Rough Draft of Research Paper

GRADES -- a letter, number, or other symbol indicating the relative quality of a student's work in a course, examination, or special assignment (http://www.dictionary.com/)

It is a six-letter word that motivates almost all college students, including myself, to give up their Saturdays to study or wait until the next day to pull an all-nighter. Students put in the extra effort to make sure that the good ol' GPA leans more towards a 4.0 than down the scale in the opposite direction. That six-letter word is what also motivates students to give up their personal time in order to visit the writing center to "fix" their paper. As much as writing center staff members try to avoid the subject of the six-letter word, let's face it - grades are what keep the writing center in business.

More often than not, students seek the help of writing center tutors because they want to make the necessary changes to their work in order to improve their grades. Based on the literature, staff members at the writing center "try their best to avoid the subject" (Morrison) though that is nearly impossible to do. Grades are what bring students to the writing center in the first place and it is the single-most important factor that connects the tutor with the person that first enters into the cubicle.

Students who go to the writing center expect accurate feedback from the tutor and so they subject themselves and their work to another's criticisms.

In coming to a writing center for assistance, students must explain to a tutor
what they want and what they hope to acheive. In the course of this type of
interaction, the students make themselves vulnerable in opening themselves up to
understanding or misunderstanding, judgment or acceptance, approval or
disapproval. (Murphy, 298)

Because staff members at the writing center are fully aware of this, tutors must guard their actions so as not to offend or discourage the student from writing. It is the tutor's job to create an [environment/atmosphere...another word, anyone?!] wherein the student does not feel threatened nor intimidated. The writing center must be a place for talk, where students are encourged to engage "in conversation at as many points in the writing process as possible" (Truesdell).

[reword all this mumbo jumbo! == Through the course of this semester, I wanted to find out how a tutor's remarks affected a student's reaction. Through my findings, I wanted to know/come to a better understanding of the real meaning of constructive criticism within the realm of the writing center....I wanted to see how a tutor's verbal and nonverbal actions affected the student's perception of the tutoring session. --> The purpose of this research is to define and measure what constructive criticism is. In other words, I will conduct research to see what tutors say and how students receive it and react to it. ]

I observed tutoring sessions conducted in the Writing Center and rated the tutor's verbal and nonverbal actions in comparision to Penelope Brown and Steven Levinson's Politeness Theory. These actions were coorelated with either the directive or non-directive (minimalist) tutoring techniques. My strategy for taking notes during these observations was to write down what the tutor and students were saying verbatim and I analyzed everthing once the sessions were over in terms of the two variables. One way I measured a student's satisfaction was through their body language or verbal cues (ex: nodding, smiling, saying yes, etc.). I also asked the students to fill out the Student Feedback form to see if my observations of student satisfaction corresponded with what the student felt was a "good/another word please" session.

[describe the Politeness Scale (bald-on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness) & Directive/Non-directive Tutoring Techniques]

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=d7d78sg_0c7c333fq&hl=en

Blog #16 - Research Plan

Statement of Purpose
How does a tutor's remarks affect a student and how will the student react to it? Through these findings, what then is the definition of constructive criticism and how can that be measured?

Detailed Statement of Research Questions
I will observe tutoring session in the CAS writing center and rate tutor's various actions in comparison to Penelope Brown and Steven Levinson's Politeness Theory which can be found in Nash's essay. These findings will be in correlation with either the directive or nondirective (minimalistic) tutoring techniques. My strategy for taking notes during these observations is to write down what the tutor and student is saying verbatim. I will analyze everything once the sessions are over in terms of the politness scale and directive/nondirective tutoring techniques. Once way I can measure a student's satisfaction is through their body language or verbal cues (ex: nodding, saying yes, smiling, etc.). I will also use the Student Feedback form to see if students were satisfied or unsatisfied with the tutoring session. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to define and measure what constructive criticism is. In other words, I will conduct research to see what tutors say and how students receive it and react to it.

Information Gathered
I have yet to observe tutoring session in the CAS but based on the information that I found in my research, constructive criticism is considered good when given by teachers and it is written down on students' papers. Some students use this to improve their writing, while others take offence. This constructive criticism in turn discourages the student from writing, causing them to dislike it all together.

