I wish I were better able to make generalizations about my tutee's classes. However, I feel rather ill-equipped, armed with only info from my 3 tutorials with two students and a reading of my tutor groups' reports. Mostly, I find it hard to differentiate. For example, starting with my own two tutees, I find it odd that the more advanced is in the "lower" or freshman class, while the more developmental is in the "upper" or sophomore class.
Frankly, after umpteen years of my teaching ESL, I'm somewhat relieved that they're both at a certain level where they understand me and understand their assignments, as well as understand the general approach of a five-paragraph essay. On the other hand, my sophomore student in 214 struggles enormously at times with sentence-level issues as well as general structure.
My freshman in 114 has much higher level language ability in general. As far as his determination toward improvement, so far, I feel he's the more challenged because he seems to have a false sense of security that perhaps he doesn't need my help very much; this might explain his tardiness and his lack of preparedness to work when he arrives. As you can see, I'm a bit at a loss in my attempt to make any generalizations about students by level or by course, so far, whether it's my tutees or others. If anything, I see structure issues and sentence level issues across the board.
I must say, I'm filled with admiration reading Jennifer E's report where he student has composition to revise, so she launches into practicing reading skills. I only wish I had her reading instruction background. In the meantime, I'll do my best to encourage my students and to bolster their writing and grammar skills.
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