communicated with Justin's teacher, since, on more than one occasion, the prompts for Justin's essays were quite vague. 

My Two Cents
Speaking from a bit of experience teaching and tutoring, I sympathize with the frustrations of these tutors.  Most teachers' primary dream, I believe, is to perform mini-miracles, helping the crippled to walk again, no matter the demands on the teacher.  The melancholy reality is that our stellar students don't really need our help, the needy ones may not accept it, and our best laid plans may have to be remolded till they don't resemble the originals.  If there's a solitary thread running through these disparate tutoring cases, it's that our tutees are very likely going to surprise us.  They'll throw us off guard and force us to shift our agenda to fit theirs.  In a sense, one has to smile at this.  Having overhauled our pedagogy, discarding teaching "product" for teaching "process," having soaked up years of reading/writing research, and amassed admirable "toolboxes" to help our students, what matters most in the end is, not our clever stategies, but that we're present, we're compassionate and ready to adapt in any way that serves our students' progress.

Tutor Case Studies -- Guidline Ideas
What seems useful is what I find in the better case studies we're reading.  We should include background on the student where it's relevant, as well as the tutor's level of experience.  If one tutee is an eye learner from China and another is an ear learner from South Central L.A., this is worth noting.  Also, we ought to note any external stressors that may be challenging the student.  We need to note the tutee's attitude, motivation level and self-discipline.  Most of all, we have to discuss the student's progress in context to his course load over the term, especially in relation to the "prompt" of the tutee's teacher, that is, what issues we were asked to remedy through tutoring.

Week 4, Post 1: Ferris Ch. 1, 2 and 4

Though a good amount of research suggests that teacher error correction of L1 student papers is either useless or harmful (Truscott), Dana Ferris' research finds that, given the right situation -- the correct timing, place and the priority -- students tend to request such feedback, even demand it.  However, studies suggest that they often do not utilize the feedback, nor does it improve their writings in the long-term.  Nonetheless, reasons Ferris, students cannot hope to make long-term improvement without short-term improvement, thus justifying error feedback.

Ferris goes on to stipulate exactly the manner in which such feedback can be most valuable.  Prioritizing the feedback is critical; it's suggested that the most effective feedback focuses on frequency of errors.  Thus, if a students' chief error is subject-verb agreement, Ferris recommends presenting a mini-lesson to explain the correct usage.  The author finds that timing of feedback can be essential; a compromise between the first draft and later drafts would be to communicate with the student one-on-one over a preliminary draft.  Giving feedback after the final draft is complete is deemed rather useless.  Teachers should take care regarding the manner of feedback, tending toward the indirect approach, where the student is guided to find errors him/herself, though with some specifics, e.g. "What kind of subject-verb problem do we find in line 9?" 

As far as written feedback for L1 student papers, students' responses indicated they much preferred feedback at the point of the error vs. end notes.  One surprising finding in Ferris' research said that, contrary to many teachers' critiques of other teachers feedback, students had no preference for or against the dreaded RED MARKER.

Week 1, Post 1: The Long and Winding Road

I have always loved language.  Initially, I think I was fascinated by my Arkansas grandma’s twang, which sounded so different from -- and frankly, funnier than -- anyone else’s speech in our family.  Then I found myself mesmerized by songs and the meanings behind lyrics, from children’s songs to Hank Williams to Motown to Dylan. 

When I was twelve I had my first encounter with religion; the language of King James’ Bible felt magical.  I first fell in love with literature when, in high school, we were encouraged to expand our outside reading.  This is how I came upon Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath,” with it’s lovely alternate chapters of poetic/journalistic commentary.  In my English BA, I adored Milton’s description of Satan in “Paradise Lost,” and, from the beginning, I’d always felt Shakespeare’s dialogues were confections as much as conversations.

In intermediate school we had to pick a foreign language to study.  Having been born in Germany and having grown up with mysteries of “G.I. German” in the home, my choice was clear.  My father knew a man who’d retired from his medical practice and was living in Lucerne, Switzerland.  In the summer of my fourteenth year, he asked if I’d like to spend a summer in Switzerland, and I jumped at the chance.  I was fairly immersed in German for about three months, an experience that ran from pure alienation and misery, at first, to an amazing feeling of enlightenment toward the end.  I reveled in the people, the culture and the learning; I dreaded having to come back to my home in California.  My zeal for language learning was only boosted by this experience.  In time, I would study happily, if superficially, French, Spanish and Japanese, as well.

High school journalism classes afforded me the chance to use language to inform and, potentially, move people to action.  Toward the same end, though in a more creative way, I would eventually put my hand to songwriting, poetry and, for a limited time, advertisement copy writing in an internship with a firm in the City.  Songwriting was my greatest love.  Personally, nothing had ever stirred me quite like the one-two punch of music and narrative that we find in modern songwriting, so I channeled that passion into a few rock bands in the East Bay during the early 80s, playing clubs all over the Bay Area.

