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icarusSo law is over.
My participation helped me. Time missed (while trying to do homework/prep for classes that I didn't have time to do because of work) hurt me.
This should have been an easy A.
Fuck.
That's it. I'm not doing more than 8 hours a week of tutoring next quarter. 15 hours a week was too much. 10 and a half hours was too much.
This isn't shelving books, this is busting my ass trying to cram an hour's worth of teaching into half an hour.
These kids who come to me are really struggling. They've passed their ESL classes, but their essays are still incomprehensible because they haven't the practice for those lessons to sink in. I can't tell you how many essays I've been handed where the English 101 teacher wrote:
"I'm stopping here, because I can't understand you at all. Please contact the tutoring office and bring your essay back to me, signed by a tutor."
And I have half an hour for each student, to show them verb agreement and make them fix their paper, catching the tense shifts themselves. To see if the lightbulb is going on.
Then move on to explain punctuation rules, and having them correct the repeated errors (usually they sort of know it, but it's not habit yet), and then try to work in some composition instruction as well, say, how to integrate quotes.
The assignments that would be easy for an American - hell, a Canadian - often have cultural references that make them meaningless to these kids. How was a Vietnamese girl was supposed to know that M*A*S*H was a TV show and not, say, a poem, (therefore italicized instead of put "in quotes") with no context?
I have it down to a system.
1 - I ask them what the assignment was (make sure they did an argument essay and not just a personal essay), and when it's due (no sweeping changes if it's due in 20 minutes).
2 - Then I pull out a sheet of paper, speed read their essay, putting dots under the errors so I can find it, but not correcting or indicating what the error is (so I can force them to see it).
On the sheet of paper off to the side I write:
Verb tense - and a hash mark for each occurance of verb tense issues
Punctuation - and a mark for each issue
Plurals - more hash marks
Articles - more little marks
Prepositions I just correct, because they're largely idiomatic
This takes five-seven minutes.
3 - Then we work through the paper:
Verb tense issues are the most common. I point out the sentence, and I ask "when is this happening again?" and remind them the tenses have to match within a paragraph. Then I have them quickly correct each verb. "Past tense of bring is...?" "Brought - oh! I brought, not I bring."
For punctuation I have them read the sentence out loud. They usually breathe and punctuate it correctly out loud. "Ah. You paused there, yes?" "Oh. A comma?" "Yes." More obscure comma rules I explain.
4 - Once we've hit the main grammatical issues, I dig into the compositional work. I don't want their English skills keeping them from learning ENG 101 or 102. This also helps them feel like they're not lagging, they are still learning even their English isn't quite there.
I end up letting a lot of things go, odd stilted phrases, verbs used in an odd way, etc., because I don't want them to feel bad and lose confidence. That's more important than getting it 100% right.
When I'm in the downstairs office it's better, because I have a full hour with each student, and I have the same students throughout the quarter. The system upstairs is lousy for teaching. Just lousy.
I come home spent. Check my email. Speed-read my homework and cram a writing assignment in an hour if I can. Go to class. Come home. Crash.
It's totally screwed up my grades. And I can't quit. I can get the hours cut back though. But I'm committed to 300 tutoring hours between now and November.
Whew.
My participation helped me. Time missed (while trying to do homework/prep for classes that I didn't have time to do because of work) hurt me.
This should have been an easy A.
Fuck.
That's it. I'm not doing more than 8 hours a week of tutoring next quarter. 15 hours a week was too much. 10 and a half hours was too much.
This isn't shelving books, this is busting my ass trying to cram an hour's worth of teaching into half an hour.
These kids who come to me are really struggling. They've passed their ESL classes, but their essays are still incomprehensible because they haven't the practice for those lessons to sink in. I can't tell you how many essays I've been handed where the English 101 teacher wrote:
"I'm stopping here, because I can't understand you at all. Please contact the tutoring office and bring your essay back to me, signed by a tutor."
And I have half an hour for each student, to show them verb agreement and make them fix their paper, catching the tense shifts themselves. To see if the lightbulb is going on.
Then move on to explain punctuation rules, and having them correct the repeated errors (usually they sort of know it, but it's not habit yet), and then try to work in some composition instruction as well, say, how to integrate quotes.
The assignments that would be easy for an American - hell, a Canadian - often have cultural references that make them meaningless to these kids. How was a Vietnamese girl was supposed to know that M*A*S*H was a TV show and not, say, a poem, (therefore italicized instead of put "in quotes") with no context?
I have it down to a system.
1 - I ask them what the assignment was (make sure they did an argument essay and not just a personal essay), and when it's due (no sweeping changes if it's due in 20 minutes).
2 - Then I pull out a sheet of paper, speed read their essay, putting dots under the errors so I can find it, but not correcting or indicating what the error is (so I can force them to see it).
On the sheet of paper off to the side I write:
Verb tense - and a hash mark for each occurance of verb tense issues
Punctuation - and a mark for each issue
Plurals - more hash marks
Articles - more little marks
Prepositions I just correct, because they're largely idiomatic
This takes five-seven minutes.
3 - Then we work through the paper:
Verb tense issues are the most common. I point out the sentence, and I ask "when is this happening again?" and remind them the tenses have to match within a paragraph. Then I have them quickly correct each verb. "Past tense of bring is...?" "Brought - oh! I brought, not I bring."
For punctuation I have them read the sentence out loud. They usually breathe and punctuate it correctly out loud. "Ah. You paused there, yes?" "Oh. A comma?" "Yes." More obscure comma rules I explain.
4 - Once we've hit the main grammatical issues, I dig into the compositional work. I don't want their English skills keeping them from learning ENG 101 or 102. This also helps them feel like they're not lagging, they are still learning even their English isn't quite there.
I end up letting a lot of things go, odd stilted phrases, verbs used in an odd way, etc., because I don't want them to feel bad and lose confidence. That's more important than getting it 100% right.
When I'm in the downstairs office it's better, because I have a full hour with each student, and I have the same students throughout the quarter. The system upstairs is lousy for teaching. Just lousy.
I come home spent. Check my email. Speed-read my homework and cram a writing assignment in an hour if I can. Go to class. Come home. Crash.
It's totally screwed up my grades. And I can't quit. I can get the hours cut back though. But I'm committed to 300 tutoring hours between now and November.
Whew.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 09:57 pm (UTC)And it's ironic, because just the other day in a class we were discussing the TOEFL, and a bunch of people took it into their heads that it was unfair for universities to demand a TOEFL score of an international student that a native speaker might have trouble attaining. It never occured to them that a university might itself and its potential students to be better safe than sorry.
Oh, and I feel you on the hours, though it wasn't so bad for me because I'm at a residential college, so no commute, and part of it was on weekends.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 10:27 pm (UTC)They warned me that we have 50 tutors, and roughly 2,00 - 2,500 people pouring through there each quarter. Working part-time, I've had about 40-50 students.
Doing it for a nonnative speaker...I had enough trouble beta-reading fanfic for a German speaker. I would go insane doing your job.
I'm trained for it. I've taken Laubach's and the Washington State Refugee training for ESL teachers.
And it's ironic, because just the other day in a class we were discussing the TOEFL, and a bunch of people took it into their heads that it was unfair for universities to demand a TOEFL score of an international student that a native speaker might have trouble attaining.
The thing is that the kind of mistake a native speaker makes is very different from the type a non-native speaker makes. We'll be too casual, or misplace a comma. They'll make a mistake that results in a complete change of meaning.
Icarus