Alina Vamanu, blog post #6


I can relate to the topic of reading issues among undergraduates. One of the two students I am tutoring this semester has had difficulties reading complex conceptual texts. Recently, she has been working on an academic article about “doing gender.” She needs to use this article as a theoretical lens to explore a case study of transgender employees and the challenges they encounter in the workplace, as well as in their everyday lives more broadly. She brought a first draft of her paper to our tutoring session, and we read the prompt together. The prompt required that the introductory paragraph present the argument of the article and contrast the theory of gender as “accomplished” in everyday interactions to the theory of socialization into gender roles. I am deeply familiar with many bodies of scholarly literature in Gender Studies, so I was glad to read parts of this article together with my student. However, I noticed that while her introduction contained a few good points, much of it demonstrated her confusion about the argument of this article. She had experienced difficulties understanding what exactly “doing gender” means; in addition, she had obviously struggled with articulating in her own words the points she had understood. So, it wasn’t simply an issue of reading comprehension; it was also an issue of expressing ideas she had been able to grasp.

We had to go back to basics: we reread parts of the article, and I had my student identify definitions and places where the authors articulated their argument about “doing gender.” I also advised her to take notes. I think she left with a clearer understanding of gender as “accomplished” in everyday interactions. The challenge of this session was to work on conceptual issues while also leaving time for the other paragraph the student had written on the case study. Luckily, this was a short paper, so we were able to get through the whole draft, although the introduction took precedence over the rest of the paper. However, I can imagine this sort of tutoring session becoming much more difficult with longer papers, if the student has not yet mastered basic conceptual issues. I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this and other reading-related issues!

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