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".