I haven’t changed my data analysis much from the previous draft, which I definitely plan on doing once I get a better grip how to do it. My discussion will (hopefully) reflect the revisions of the analysis.
And my lit review is still long, but I don’t think it’ll be too hard to cut it down more. (Hey, I already cut it by 2/3 - and that's with new info added!)
How’s my intro? Do I need to define the loss more? Is my problem/research question clear enough? Do I need to hold off on explaining my findings? Need to more specifically include categories of classification in discussion section? Does my conclusion answer my question?
Introduction
Every writing tutor has found herself in a moment of uncertainty, a moment of panic, mind either racing or empty. Even the best of tutors will come to a point in the lesion where she does not know an answer or the right thing to do or how to do it. In these moments, she is at a loss of words or actions. I have researched what happens in these moments, and I have found that there are indeed trends in losses, and when a tutor is aware of these trends, she can better handle the loss or even prevent it. Also, a loss can be not only a point of conflict but also a time when a tutor can learn from her student.
Review of the Literature
Although in writing about __________, many people have used a tutor’s loss as an example (?), no research has been done that specifically pays attention to why losses happen, what happens, and how the tutor gets out of them. Elizabeth Boquet comes very close to talking about this in her article Intellectual Tug-of-War: Snapshots of Life in the Center where she looks at moments when tutors struggle. She shows that sometimes, there is no recovery and tutors are left with an internal battle of perception, wondering if they seem like bad tutors because they did not resolve a conflict. Another loss revolving around perception happens when a tutor must negotiate between her own goals and responsibilities, the student’s needs, a professor’s agenda, and to which expectation she wants to cater. While a tutor can choose one role to play and thus recover from the loss in the session, she may not be personally satisfied and therefore still at an internal loss with herself.
Brooke Ann Smith’s The Socratic method: The answer for the new tutor looks at how a tutor can ask broad questions to help a writer discover answers and ideas on his own. This method is effective even when the writer expects the tutor to provide all the answers and when the tutor is at a loss; however, the writer in Smith’s example is already observant and comfortable with the conventions of a college paper.
In her article Cultural Conflicts in the Writing Center: Expectations and Assumptions of ESL Students, Muriel Harris says that writing tutors and their ESL students have differing expectations about the routines of a writing session. She notes, tutors are trained to be collaborators, and ESL students come to a tutor for answers and solutions. She also discusses that as part of the cultural differences, ESL students may struggle with typical open-ended questions tutors ask because finding their own answers is a foreign exercise. Too, she explains that these different expectations will indeed create a conflict, or a loss. Harris also writes that ESL students respond positively to a tutor who is sympathetic or understanding about the challenges that come with learning English.
Finally, The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors suggests that when a writer is at a loss, she should admit it, then get help from a textbook or handbook (modeling good practice for the student) or another tutor. When discussing grammar with a student, the authors advise tutors to being aware of their vocabulary as not all students will understand it. The authors also recommend that tutors have students read their papers aloud to find their own errors, and the recommend that tutors ask general questions to help students find an answer.
Methods
For my research, I conducted sessions in Kean University’s tutoring facilities. I did nothing special to manipulate my sessions; I conducted them as I normally would. I had some previous experience working part-time one semester a year ago at a writing center geared specifically for developmental writers at Charleston Southern University. But I still consider myself a fairly novice tutor. Also, I am a native speaker of English.
The sessions were an hour long each. Four of my seven sessions were with the same student, and the remaining three were with ESL students with varying levels of proficiency. Out of my seven sessions, I documented 10 cases where I was at a loss. After each session, I used a series of prompts to reconstruct the loss. The prompts were a chronological outline of what happened, noting any preceding signals to the loss, the tutor’s and writer’s verbal and nonverbal actions during the loss, the details of the recovery, and both parties’ responses to the resolution.
In my these notes, I wrote down nonverbal cues signaling emotions or thoughts, and I tried to be as specific as I could about the situation and what was said during the loss.
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 write. 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 improve 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.)
** Also mention later session where I brought in handbook and avoided loss!)
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 ever physically or 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.
Discussion
From Jen’s session we can see that personality and background play a major role in a session with an ESL student and a native tutor. When a tutor is not aware of how the cultural differences conflict, she may walk right into a problematic situation for tutor and student. On the other hand, a tutor may pick up on stress signals from the student and make an effort to comfort the student even when the tutor has not read or heard that ESL student respond positively to praise and understanding. (combo of informed tutoring and responding to instincts.) (socratic method didn’t work)
Stacey’s sessions also shed light onto several aspects of a tutor’s loss. First, not all losses are completely resolved. In such a case, a tutor can try to settle the loss as much as possible during the session, perhaps just helping the student get through one assignment, and then the tutor can follow up with the student on the given subject through e-mail or even in a subsequent session.
Secondly, writing resources are incredibly useful during a loss about a rule or convention. They serve several purposes; they answer a tutor’s question, they answer a writer’s question, they provide answers than can be different or more clear than a tutor’s answers, and they may be perceived as having more official and authoritative answers.
Finally, Stacey was just one student who proved that students themselves may recover from and resolve a loss. In many of my sessions I was at a loss from the very beginning because I did not know how to start the session, but the students often initiated the direction for the session very quickly. The student may also recover from a more involved loss, like when I suggested changes and then recounted them. Here, all I had to do was point out an area for improvement and Stacey, as an attentive writer, came up with her own solution.
On a larger plane, I have found that conflict is always the heart of a loss, and that conflict may be a tutor’s own internal struggle or an external friction between tutor and writer. The conflict may be over perceptions, knowledge, or communication. A internal conflict is often one where the tutor dances between a professor’s opinions, a student’s desire, and a tutor’s philosophy. Another internal conflict may also be between how a tutor wants to be perceived and she is perceived. The most obvious loss may be one where a tutor simply does not know the answer to a student’s question. And a loss revolving communication is one where the tutor does not know how to explain something to a student or how to understand what the student is saying.
Conclusion
Because of the nature of my study, much is left to be researched about losses. A study of different tutors, for instance, would broaden the scope of what happens in a loss. More cases in general would have more statistical weight. Research on the most effective ways to handle a loss could also be conducted.
Despite these limitations, my study does offer useful insight into the world of the loss, for simply being aware of what causes a loss can help tutors prevent them. And on the other hand, realizing that a loss can be a moment for growth can help a tutor feel less anxious. So really, tutors should embrace their losses. They are inevitable, so when tutors take note of what kinds of losses they are prone to have, they become better tutors because they better understand themselves and the dynamics of the sessions they conduct. And when tutors notice trends in their losses, they can then anticipate problems they will face and be prepared for them.
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