In meetings thus far, I have found that most tutees have a decent understanding of the texts required for their essays. Some have needed help keeping their summaries concise, which concerns their reading comprehension and deep understanding of the texts and how they coincide with their claims. I have not asked them about their reading strategies, but I can see that it might be helpful to review this by posing the question. Much of what they do in class is discuss the required texts and have open conversations about them, which I believe is why most of them have been alright in this aspect. I have encountered many drafts where the readings are not fully utilized, to which I have suggested strategies that can help support their claims as the prompt requires. I would like to try asking them about their reading process, as it might help me help them. In most meetings, I have asked the writers which author they relate to more since the texts have conflicting stances or if they somewhat agree with both or neither. Even if it is clear who they side with in their draft, I have found that this question makes them more deeply consider their personal stance, which is a vital part of the prompt. Asking this also causes the writers to assess the quotes they used, which I have found to be an issue with many writers.
I have not encountered a particular example of the tutoring experiences in this chapter. The closest I have seen is when a writer made bold claims that I disagreed with and were largely off-topic from the original prompt. I did not try to impose my interpretations of the texts onto this student but attempted to guide them back to the prompt to employ the required textual evidence. Luckily, the student had asked about the relevance to the prompt with a fear that their draft was too off-topic, so they were open to reformatting and reassessing their draft to better answer the prompt.
Journal #6:
So far I have only tutored students writing a clear response to one essay. Most of their homework has been about reading comprehension, and the reading process, as well as reading strategies for them to employ. I really enjoyed reading this chapter of The Longman Guide to Peer Tutoring, because reading strategies haven’t so far been something I was thinking about, because all of my tutees seemed to grasp the text fairly well. Knowing about the importance of reading strategies I will be able to add them to my tutoring tool kit in the future. I did notice during my recent tutoring sessions that many of the tutees were summarizing instead of responding to the reading. I asked open-ended questions about how they felt about the reading and what their reaction was, so that we could start a conversation that would help me understand their opinion, so that I could direct them toward the prompt for this essay. In the future I think that adding some questions about their reading strategies will be very helpful. I noticed a lot of the students were not annotating their texts at all, so maybe looking over the text together, and talking about annotation together could be useful. I think that annotating, or highlighting important passages would be especially helpful, as several of my tutees came to me asking for help identifying areas in their essay that would be well supported by additional quotations, as well as what quotations I would suggest for their writing. I did my best not to give them a direct answer, and rather asked what stuck out to them in the writing, and to identify overarching themes in the essay that they could look for to quote in their writing. As for the situations outlined on page 109, I believe that example three is the closest to my experience. Though it was not an identical situation, we were working with a text that I know well. I took this same class last semester and read and reread this particular essay several times. For the tutees who came to me with an open mind and wanted my help, this gave me the ability to go more in depth with them and really talk about what their argument was and what passages would be best to quote. That being said, they were writing a response essay, and I did not want them to mimic my response, as that was my own unique viewpoint. Therefore I was very careful not to give any of my own opinions on the text specifically, and rather asked them questions about their own interpretation of the text so that we could better form their argument, rather than the one I had already written. Finally, the biggest thing I want to talk about with my tutees in the future is the greater context of the texts they will be looking at. For example we read The Empathy Diaries by Sherry Turkle, which came out in the mid 2010s, but the vast majority of the students I met with acted like it had been released very recently, which shaped some of their questions and arguments in a way that did not take the time period the text was written in into account, for example asking why the author did not address covid, when the essay predates covid by several years.
