Case Study - Callie
For this study, I will be referring to my student as "B."
B's case is one which I have discussed in class before: certainly, she's my most challenging tutee, through no fault of her own. From day one, B has know exactly what she wanted from me, regardless of whether or not that vision fit entirely with my own. She is a PhD student, in mid-dissertation, and hyper aware of her own needs, concerns, and disinterests. Initially, we struggled a lot. B essentially wanted a copyeditor, someone to go through her writing and check for commas, run-on sentences, and paragraph breaks. It became evident, however, that there were deeper language and grammar issues that were unresolved, and which needed to be addressed before we could move on to the nitty-gritty, so to speak.
B's research deals with the largely unstudied population of women in sub-Saharan Africa, a topic close to her heart. To the best of my (limited) understanding, she is studying the prevalence of lower-back and hip problems among rural women who perform domestic chores like water-carrying. From reading her work, I have gathered that this has never been addressed, despite being a major public health concern. Her research and dissertation are almost inextricably linked to her own life, and yet we discuss almost nothing of it. She is both open about her background and very reticent about herself personally. B is from Nigeria, and I have gathered that most of her family still lives there. She has expressed, in our few forays into personal experience, that she grew up poor and in a very rural community. She came to Iowa "because it was new," and is perpetually anxious about funding and grants and teaching appointments in order to keep herself here. We have worked together on several grant applications, fellowship cover letters, and research proposals.
Our largest pedagogical issue has been the language barrier. We each speak three languages: how unfortunate that none of them overlap! B's first language is Yorubo, a common tongue in Nigeria. She also speaks French and English. While we can understand each other fine in conversations about our weekends or the weather, problems have emerged in communicating about grammar points or content questions. B's dissertation deals with extremely complex socio-medical issues, and often uses terms or concepts about which I have no understanding. This is made exponentially more difficult by the pre-existing language barrier. It often seems like we are speaking two different languages, English and Medicine, and that neither of us are fluent in both. Nevertheless, we do our best!
B is extremely capable with regards to structure and subject. She can bang out an organized research proposal with eight different sections and methods in as much time as it takes me to collect my thoughts. She has very clear points, and can cite her sources like nobody's business. It's very impressive. However, because she is so efficient and knows exactly what she's saying, her point is often lost on the average reader. This is due partially to the second-language burden, partially to the very technical nature of the writing, and partially to the simple fact that she has a tendency to use four words when one will do. For example:
B's case is one which I have discussed in class before: certainly, she's my most challenging tutee, through no fault of her own. From day one, B has know exactly what she wanted from me, regardless of whether or not that vision fit entirely with my own. She is a PhD student, in mid-dissertation, and hyper aware of her own needs, concerns, and disinterests. Initially, we struggled a lot. B essentially wanted a copyeditor, someone to go through her writing and check for commas, run-on sentences, and paragraph breaks. It became evident, however, that there were deeper language and grammar issues that were unresolved, and which needed to be addressed before we could move on to the nitty-gritty, so to speak.
B's research deals with the largely unstudied population of women in sub-Saharan Africa, a topic close to her heart. To the best of my (limited) understanding, she is studying the prevalence of lower-back and hip problems among rural women who perform domestic chores like water-carrying. From reading her work, I have gathered that this has never been addressed, despite being a major public health concern. Her research and dissertation are almost inextricably linked to her own life, and yet we discuss almost nothing of it. She is both open about her background and very reticent about herself personally. B is from Nigeria, and I have gathered that most of her family still lives there. She has expressed, in our few forays into personal experience, that she grew up poor and in a very rural community. She came to Iowa "because it was new," and is perpetually anxious about funding and grants and teaching appointments in order to keep herself here. We have worked together on several grant applications, fellowship cover letters, and research proposals.
Our largest pedagogical issue has been the language barrier. We each speak three languages: how unfortunate that none of them overlap! B's first language is Yorubo, a common tongue in Nigeria. She also speaks French and English. While we can understand each other fine in conversations about our weekends or the weather, problems have emerged in communicating about grammar points or content questions. B's dissertation deals with extremely complex socio-medical issues, and often uses terms or concepts about which I have no understanding. This is made exponentially more difficult by the pre-existing language barrier. It often seems like we are speaking two different languages, English and Medicine, and that neither of us are fluent in both. Nevertheless, we do our best!