Plan for Gathering Information
For this project, I started with a broad collection of data and narrowed down the sources to the ones that are of importance to my topic of choice. From this broad list of sources, I have created my annotated bibliography. I will coode the notes that I have taken from these sources as well as notes that I will take from observations done in the CAS tutoring sessions. Another way I will collect data is through the Student Feedback forms which the students will fill out after observing their tutoring session with another tutor. I will also conduct tutoring sessions myself and take notes of these session as well. I will review these notes and organize them into a preliminary draft. I will go back and form, looking through my notes and observations, to create my final paper.

Blog #15 - Tutoring Observations

Post Blog 15 after you observe a session.

** I still have yet to observe a tutoring session and write this blog.

Blog #14 - Questions Regarding Research Project

I'm looking at the Google.Doc page with everyone's resources and there's so much there that it looks confusing! I just started adding my sources and I don't think I did it right :( I feel so behind because I only have 4 sources, 2 from the internet and 2 from the Longman Guide. I know what I need to research but the Writing Center Research Project page isn't helping at all. Whenever I type in something for the search, nothing really comes up. So my question is, can I use Google Scholar to look up some sources?

I still don't know what my research question is because I don't know if I'm looking for the right things. I have a lot of questions (as can be see on my Developing a Research Plan doc) but I still need to tweek it a little bit...or a lot!

So right now, I don't really have that many questions. I just need to narrow down my choice of what I really need to research and look for in my observations.

Blog #13 - "Real" First 5 Minutes

I have noticed that the "real" first 5 minutes that I've observed are very similar to what Newkirk labeled as an "ideal" way of conducting a writing conference. Because the past tutoring sessions that I've observed were among my classmates, there is no need to introduce ourselves to one another. We are comfortable working with one another that it's easy for us to voice our thoughts to the tutor and visa versa.

Newkirk believes that students should be given the opportunity to talk within the first few minutes of the conference. I have noticed this in the tutoring sessions that I've observed because the student is the first to explain why they are there and what they need help on. Because most of the tutors used minimalist techniques, there was no problem seeing the student take control of the session. The tutor asked questions that guided the student to understand the purpose/focus of the paper.

I think that my fellow classmates are doing a good job in tutoring their students because I've observed what Newkirk labeled as the "ideal" writing conference. I guess we're learning a lot during class (and from one another!) that it's hard to mess up and conduct a tutoring session like the first two examples in Newkirk's essay that "didn't work".

Blog #12 - CAS Tutoring Session

During our first tutoring session in the CAS Writing Center, none of us had students signed up to see us :( I guess that was okay because we got practice observing our classmates tutor in action. I've got to admit that it was a little chaotic at first seeing that it was only our first day there, but I'm glad we were able to get our feet wet, so to speak. I can't wait until next Monday when, hopefully, a real live student will come seeking for our help and guidance!

I was given the opportunity to observe two of my fellow classmates during our time there. I think it's safe to mention their names here since it was only practice but I don't want to risk it. I'll just say that I observed Kris (tutor) and Sarah (student) - real names have been altered. During my observation, I noticed that Kris used minimalistic techniques which seemed very effective for this session. He sat next to Sarah and only spoke when she needed ideas or had a question. Sarah had a pen in her hand and wrote on the paper while Kris sat there and watched her do the work. Sarah read the paper out loud so that the both of them could analyze and work on it together. There was not a lot of eye contact going on between them because most of the time was spent looking down at the paper. Whenever Sarah would explain something, she would talk with her hands moving around from side to side, which to many of us (including myself) is natural. Kris' comments were always positive and the session wasn't that long because Sarah only needed help with a small portion of her paper. I'm sure some of the tutoring sessions we will observe in the CAS will go like this because the students just want to go in to get help and leave. However, the student felt that she got the help that she needed so I'm guessing that that's all that matters.

Since the session was shorter than expected, Dr. Chandler decided to demonstrate how to tutor a student, so she tutored Sarah again. This time, I saw a great difference between her tutoring style and Kris'. The tutor did a lot of nodding and was very encouraging. Whenever the student would say something that contributed to the thesis statement, she would say, "Good. Now write that down." Whenever the student would say something about the paper, the tutor would restate it in the form of a question to make sure that she understood it and the information that was relayed to her by the student was correct. There was more eye contact that occured during this session than the first and again, positive feedback was given to the student - example, "That's a great title!"