Reading is something that I have felt the need to address with students I have been working with, even before I considered Chapter 8’s insights on the topic. Their project is an APA paper that incorporates 6 academic sources, so a common question and discussion point that I have utilized with them is “have you been having a hard time reading the articles?” or even “do you have any strategies for reading academic literature?”. These questions are ones that I have found to be very helpful in engaging students in a conversation that helps them to think critically about how we read, and in what ways can we make ourselves more efficient at it. In order to relate to them, I often share with them about how I have a hard time reading academic articles myself, because they are so dense and empirical. However, I inform them of my strategies. Oftentimes, I can’t just sit there and read through the whole article, beginning to end, so I carefully look at the abstract, the introduction, and the conclusion. In those areas of an academic paper, it is clearly outlined what will be discussed, what the results will be of a study, and what the most important takeaways are. If what the student needs to supplement their writing is not found in these areas of the text, it is not likely going to be found or discussed anywhere else in the text. So in that case, I tell them that if they found some intriguing information in the conclusion that they could integrate into their writing, they should try to go back into the study to see where that information was coming from and maybe it was discussed further. Some tutees find these academic papers daunting, and these tips are helpful for them and give them a game plan. Some tutees have no problem at all reading and understanding the academic writing, so it’s really just about meeting the student where they are at.
Another issue of contention I have found with how the students are approaching their writing assignments, is that they are trying to start writing before they know what they are writing about. One of my first questions to them is “do you have your six sources” because I have to explain to them that they need to get familiar with their sources in order to determine what about their sources is important and will supplement their writing and their study. Some of them come in well-aware of this and are prepared, but most claim that they were stuck and uninspired when they had not yet consulted the literature that would inform their writing. This was something I found to be important to tutor them on.
I think for the APA paper I am tutoring on, the most relatable example would be “crossing the line”, because I do have an egocentric tendency when it comes to writing to think my interpretation of things or way of understanding or articulating things, is the only right way. However, it is important for me to respect the writer’s voice and style, as well as to limit my critiques to what is objectively wrong.
So far, I have not had any student interest in my office hours, so most of what I am writing for this journal will be what I notice from sitting in on class, as well as what I learned from this chapter.
The example that stuck out the most to me in chapter 10 was the example of crossing the line. As the students in my class move into their first large writing assignment, I can feel that my role in the class is about to become a lot bigger, and I am afraid of “giving away the answers”. Sometimes, I over explain myself, so reading this example gave me a few strategies to avoid doing this. For example, the dialogue shows the tutor having the student explain the answers with the support of guiding questions from the tutor, which I think I will find helpful as I start to work with students.
4 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 6”
In meetings thus far, I have found that most tutees have a decent understanding of the texts required for their essays. Some have needed help keeping their summaries concise, which concerns their reading comprehension and deep understanding of the texts and how they coincide with their claims. I have not asked them about their reading strategies, but I can see that it might be helpful to review this by posing the question. Much of what they do in class is discuss the required texts and have open conversations about them, which I believe is why most of them have been alright in this aspect. I have encountered many drafts where the readings are not fully utilized, to which I have suggested strategies that can help support their claims as the prompt requires. I would like to try asking them about their reading process, as it might help me help them. In most meetings, I have asked the writers which author they relate to more since the texts have conflicting stances or if they somewhat agree with both or neither. Even if it is clear who they side with in their draft, I have found that this question makes them more deeply consider their personal stance, which is a vital part of the prompt. Asking this also causes the writers to assess the quotes they used, which I have found to be an issue with many writers.
I have not encountered a particular example of the tutoring experiences in this chapter. The closest I have seen is when a writer made bold claims that I disagreed with and were largely off-topic from the original prompt. I did not try to impose my interpretations of the texts onto this student but attempted to guide them back to the prompt to employ the required textual evidence. Luckily, the student had asked about the relevance to the prompt with a fear that their draft was too off-topic, so they were open to reformatting and reassessing their draft to better answer the prompt.
