[Bkn-english-646-fall-2009] Assignment 5.

[Grausso at aol.com]

Here's the fifth assignment. I apologize for the "rant" style-- honestly, I 
 come off as being way more opinionated than I actually am about the  
material. It's mostly because I do my writing in the middle of the night,  and I 
think I need to take a stance in order to remain engaged.. or something... 
 
John: To answer your question about tutoring sessions focused entirely on  
the subject of introductions, I had a walk-in session like that today. The  
student arrived without his assignment sheet, and spent about five minutes  
trying to explain the topic to me. He actually approached his paper as 
though it  was a free-writing exercise, so I tried to get him to recognize that 
he had to  do two things in his introduction: 1) State the necessary 
background information  about the topic & 2) Develop a definitive argument. He 
struggled to write  clear sentences, even though he was able to generate specific 
ideas in his  dialogue with me. Ultimately, I had him write down exactly 
what he was saying in  response to my questions, and he was like "Oh, yeah, 
that's much clearer." There  was an unbelievable level of disorganization in 
his overall paper, and I gave  him some techniques that he could use in order 
to re-shape it. It was a pretty  difficult tutoring session, because there 
were so many other problems in the  paper that needed to be addressed-- he 
didn't understand MLA formatting, and  there were other grammatical errors 
and spelling mistakes. It was frustrating  knowing that he would leave the 
session without getting more accomplished. All I  could do was encourage him to 
try to come back to the Writing Center in the  future. 
 
Rice: I think it's interesting that you use different methods depending on  
the students you're dealing with-- I wish there was some way of assessing 
the  learning-types (kinetic, visual, auditory) of our students before we 
meet with  them. I feel like some students require much more attention than 
others,  and I find it hard to predict whether a method will benefit  a 
specific student until we've tried it. 
 
See you all on Wednesday. 
 
Christine 
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