Though I moved to LA after college, in part, to make it as a songwriter, I rather fell into teaching via the seduction of the emergency credential.  In truth, I didn’t know what I was getting into.  I’d had no formal teaching instruction.  Suddenly I was teaching huge classes of hormone-crazed adolescents in ESL in South Central, complete with drive-by shootings and, worse, an even more uncooperative administration.  Two years later, taking a big drop in pay, I found my way to teaching ESL in adult education centers throughout LA.  I did this for about 25 years.  After a very enjoyable position near the beach for twelve years, the entire school was eliminated due to budget constraints -- a tragedy for the whole community, where the school had served for over seventy years.  For my part,  it broke my heart to walk away from the joyous students I’d been blessed to teach, and who’d taught me much about loyalty, friendship and the bounty of a (comparatively) non-materialistic culture.

Unemployed, I took some literature courses at a community college.  They reminded me of my earlier passion for reading and writing, which, to be honest, I’d neglected to some extent, in favor of songwriting.  I remembered, too, my favorite class at UC Berkley, Rhetoric 101.  It was easily the most student-centered course in my college experience; the discussions were always lively, sometimes even aggressive.  The goal was to master persuasive writing.  The means to that end was critical thinking, questioning everything, and honing our writing skills until we were capable of persuading our most ardent opponents.  Like my summer of “enlightenment” in Switzerland, Rhetoric 101 felt like a great “wake up” time.  Looking back, this was the turning point, I suppose, where I discovered clearer thinking and clearer writing.  In choosing a new career direction for myself, I’ve decided to return to my Rhetoric “roots,” to try to help other young people clarify their thoughts and writing.  It may well be difficult, but I’m sure it will be rewarding.

Week 3, Post 2: Tutor to Tutee

As we've seen in various articles, notably Joy Reid's "'Eye' Learners and 'Ear' Learners," much of the schema our tutees bring to the reading/writing process depends on their prior educations.  Both eye learners and ear learners have their own strengths and weaknesses, and it behooves the tutor to capitalize on the former and nurture the latter.  First, however, it's essential to identify whom we're working with.  As Mark Robege has said, we can't merely ask if the student is Generation 1.5.  Rather, we need a simple set of questions to help identify the tutee's by experience and skill set.

At the risk of appearing hideously unoriginal, it seems we could do far worse than to utilize or adapt Reid's Sample Survery/Interview Questions to Identify ESL Student Writer's Language Background ("'Eye' Learners and 'Ear' Learners," pp. 8-9).  Ideally, the "interview" would not come across as an interview at all, but rather a chat that covers some rapport building and some questions like those offered by Reid.  This would follow naturally after I've spoken a bit about my myself and my goals.

Questions
1. Is English your second language?
2. What's your first language?
3. Did you come to SFSU directly from high school?
4. How many years of college have you had?
4. Did you graduate from a high school in the U.S.?
5. How did you choose SFSU?
6. What do you like about SFSU?
7. How fluent are you in you first language in speaking, listening, reading, writing?
8. How did you learn English?
9. Which areas of English do you like the most -- speaking, listening, reading, writing or grammar?
10. Which areas would you like most help with?
10. What things do you like to do for fun?
11. Who do you like to spend time with in your free time?
12. What do you imagine yourself doing after you graduate?

Week 3, Post 1: Twelve Little Indians

Overview
This is not as easy a task as it first appears.  I had to re-read several selections 2-3 times, and even noe, I'm not 100% certain.  Generally, the ear learners have a better command of idiomatic expressions, though they make certain grammatical mistakes (errors?) that ear learners would tend to know sounds "off."  The student in the Introductions appears to be an ear learner, using the language idioms like, "Tell you the truth" and slang like "slacker."  Student I, however, makes awkward vocabulary choices such as, "I eat green-tea every day."  Most likely, this student is an eye learner.

I used a similar means to group the student papers in general.  The "tip off" aspects below are in parentheses, though these are hardly the only identifying features.

Eye  Learners
D (awk. vocab.), E (awk. idioms), G (awk. vocab.), H (awk. idioms), I (awk. idioms)

Ear Learners
"Pot Legal" (false cognates), "Spelling" (slang usage), "Intros" (slang usage), A (idiom usage), B (conversational grammar), C (awk. inflection/first language thinking), D (awk. inflection/first language thinking), F (awk. sentence structure, punctuation and grammar).

 Twelve Divided by Three
 The three categories that seem to require attention are A) Thesis/Structure, B) Argumentative Support and C) Grammare Issues/Sentence Structure/Polishing. The key question for me is one of priority.  If a student needs help with all of the above, where should we begin?  Do you start from scratch with sentence structure?  Or do you focus on the argumentative essay -- Point, Purpose and Argument -- and take care of the finer points later?  For this Blog, I chose to address the argument first; thus, if a student, like F, seems incoherent, my tendency is to brainstorm with him from the start, to be sure he has something to say.

