Data Analysis
Case 1: Jen
Jen was an ESL student who had been studying the language for three semesters. She spoke quietly and with a noticeable accent, so at times I struggled to audibly understand her. She brought in a midterm paper that her professor had marked up, and she wanted to revise it.
I quickly looked over her paper and saw several different kinds of problems, but the first paragraph in particular was difficult for me to understand – I could tell her paper was about perceptions of obesity, but I could not determine whether or not she was arguing that obesity should affect personal opinions. My confusion about her topic was my loss, and I decided to use Socratic questioning by asking, “I don’t understand what you mean here. Can you explain it?” She answered by rereading some of the phrases in that paragraph over but never giving me the clarification I was looking for. This exchange is an example of the conflicting expectations Harris describes where I was aiming to help her with the overall writing process by using the Socratic method, but she was not as willing to engage in free conversation.
So the conflict in this situation was external, between Jen and me and our different expectations. Ultimately I conformed to her expectations by taking a direct approach and telling her specific changes to make in her paper, but it did take me a long time to understand what she wanted to say. After we revised that paragraph, I felt self-conscious about how I handled myself; I knew I was supposed to be the expert, but I had not known all the answers, and I could tell from her sighs and raised eyebrows that she was frustrated and tired. At this point I was at an internal loss over perception, so I made an effort to rectify how I thought she may be negatively perceiving me by saying, “You’re doing a good job. I know this is really confusing, and sometimes I don’t even know the right answers.” Then she smiled and laughed and thanked me and said, “And you speak English!” And Harris’ research shows that ESL writers are appreciative when their coaches are sympathetic to the difficulties of learning the language, which Jen’s smile confirms.
Case 2: Stacey
Stacey was a senior English Education student who had four consecutive sessions with me. She typically brought in journals about or lesson plans for her student-teaching. She initially came in because her supervisor was very critical of her writing, especially her grammar, punctuation, and wordiness, and instructed her to seek tutoring. She was very self-motivated – she told me about the practices she was doing at home and the resources she was using enhance her writing. Her directness in the sessions also indicated her initiative.
During our second session, we were looking at semicolons and colons she had used in a journal. I pointed out an example and said, “You don’t need this colon here. It’s unnecessary because the sentence just… flows right along… it’s a complete thought together.” She said, “Okay” and changed it, but she clearly had not understood because later in similar sentences, she did not always use colons correctly. The loss here was external in that I was not able to effectively explain the rules to her, but I also was in internal conflict because I was frustrated that I could not help her. At the end of the session, I asked if I could e-mail her some more information and examples for semicolons and colons, and she accepted. The next day, I e-mailed her with explanations and examples from Joseph Williams’ book Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. She thanked me in a reply as well as in our next session, and I noticed in that next session that she had printed and highlighted the e-mail. In our following sessions, she used the two punctuation marks correctly, proving her understanding.
The resolution for this loss was staggered. In the session, I instructed her on how to fix the errors, but I was not satisfied because I knew she had not grown as a writer. So though it was unconventional, the second part of the resolution, going to an authority, helped me help Stacey conquer the colon.
(*I also want to work in to this how using a resource was helpful in two ways: it said it better and it was more of an authority – since Stacey and I are both senior English students, we were on a pretty even playing field (sort of…) and she sometimes disagreed with what I said even though it was pretty undisputable.)
Case 3: Stacey
The following losses happened during my first session with Stacey and they are surprising in terms of my topic because I was very passive in the resolution to the loss. As I already mentioned, Stacey was driven and certainly so from the very beginning. She sat down, pulled her papers out, and said her supervisor wanted her to work on grammar and writing. My first loss was very quick, and it was a loss of how to start the session. I wondered momentarily exactly what we should work on, for she had given me some pretty broad subject areas. Right after explaining why her supervisor sent her, she took the lead, pointing to a few specific paragraphs that she wanted to work on. This was a completely internal loss on my part because neither of us every physically for verbally acknowledged it, and she resolved it without ever knowing something needed resolving, with which I was perfectly content. (blech I know that sentence is bad, but this is a draft. so there.)
The second loss, however, was anything but invisible. We came to a sentence that was long and wordy, so I suggested she revise it. As I talked aloud about the sentence, where its issues were and how they could possibly be fixed, she said, “No...,” not liking my ideas. This was an external loss between Stacey and me and our different opinions. After a few suggestions, I changed my mind and said, “You know, maybe it’s fine the way it is,” indicating we should move on. But once again, Stacy recovered my loss. She came up with her own revision and wrote it down. So while I did not intentionally ask a leading question, hoping to lead Stacey to her own answer, I did open the session up for her to … um… figure out on her own what needed to be done.
No comments:
Post a Comment