At the end of the hour, I wasn't sure if I took the right notes and observed the proper elements of a tutoring session. I guess I didn't know if this would help me for my research paper, but since I'm not sure what I'm going to do for it, the notes were good enough. Unexperienced as we are at this point in time, we just need to go in with an open mind and see how it is. This is a learning process and I can't wait to see what will turn up next :)

Blog #11 - Possible Ideas for a Project

Listed below are three possible ideas for my research project:

1) During our class discussion on Wednesday, we talked about assumptions on how tutoring sessions in the CAS will be conducted. One assumption I came up with was on constructive criticism and how a student handles it. Face it...none of us want to be criticized but sometimes it needs to be done in order for us to learn and grow. It would be interesting to find out when students take offense when they are given constructive criticism about their writing. Will they take it personally and become offending by what the tutor has to say? Will they become defensive and feel that the tutor's words about their writing is an actual reflection of the person that they are? How and to what extent will the students express their offense, maybe through their words or body language? Will some appreciate the constructive criticism and use it to better their paper? How do men vs. women handle constructive criticism? These are but a few questions I have in mind for this topic and I'm really interested to find out more!

2) During one of our discussions in class, we talked about how people learn. Some examples of these are by memorization, repeating something in order to "get it", creating mnemonic devices, etc. It would be interesting to see what kind of learning styles are most popular with the students at Kean. Are the majority of us visual learners or do we need someone to break it down for us in order for us to "get it"? This in my opinion would be a good research topic but then you have to take into account what works for the tutor because most likely, that'll be the first strategy they will use to relay the message to the student. I guess more observation on body language and verbal exchanges will have to be focused more here.

3) I mentioned in my previous blog that it would be interesting to conduct research on effective techniques that will get younger students to want to learn and become better writers. Since our job as tutors is not to create better writing, I want to at least find out how to engage them long enough so that they at least care about it.

Looking at all three possible ideas, I'm leaning more towards #1. Why? I'm not quite sure...I guess we're going to have to wait and see :o)

Blog #10 - Possible Research Ideas

I have to admit that I've been falling behind on my blogs in this class. This past week has been CRAZY in my house so writing blogs and completing assignments have taken a back seat to life. Sorry guys! As soon as I get my life in order, which probably might be an eternity, so let me rephrase that or just delete it all together...I'll try to read everyone's wonderful blogs and make comments on them so that you get my opinion alongside with everyone else.

I've learned so much in this class that it's a little difficult to choose what I want to do my research on. Since Dr. Chandler mentioned that most of our students might be freshmen, I would like to do a study on how to properly tutor them or what we consider as younger learners. During our class discussion, we made note of the learning stereotypes between older people and those of our generation. Since younger learners are "tech savy" and seem to alway want the shortcut to the end product, and since our generation of students refuse to listen to anyone older than us because of course, we are definitely smarter than them (SO NOT TRUE!), I would like to conduct research on effective techniques that will get younger students to want to learn and become better writers. Since our job as tutors is not to create better writing, I want to at least find out how to engage them long enough so that they at least care about it.

I haven't really thought much about this since I've been so focused on not getting Lunsford's Garret Center and Storehouse Center concepts mixed up with everyone else so I need a little more time to think. Collaboration is something else that would be interesting to explore since I've never really seen it happen before. It would be great to see something on paper actually come to life!

This probably didn't answer the blog's question but that's what's on my mind right now. I'll have to look into this a lot more and maybe hear a little bit of everyone else's ideas so that I can properly formulate my own.

Blog #9 - Position on Minimalist Techniques

I believe that minimalist techniques should be used when the student seems like he/she understands what's going on. This means that the student is prepared with questions and has a focus on what he/she wants to accomplish during the session. Minimalist techniques should be used to get the student writing and basically when the tutor personally feels that the student can direct the flow of the session.