Off Task/Needs Brainstorming/Thesis 
These papers make a nod toward the prompt, then lose focus, failing to form and develop a thesis.

B, E, F, G, I

Need More Argumentative Support
These papers are chiefly on task in addressing the prompt, but they lack sufficient support either defending the thesis, or within the paragraphs.  Again it's a question of focus.
" Pot Legal," A, C,

Grammar Issues/Sentence Structure
These papers were far more sophisticated in structure and tone, but they need help with with sentence structure (ex. D) or proofreading and polishing (ex. "Spelling").
 "Introductions,""Spelling," H, D

Eye/Ear Summary
Clearly, a task that began by corralling eye learners and ear learners in tidy clusters took a sharp left turn when I had to address their skills.  So what is the point of paying attention to such backgrounds at all?  The benefit is that this equips the teacher to deal with each student as an individual, based on experience, talents, learning modalities and needs.  Of course, in a group setting, such a goal may prove more difficult in application than theory, but it's absolutely impossible to achieve without focusing on it from the start.

Top 10 Tutoring Tips

While I spent years in the classroom, I had far fewer experiences in one-on-one tutoring.  The tutoring I did was entirely schooled by empathizing with students and following common sense.  This list is derived from my experience and from various websites.

1.  Put yourself in your tutee's shoes.  Relate to him/her as a person who's struggling as bravely as he/she can.  Understand the frustration.  Let him/her know it's totally normal to feel "stuck" sometimes.

2.  Be sure you understand the student's background before you begin.  If he/she's an "eye learner" or an "ear learner," orient yourself appropriately.  Much of this can be derived from the orientation info, but pay attention to speech patterns that may signal a tendency to write in a style influenced by native language, including use of false cognates.

3.  Implement the Socratic method.  Rather than push the student to understand his weaknesses, lead him through questioning.  Wait for agreement.  Begin with what the student knows and move on to less familiar material.

4.  Know your material.  Keep resource materials handy for explanation.  If you don't know the answer to a question, say, "I'll have to get back to you on that."

5.  Be flexible.  Be ready to present different approaches to explain a point.

6.  Be patient.  If the tutee keeps drawing a blank, ask what he/she doesn't understand.  If he/she isn't responding, it could be the tutee is thinking deeply, about to arrive at the answer independently, so allow "quiet time" as necessary.

7.  Be creative.  After you've explained a point, be ready to think up a few practice cases for your tutee to work out by him/herself, explaining how he/she arrived at the answer.

8. Give credit where credit is due.  Most people are motivated by the carrot, not the stick.

9.  Stay upbeat.  Smile.  When you and your tutee reach a dead-end, stay positive.  Keep a sense of humor.  Try to enjoy the moment, regardless of the difficulties.

10.  Believe in your tutee.  Let him/her know his/her efforts will definitely pay off; it will all be worth the work.

Groovy Blogs for Tutors

 Rummaging through dozens of sites, I found a plenty that emphasized grammar (Purdue) and a lot that cater to online tutors.  More relevant to this class, I found the following most useful:

writingcenter.unc.edu/esl/teacher -- Lots of tips for tutors; excellent, easy-to-understand grammar

blog.socrato.com -- This site provides great tutoring tips and provides quizzes and testing services, too.

www.edudemic -- Offers mountains of help for tutors and teachers (mostly teachers), especially in terms of technology in the classroom.

Though I rooted through dozens of sites, none were as resourceful as those listed on our I-Learn English 704 website!

www.lynchburg.edu/writing-center/alton-l-wilmer-center/tutoring-strategies -- Fantastic primer on working 1-on-1, including the importance of reading body language and how to handle "difficult" tutees (irresponsible, duplicitous, lazy).

www.etown.edu/offices/learning/module_one.aspx -- Like the Lynchburg site, this site is an embarrassment of riches for tutor tips.

First Tutoring Experiences

I'm Troy Croom.

My first experience with tutoring came while I was working at Moss Lighting on Mission as a general laborer around 1981.  I'd started Cal and dropped out to play in a band called Flexopumps.  There were a couple SF City College students from China who were also laborers like myself; they were struggling with their English compositions.  I was surprised at how deeply appreciative they were and how good it made me feel to help these guys.  Working with them was one of the things that motivated me to return to and finish my BA in English.

A few years later, having graduated at Cal and having moved to LA, I discovered I could become a K-12 teacher with NO TRAINING; I would begin night courses in teaching instruction and work in South Central LA as an ESL instructor on an "emergency" credential for two years.  Then I would go on to teach adults ESL.  While I found I loved leading large groups, one-on-one instruction and motivation was always my favorite.