Teaching in a Writing Center Spring 2020

Hi everyone! Here is my case study: From English to Spanish Since I don’t have students that I work with throughout the semester, I have decided to write about one student that I worked a few times in the semester. Let’s call her Lily. I am actually familiar with Lily because I was her TA during my first year teaching at the University of Iowa. Back then, I taught an intermediate level course. When I was her TA, I remember that she was a good student who would participate often in class and does her online assignments regularly. Sure, her Spanish was not perfect, but it was above average; I also remember that she wants to minor in Spanish. When she made an appointment at the center, I discovered she is in the writing class (2000 level) that I am teaching now, but with another TA. So, I was familiar with the class material and the assignments that she had to do. When Lily came to see me, she wanted to work on her draft for a chapter essay that was about 600 words. Wh

Hi Class: Here are Ashlyn's Case Studies Ashlyn Kershner RHET 5375 May 2020 Case Study: Two Similar Students             For this case study, I’d actually like to discuss both of the students I have been working with each week. The reasons for this are that both students bring similar problems and strengths to the table, both are in the same program (albeit doing rather different research), both are working on projects of a similar scale and for similar purposes, and both have had very similar issues come up with regards to their processes. Both, also, are international students bringing some of the writing struggles we’ve talked about at length to the table: confusions about tense, number, pronouns, and occasionally general word choice. However, both are PhD students who have had many years of figuring out such translation issues, such that they often catch them even before I do. Since both of these students are working on similar (in terms of scale and general p

"Where academic writing requires intricate argumentation, creative writing demands risk and finesse." I felt that this conclusive statement to Lorraine's story well-encompassed the struggle I see in both my rhetoric students and writing center students when it comes to individual strengths and weaknesses in specific writing genres. I believe that if I were to instill an awareness of this quote's idea deeper into my teaching mindset, it would help inform my methods during tutoring. For example, I have a student in my rhetoric class who is phenomenal at filing out a research paper outline to great detail. But any creative elements of the paper itself -- from including personal anecdotes in a conclusion paragraph to choosing an original topic to write on -- is incredibly overwhelming to her. She has even requested office hours for every paper or speech topic selection because she feels crippled by, what I can now identify as the "risk and finesse" that cre

Hello! I know I have already posted once for this week, but I believe I am missing a post, and thought it wouldn't hurt either way to do another one! I have taken writing classes in other languages - Spanish, for example - but never in a language so convoluted. Having to consider each word for tense, gender, number, declension, or conjugation is bad enough, but when you start to look at phrases, sentences, and finally style, it becomes so incredibly dense as to be almost impossible. Trying to write a speech in the style of Cicero or a narrative in the style of Livy is impossible if you cannot work through your first tricky clause. You can't consider the bigger picture, or learn anything from your work, if you spend all your time fighting through each sentence. In other words, if you can't see the forest for the trees, you certainly can't learn anything from observing the forest (I know it's a tortured metaphor, go with me - it's the Livy).  I've been thi

I have said before, and I will say again, that a problem with academia in general is its division of interest and expertise into the most specific niche fields. This implies that a person has only one interest or one thing they are good at and can speak to: as we all know, this is absolutely not the case. We don't see many classics students in the writing center, aside from the occasional reluctant student writing for a gen-ed mythology class. I therefore almost never end up tutoring in my own field. But I have had the opportunity to read papers in biology, public health, poetry, sociology, nursing, and film studies. My interests and breadth of knowledge certainly don't stop at the fall of the Roman empire, and I have really enjoyed getting to interact with disciplines and themes I would never otherwise be reading. This doesn't mean that I feel 100% comfortable with every student's field or the specific problems that come with them. I do, however, really like having

Working with students who are not in my field, and this is mostly the case since I study Spanish Literature, has been challenging and rewarding at the same time. This is particularly true when students are in Spanish classes that are specific to their majors, such as business Spanish. I once had a student who came in with his assignment, which was creating a mock website for his company. Having no business background at all, I struggled a little with the instructions and different vocabulary that he had to use because the were quite technical. However, I think the overall session went well as I was able to help with things that are more universal, such as the organization of sentences and grammar issues. I was actually able to learn a great deal from that student about a field that I was not familiar with. The same issue happened when a student brought in his resume because he wanted to apply for an internship in Spain; his major was engineering. He had his resume in Spanish, but sin