B is extremely capable with regards to structure and subject. She can bang out an organized research proposal with eight different sections and methods in as much time as it takes me to collect my thoughts. She has very clear points, and can cite her sources like nobody's business. It's very impressive. However, because she is so efficient and knows exactly what she's saying, her point is often lost on the average reader. This is due partially to the second-language burden, partially to the very technical nature of the writing, and partially to the simple fact that she has a tendency to use four words when one will do. For example:
"Since every woman in this study is expected to have some level of social and psychological resilience, it is important to use cluster analysis to examine the co-occurrence of multiple resilient factors and assess the unique clusters of resilient factors (for example; high self-efficacy, spirituality, and family cohesion) among women in urban and rural households, instead of simply aggregating resilient scores [43, 44]. This study is methodologically innovative in the formation of a composite resilient scale to be adapted from existing resilience scales and use of cluster analytical method to identifying resilience among poor women performing domestic work in LMICs."
Notwithstanding the ridiculously high degree of technical language (which all goes right over my head), B's wordiness, grammatical inconsistencies, and long sentence structures are evident. We have been combatting this largely by reading out loud: I think it is often much easier for B to identify problems when she can hear them. It also helps me. I have a very difficult time reading through full-length papers written with this technical language, so slowing down and hearing it spoken can be really beneficial. I think having to explain basic principles to me also helps B work out how to explain them in her paper, although sometimes we both have to accept that it's just not going to work in my classist brain, and move on.
If anyone has advice on working with a student who is writing in such a niche field, I welcome feedback! Particularly, anyone who has worked with second-language students in this technical situation: how do you go about deciding what of the writing is confusing due to language issues, and what is simply very technical language? Thanks!!
Let me take a stab at understanding B's paragraph. She seems to be writing about resilience to lower back and hip problems (I've got them too--not from carrying heavy loads, but from knee surgery recovery, so I can relate), so I think she means resilience factors, not resilient factors. There seem to be two traditional statistical methods for researching resilience--clusters of factors as in cluster analysis vs. adding up resilience scores (not resilient scores) on maybe resilience tests? She is arguing that her method, a third one, is a significant contribution to the field because it combines the advantages of the other two? What are LMICs?
ReplyDeleteI don't think you need to understand cluster analysis or know how to do it in order to understand the basics of her project--why are some Nigerian women water-carriers more resilient to pain than others? What factors make the ones that don't suffer and complain resilient? Spirituality/religious beliefs? Family support? She should be able to explain it to you both orally and in writing--that's part of being a grad student these days, part of writing and defending a successful dissertation. And everyone has to have a public abstract for their dissertation. Maybe ask her to try diagramming her methods and results? Does she have results yet or is she at the prospectus stage?
I have a similar experience with my PHD student in the sense that her arrival in our first meeting came with her expectation that I was going to simply serve as an advanced spellcheck and grammar editor for her papers and dissertation. She even showed up sometimes with a chapter from a grammar book and wanted me to teach it to her. I grew to appreciate the structure she brought in those circumstances, but I can relate to the stress that comes with working to guide a student into the better balance of what is meant to be the growth-mindset roles between a writing center tutor and tutee. Stunks' The Elements of Style book did wonders for us, as it crossed the barrier from their field's jargon and jumped right into universal grammar and technical mistakes that came up in her work. I highly suggest recommending the book to her (its only 60ish pages and probably less that $10 on Amazon) especially as she goes on to summer!
ReplyDeleteHi Callie,
ReplyDeleteFirst, it sounds like you are doing your best and have her interests at heart; I can appreciate the frustration of a scenario where no one has done anything wrong but a common ground cannot be reached, somehow. I like that you are having her read aloud--that sounds effective! It's often my strategy to have the student explain concepts to me, but I can see how that could have limitations. I would second Marisa on providing her with an outside resource and making it clear that you are still here to help but that this is an opportunity for her to develop her writing for the future.