Two Questions from Week One Reading

Question One from the readings in the Bedford Guide -- After reading chapters one and two the question I have is about integrating grammar corrections into a tutoring session.  The Bedford Guide advises avoiding making significant grammar corrections, instead focusing on the overall presentation of the paper.  For most of the students in prison, lack of knowledge and understanding of the rules of grammar is a significant barrier to writing success.  What are other options for more acutely integrating grammar lessons into a tutoring session, while still avoiding taking a student's paper over through over-correction?

Question Two from the Writing Center website -- First of all, I had no idea of the broad array of writing support services offered to students across campus.  As I was looking through the other centers around campus I wondered if tutors in all the centers receive any unified training, or if each center determines what skills are prioritized in their specific setting?


Comments

  1. Carol SeverinoJanuary 23, 2019 at 5:13 AM

    Heather--You've identified an important problem. I agree that grammar and language help must be integrated into tutoring about the bigger issues like assignment fulfillment and using sources. We work a lot with language in the Writing Center. But you don't want to overwhelm writers who haven't had much experience writing or instruction in grammar. One best practice is to choose an error pattern that occurs in the student's writing, say, run-on sentences. Then take one of the student's run-on's (no end punctuation--a period or semi-colon-- between two sentences), show them how to fix it (using end punctuation or sentence combining) and then take the next run-on and see if they can fix it themselves. You can also use a grammar and composition handbook or the Purdue OWL to find exercises and lessons on fixing run-on's. Do you have grammar and composition books on hand at the prison? We sometimes get them for free so we can give you some.

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    1. UnknownJanuary 25, 2019 at 6:32 AM

      Thank you, Carol. Your response is very helpful. At the prison we rely on donated resource guides so have a conglomeration of items. We have some dictionaries and the like, but I don't think we have any readers specifically targeting grammar skills. We have been contemplating creating a series of workshops focused on grammar and other foundational writing skills, and hope to offer that later this semester. We'd be so happy to have any extra grammar and composition books that you aren't using or don't need. Thank you!

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    2. Carol SeverinoJanuary 31, 2019 at 11:57 AM

      Remind me, Heather, on Tuesday and I'll give you a couple.

      Delete
  2. Carol SeverinoJanuary 23, 2019 at 5:31 AM

    That's a good question and it makes sense to share training tips, which we do sometimes at our semesterly Pan-Writing Center/Program meetings. And I remember an administrator from Academic Support suggested we all centralize our training. But it became clear through discussions that the individual contexts of the 7 writing centers are fairly different. For example, Engineering works with course papers (for example, the Materials Science proposal) that must be vetted thrugh the Engineering Center as part of the students' writing process. Those Engineering tutors (all undergrad Engineering students) know the College's courses, assignments, paper genres, and instructors better, say, than we would in EPB. They are immersed in Engineering. But our tutors probably know about the contexts for Rhetoric and Gen Ed Lit papers better than they do because many of our tutors have taught one or both of those courses. Plus, we don't have the resources for instructors to require that all students in their class use the writing center for certain assignments.

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