Journal #6:
So far I have only tutored students writing a clear response to one essay. Most of their homework has been about reading comprehension, and the reading process, as well as reading strategies for them to employ. I really enjoyed reading this chapter of The Longman Guide to Peer Tutoring, because reading strategies haven’t so far been something I was thinking about, because all of my tutees seemed to grasp the text fairly well. Knowing about the importance of reading strategies I will be able to add them to my tutoring tool kit in the future. I did notice during my recent tutoring sessions that many of the tutees were summarizing instead of responding to the reading. I asked open-ended questions about how they felt about the reading and what their reaction was, so that we could start a conversation that would help me understand their opinion, so that I could direct them toward the prompt for this essay. In the future I think that adding some questions about their reading strategies will be very helpful. I noticed a lot of the students were not annotating their texts at all, so maybe looking over the text together, and talking about annotation together could be useful. I think that annotating, or highlighting important passages would be especially helpful, as several of my tutees came to me asking for help identifying areas in their essay that would be well supported by additional quotations, as well as what quotations I would suggest for their writing. I did my best not to give them a direct answer, and rather asked what stuck out to them in the writing, and to identify overarching themes in the essay that they could look for to quote in their writing. As for the situations outlined on page 109, I believe that example three is the closest to my experience. Though it was not an identical situation, we were working with a text that I know well. I took this same class last semester and read and reread this particular essay several times. For the tutees who came to me with an open mind and wanted my help, this gave me the ability to go more in depth with them and really talk about what their argument was and what passages would be best to quote. That being said, they were writing a response essay, and I did not want them to mimic my response, as that was my own unique viewpoint. Therefore I was very careful not to give any of my own opinions on the text specifically, and rather asked them questions about their own interpretation of the text so that we could better form their argument, rather than the one I had already written. Finally, the biggest thing I want to talk about with my tutees in the future is the greater context of the texts they will be looking at. For example we read The Empathy Diaries by Sherry Turkle, which came out in the mid 2010s, but the vast majority of the students I met with acted like it had been released very recently, which shaped some of their questions and arguments in a way that did not take the time period the text was written in into account, for example asking why the author did not address covid, when the essay predates covid by several years.
Reading is something that I have felt the need to address with students I have been working with, even before I considered Chapter 8’s insights on the topic. Their project is an APA paper that incorporates 6 academic sources, so a common question and discussion point that I have utilized with them is “have you been having a hard time reading the articles?” or even “do you have any strategies for reading academic literature?”. These questions are ones that I have found to be very helpful in engaging students in a conversation that helps them to think critically about how we read, and in what ways can we make ourselves more efficient at it. In order to relate to them, I often share with them about how I have a hard time reading academic articles myself, because they are so dense and empirical. However, I inform them of my strategies. Oftentimes, I can’t just sit there and read through the whole article, beginning to end, so I carefully look at the abstract, the introduction, and the conclusion. In those areas of an academic paper, it is clearly outlined what will be discussed, what the results will be of a study, and what the most important takeaways are. If what the student needs to supplement their writing is not found in these areas of the text, it is not likely going to be found or discussed anywhere else in the text. So in that case, I tell them that if they found some intriguing information in the conclusion that they could integrate into their writing, they should try to go back into the study to see where that information was coming from and maybe it was discussed further. Some tutees find these academic papers daunting, and these tips are helpful for them and give them a game plan. Some tutees have no problem at all reading and understanding the academic writing, so it’s really just about meeting the student where they are at.
Another issue of contention I have found with how the students are approaching their writing assignments, is that they are trying to start writing before they know what they are writing about. One of my first questions to them is “do you have your six sources” because I have to explain to them that they need to get familiar with their sources in order to determine what about their sources is important and will supplement their writing and their study. Some of them come in well-aware of this and are prepared, but most claim that they were stuck and uninspired when they had not yet consulted the literature that would inform their writing. This was something I found to be important to tutor them on.
I think for the APA paper I am tutoring on, the most relatable example would be “crossing the line”, because I do have an egocentric tendency when it comes to writing to think my interpretation of things or way of understanding or articulating things, is the only right way. However, it is important for me to respect the writer’s voice and style, as well as to limit my critiques to what is objectively wrong.
So far, I have not had any student interest in my office hours, so most of what I am writing for this journal will be what I notice from sitting in on class, as well as what I learned from this chapter.
The example that stuck out the most to me in chapter 10 was the example of crossing the line. As the students in my class move into their first large writing assignment, I can feel that my role in the class is about to become a lot bigger, and I am afraid of “giving away the answers”. Sometimes, I over explain myself, so reading this example gave me a few strategies to avoid doing this. For example, the dialogue shows the tutor having the student explain the answers with the support of guiding questions from the tutor, which I think I will find helpful as I start to work with students.