As you might see from my previous posting, it was hard to make any generalizations about students by class. With the benefit of in-class discussion, I learned some useful information.
Generally, 104 is for students who took the DSP (Directed Self-Placement test through Early Start) and opted for remedial level. These students tend to be those who scored lowest on the test.
114 is the traditional freshman composition course. These students are here because they are more highly functioning in English writing and reading or because, following the DSP, they didn't care for the idea of 104, either because it's remedial or because it's a commitment to a full-year ("stretch") program.
214 is the sophomore segment of the two-year comp requirement at SFSU, so ususally these students are sophomores and more skilled than the 114 students. However, as I stated in my Week 6, Post 1, this does not apply to my two tutees, for whom it's the reverse. My 114 student writes at a decent level already, while my 214 student struggles with many sentence-level issues. (Both have a pretty firm handle on general, though the 214 lags behind by some degree.)
The key differentiating fact for these two, I believe, is that the more advanced student has the benefit of having heard and spoken English, at least as L2 if not L1, growing up in the Phillipines and in the U.S. The student who's struggling more has spent about the same amount of time (5 years) in the states with her folks, but the L1 is Cantonese 24/7, so she's missing some of the benefits of using the language, developing vocabulary and syntax.
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