Teacher-centered approaches should be used when the student seems like he/she doesn't care, which sometimes include students that go to the tutoring center because they were forced by a professor to seek help there. These students are there because they just want to get things over with and get the answers so that they can leave. Tutors should step up to the plate and help direct the student in the right direction. The tutor needs to help the student brainstorm possible ideas on how to tackle the problem. During this session, the tutor will get the student to do some writing and will ask the questions that will get the student motivated to work and make his/her paper better.

Looking at my personality, I'm more of a person that likes to tell people what to do, but then again, I get tired of that after a few minutes and then I want the person to think for themselves,. This pretty much means that I stand in the middle of the minimalist and teacher-centered techniques. It all depends on the student's behavior and their desire to become better writers. I know we shouldn't judge people by their cover but sometimes we have to; we have to have a feel for what kind of student they are in order to adjust ourselves to better help them during our tutoring sessions.

Blog #8 - Checklist

Living in this country, we are privileged to be surrounded by a diverse group of people. We have the opportunity to learn about different cultures and the wonderful people that are raised by them. As tutors, we will meet these people, but because of what society has "labeled" them, we can't help but have certain beliefs about them, even if we try not to think about it. As tutors, it is our responsibility to respect everyone and give equal attention to those that are there in need of our help. With that said, here's a few pointers that I will make for myself in order to put on my best face and give my all when it comes to helping my students:

- leave all stereotypes outside! there's no room for them in the tutoring center
- treat everyone with respect
- encourage them at all times
- watch their body language to see if they are confused or if they "get it"
- if they do "get it", ask them to say it back in their own words so that I know they actually got it :o)
- if they do "get it", do an activity with the student in order for them to apply what it is that they've learned
- try to find the good everyone's work
- ask them how they study for tests and take notes in class; this will help the tutor get an idea of how they learn and gather information, either through repetition, mnomonic devises, seeing an example first, etc.
- if the student feels overwhelmed, break down the assignment into "digestable chunks" so that the job will get done little by little
- LISTEN! Genuinely care about what the student has to say and do your best to be of assistance to everyone

Blog #7 - Features of Effective Tutoring

Based on my experiences in class, I believe that one of the most important features of an effective tutoring session is that a tutor's job is to produce better writers, not better writing (North). I enjoyed the scenario that Brooks wrote about in his essay entited "Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work" wherein he basically says that a tutor should not be the editor. Even though it may be tempting at times for a tutor to just find the errors in the paper and correct it, or just give information that may seem helpful to make the paper better, being the editor will do "little service" to the student.

I agree with Brooks when he said that students should "own" their paper and take full responsibility for it. The student should do most, if not all, of the work during a tutoring session as well as do most of the talking. This is where North comes into play when he says that talking is an essential part of a tutoring session. There should be a constant flow of conversation going on between the student and tutor in order for ideas to be passed around that collaboration (Lunsford) can take place.

I think that it is important for the tutor to be encouraging and provide positive feedback. Just like what Brooks mentioned in his essay, tutors should make every effot to "find something nice to say about every paper, no matter how hard you have to search".

As I prepare to enter the writing center to become a peer tutor, I would like to improve on all of the important features of a tutoring session. I believe that with added experience, I will be able to develop my skills in order to be a good tutor and not an editor. As with a previous tutoring session I had with Stephanie, I need to learn to make the student do most of the talking and all of the work.

Blog #6 - Writing Center Philosophy (revised)

As I look over my Writing Center Philosophy from my previous blog, I stand by my beliefs in that the ideal writing center should be a combination of the Garret and Burkean Parlor centers. Below are my reasons why I think it should be this way (which I pretty much just copied from my previous blog).

I believe that knowledge is both interior, like the Garret Center, and exterior, like the Storehouse Center. I believe that in order for knowledge to be interior or to be our own, we need to search externally by looking elsewhere and learning from other people. Tutors and teachers should help direct the students in order for them to find that knowledge and make it their own. Students, on the other hand, should not be sponges absorbing everything that the tutor is telling them. Instead, students should use this information or knowledge as a guide and change it up a bit to make it personal.

Everyone in the writing center should work together like the Burkean Parlor Center and strive to have a collaborative environment. The writing center should be a friendly place where students do not feel intimidated that their writing might not be good enough. Staff members should be welcoming and should not discriminate against anyone. This place should also have enough staff members available at all times so that if students want to walk in and ask for help, tutors and teachers will be there. Tutors should be knowledgeable in the content in which they will help the students with. If everyone in this writing center will work collaboratively, I believe that tutors should also know the content that the students need to research or are working with in order to provide better guidance and assistance to those that they are helping.

