What about grammar?

While it is true that we don't proofread papers, addressing grammatical problems IS part of what we do, especially errors that are pervasive in a paper. We don't want to simply ignore those issues or assure students that their papers are wonderful if their sentences truly are tangled up with errors. This can give students the wrong impression that they are doing just fine when they may have many sentence level errors that impede understanding.

Since it isn't your job to know all the ins and outs of grammar (they just don't teach you a lot of those rules in k-12), but since you also want to be honest with your students, what do you do?

Here's what I suggest:

1. Browse the green ESL book to see how they explain some of those rules you never learned in school. You'll pick up few useful ones, I guarantee.

2. Don't gloss over messed up grammar. Say something like, "Gee whiz, what a great topic, and what great organizational strategies you used. However, are you aware that you make a lot of mistakes with verbs? Do you feel pretty confident that you will be able find your verb mistakes once you get around to proofreading?" Or how about, "Golly, you did such a good job with this synthesis. I can tell you worked really hard. However, do you remember learning about sentence fragments in your ESL/high school English class? What do you remember about them? Do you see that this one is a sentence fragment?" Or, if you know it sounds weird but you can't put your finger on why, how about, "I really like your topic and how your developed it. Some of your sentences seems a little awkward to me, like this one. I'm not sure you can say it like that....can you think of another way to say it? Do you remember the rules you've learned about using phrases like this? Is there a name for this?" This might get the student looking more closely and connecting their ESL grammar class with their writing--THEY are in the driver's seat, using what THEY already know to self-correct--and inform you along the way, which makes them feel good, too.

3. Try to brainstorm a way the student can learn to identify the problem area. Try to find some kind of signpost in the student's writing that seems to mark the type of error you're working on. Get creative. Ask someone else for ideas.

4. Work on only one or two grammar matters in a session.

Because while it's not our job to make a paper perfect, we do want to give realistic feedback.

Writing prompt

"Tutors who never blog are ungenerous, secretive sorts who keep their good ideas to themselves and do not fail to deprive others of the encouragement they might be hopeful of being the beneficiaries of in a community of practice such as that of the WLDC."

Respond. Do you find this claim a little cheeky, or do you find it downright insolent? Do you find the double negatives off-putting? How about the awkward constructions ending with "of"? Can you revise them for clarity? Explain your answers, using your own experience and evidence and examples from the text.

Something about reading

I am guessing you run into students who misunderstand their reading or claim to have poor comprehension no matter what they do....

...so what do you do with that?

Do you feel that you have enough tools to help them with their reading comprehension? Or do you think we need to add more to our tutor training? Or is this not a problem in your experience?

One thing I try to encourage (not just by talking, but by demonstrating it) is to WRITE SOMETHING in the margins rather than highlight or underline. Highlighting/underlining can be just as passive as the passive "reading" that is the problem in the first place. You don't have to think very much or understand very deeply to underline. (Just ask a student WHY he underlined THIS sentence, right here, and see if he doesn't say something vague like, "I thought it might turn out to be important.") Point is, underlining seems as likely to identify something puzzling or just some minor thing the student "gets" as it is to identify something important in the piece. Writing something, on the other hand, is active and requires that you actively process the information at least enough to figure out what you want to write.

What do you do?