As I look over my philosophy, I know that this is a bit idealistic and maybe not so realistic. During our discussions in class, we learned that most students do not have the time nor the patience to spend a great amount of time working on their papers. Most of them go to the writing center because it is required by the professor or they just want a quick fix so that they'll get a better grade on the paper. According to North's "The Idea of a Writing Center", he believes that the writing center should be a place where writers who are passionate about their writing go for help; in other words, people that should go to the writing center are those that are genuinely interested in talking about their writing. It would be great if everyone that goes to the writing center is passionate about their writing, but most students are not. That is why I believe tutors should not only know the content that they are helping their students with, but should be knowledgeable in the strategies needed to motivate students to write and become better writers. Tutors should find ways to engage the student in their own writing so that they can fulfill North's idea of an ideal writing center where people talk about their writing. When people talk and share ideas, collaboration takes place which is what I envision as the perfect writing center.

Blog #5 - Tutoring Session w/ Stephanie

During class last Wednesday, Stephanie and I took turns being the student and tutor. While I was the tutor, the two tutoring strategies that I used were "creating a headline or bumper sticker" with regards to the thesis/focus of her paper, and "mapping" for the developmental part of the paper. Since she had a rough draft but no main focus, I asked Stephanie to tell me what she wanted her paper to be about; in other words, what she got out of the Lunsford reading that she would like to respond to. I asked her to read her rough draft out loud so that we could get a better idea of where she wanted to go. Based on Stephanie's response to what she wanted her paper to be about, we used the "bumper sticker" approach in order to create a headline or focus. The one I came up with was "It Works, But Does It Really Work?" with regards to collaboration in the writing center. Stephanie's bumper sticker was "Collaboration - To Be Used But Not Abused". I liked her bumper sticker and so we went with that for the focus - that her paper will state why she agrees with Lunsford and the idea of collaboration, along with her experiences in the past as to why collaboration should be used cautiously in certain situations because tutors might misuse it as a way to be the "boss" of the student rather than a helper. From there, we kind of used the "mapping" approach when I asked her to look over her paper one more time to pick out certain parts that she could use in her final draft. She used different colored pens to see what information from the draft she could keep and what she could throw out.

When our time was up, Dr. Chandler asked a very important question: who did the most talking? I realized that Stephanie and I had an equal amount of talk time, but was it appropriate for this session? This is something that I need to always keep in mind when I conduct tutoring sessions - that the student should always do most of the talking.

Now that it was Stephanie's turn to be the tutor, she used the "matrices" and "read aloud" strategies to help me with my paper. When I read it out loud, I was able to catch my own mistakes and fix it immediately. Even though I already had an idea of what I wanted my paper to be about, Stephanie helped me with my focus by giving a lot of encouragement and positive feedback to reinforce the decision of my topic of choice. With regards to the matricies strategy, we didn't really go along with what the book told us to do. Instead, Stephanie kind of used the "coloring" method by telling me to use two different colored pens and draw brackets around information that I would keep for my final paper and use a different color to see information that I no longer needed. By having the different colors and by putting them into brackets, I was about to see more clearly what information I could work with for my final paper.

During this session, I realized that as the student, I did most of the talking which is supposed to happen. I learned that as a tutor, you must master different strategies that can be easily accessible when a student needs help. Since all students' learning styles are different, the tutor must learn to think on her toes and use strategies that are effective and can really help the student. A lot of encouragement is needed to help the student see the greatness of their paper, however, it should be positive feedback that will not crush their spirits but give them hope that they will produce good papers and someday become good writers too.

Blog #4 - Tutoring Session w/ Vanessa

I really enjoyed my tutoring session with Vanessa and I felt that I learned a lot as the student while observing her acted as the tutor. During our session, Vanessa asked me to make a list of main ideas from the Lunsford reading that I thought were important and could help me in creating my response essay. She asked me to narrow down my choices to the one that I felt most comfortable writing with, the one main idea that I either totally agreed or disagreed with. When I finally decided to write my response essay on "collaboration and why it works", Vanessa directed me to do the clustering method wherein I wrote the main idea in the middle of the page and circled it, then wrote ideas relating to that idea around it, creating a web. She asked me to do the same method for the "cons of collaboration" in order to see the other side of the argument. We looked at both clustered webs and decided to stick with "collaboration and why it works" since it had the most information out of the two which related to their respective main ideas.

By the end of the the tutoring session, I had a "battle plan", if you will, on how I was going to tackle this task of writing my response essay - I will first summarize why collaboration works and then respond by giving reasons on why I agree with Lunsford.

As the tutor, I felt that Vanessa conducted this session as if she was showing me a picture. We both looked at this picture and dug/looked closely at it in order to find the details that made this picture so important. She did not force me to begin writing my paper during the session; instead, she paved the way in order for me to find my focus, planning out the path that I was going to take in writing my essay, so that at home, when she's not there to help me, I'll know exactly what to do and hopefully, get the job done right.

Blog #3 - My Writing Center Philosophy

Unfortunately, I missed class on Wednesday, September 17, so I wasn't able to be a part of the class discussion concerning this topic. However, if I were to draw on my past experiences attending tutoring sessions in the CAS and from the readings that we've been doing in class, my Writing Center Philosophy would be a combination of the Garret and Burkean Parlor Centers that were coined by Andrea Lunsford.

I believe that knowledge is both interior, like the Garret Center, and exterior, like the Storehouse Center. I believe that in order for knowledge to be interior or to be our own, we need to search externally by looking elsewhere and learning from other people. Tutors and teachers should help direct the students in order for them to find that knowledge and make it their own. Students, on the other hand, should not be sponges absorbing everything that the tutor is telling them. Instead, students should use this information or knowledge as a guide and change it up a bit to make it personal.

Everyone in the writing center should work together like the Burkean Parlor Center and strive to have a collaborative environment. The writing center should be a friendly place where students do not feel intimidated that their writing might not be good enough. Staff members should be welcoming and should not discriminate against anyone. This place should also have enough staff members available at all times so that if students want to walk in and ask for help, tutors and teachers will be there. Tutors should be knowledgeable in the content in which they will help the students with. If everyone in this writing center will work collaboratively, I believe that tutors should also know the content that the students need to research or are working with in order to provide better guidance and assistance to those that they are helping.

Blog #2 - Process for Creating Lunsford Summary

In order to fully understand what Lunsford was talking about in her piece entitled "Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center", I had to reread it over a second time. I felt that her writing was very confusing because her definitions of each Center was unclear. She also didn't give a definite answer as to which side she was for - either Storehouse, Garret, or Burkean Parlor.She said that it would be ideal to have a Burkean Parlor center which was kind of like the Storehouse Center but since all three possessed similarities, it was hard to see what made them different.

The first time reading through, I highlighted key ideas that I thought would be important in creating my summary. I then wrote down in my journal all of the key ideas that I highlighted in order to see it more clearly. I placed each idea under the three categories named after each center which helped me understand what each one was all about. As I wrote the summary, I put everything in my own words using her main ideas as my guide.

Blog #1 - Response to First Reading

Research has shown that peer tutoring is effective for all age groups. It can help improve the skills and knowledge of the person being tutored, as well as the tutor herself. I learned through the readings that one-on-one conferences is as effective as traditional lecture classes because it creates in the student a positive attitude towards writing.

There are certain features that should be found in a person in order for them to qualify as a good tutor. Through our class discussion, we learned that tutors should be genuinely interested in helping the students succeed and improve in their writing. Tutors should offer feedback and encouragement so that the student will be inspired to finish what he/she started.

There are certain things that tutors should not be found doing, one of which is offering empty flattery. Offering too much praise creates doubt and suspicious in the student, causing them to wonder if their writing is really all that you're making it out to be. A tutor should not point out all the flaws in a student's writing because it will discourage them from improving on their writing.

What surprised me the most about the "don'ts" of tutoring is that some act as a therapist. There are times when tutors become overly involved in the student's writing that they cross the line. This should not happen; instead, tutors should focus on what's written and help the student improve and expand on what's there.

test test...1...2...3

first blog :o)