Case study - José
For this case study I will write about one of the students that made a habit of coming to the writing center. We'll call her Casey. This student was majoring in Spanish, if I remember correctly, but had at the same time important difficulties in understanding and writing in the language. This should point to a sort of inner discrepancy in the student's experience of her academic life, but I was, of course, in no position to recommend more careful consideration on this matter. It seems evident that she should focus on a different major.
Casey came a total of 4 or 5 times for help with either reading a text that she had been assigned, or with the writing of an assignment related to a text. Both of these were somewhat challenging, because the student seemed to be uninvested in the work, and to want it done for her. She brought in the letters of Cortés, a key text in colonial literature, with which I was not fully acquainted at the time. Furthermore, she didn't have any specific questions about the piece. She seemed simply to want to get the main ideas in order to produce a written assignment. Help with reading is, of course, part of what we are geared towards in the spanish writing center. We also help with, say, speaking, or reviewing key grammar or rhetorical points. So I helped the student, trying to guide her towards comprehension, instead of simply telling her what the text was about, or what to write in her paper. Notwithstanding, she cleverly made a point of something I said in conversation with her and used it as the main argument for her work.
I think it is expected to encounter some students of this sort. Casey was on the whole empathetic, and she seemed to understand she had some difficulty with the material. She expressed gratitude and, as I said, returned several times. I am not sure I could have been much more effective in terms of pedagogical strategy than I was. By this I mean that Casey was not at a stage in her academic performance where she would try to refine her arguments and embellish her phrases, but that she was merely attempting to meet more or less minimum requirements. And that is also ok, I think, and it seems to me I was able to help her.
Casey came a total of 4 or 5 times for help with either reading a text that she had been assigned, or with the writing of an assignment related to a text. Both of these were somewhat challenging, because the student seemed to be uninvested in the work, and to want it done for her. She brought in the letters of Cortés, a key text in colonial literature, with which I was not fully acquainted at the time. Furthermore, she didn't have any specific questions about the piece. She seemed simply to want to get the main ideas in order to produce a written assignment. Help with reading is, of course, part of what we are geared towards in the spanish writing center. We also help with, say, speaking, or reviewing key grammar or rhetorical points. So I helped the student, trying to guide her towards comprehension, instead of simply telling her what the text was about, or what to write in her paper. Notwithstanding, she cleverly made a point of something I said in conversation with her and used it as the main argument for her work.
I think it is expected to encounter some students of this sort. Casey was on the whole empathetic, and she seemed to understand she had some difficulty with the material. She expressed gratitude and, as I said, returned several times. I am not sure I could have been much more effective in terms of pedagogical strategy than I was. By this I mean that Casey was not at a stage in her academic performance where she would try to refine her arguments and embellish her phrases, but that she was merely attempting to meet more or less minimum requirements. And that is also ok, I think, and it seems to me I was able to help her.
I'm glad Casey came back so many times. It would be good to know what her goals were as a Spanish major. How does she want to use Spanish in her career and life? I'm guessing that Cortes's old-fashioned Spanish and maybe even his colonialist attitude were getting in the way of her goals maybe just to communicate with Spanish speakers. What sort of reading strategies was she using? When and how much was she looking up words (which can become a full-time job)? Was the text annotated?
ReplyDeleteAcademic and literary reading in a foreign language is definitely the hardest of the four skills, listening, second. That is receptive skills turn out to be more difficult than production skills; with writing and speaking, you only express using language you know and you have more control. With reading and listening you cannot regulate the language level of the author or your interlocutor.
When I was a Spanish major in college I found it challenging to read older texts like Don Quixote. Even contemporary novels that used a lot of dialect stumped me. I remember giving up on the Guatemalan novel Senior (sic) Presidente and withdrawing from my independent study with a much beloved professor. It was one of the low points of my college career because normally I'm not a quitter.
Hi Jose,
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting case study--your student has some overlap with one of mine who is insecure in her writing skills and tries to scribble down everything I say, even though my style is substantially different from hers. It's curious that she is un-invested with her class, but like Carol, I remember having a course in my undergrad major where I knew it was important and useful but lacked motivation because the language of the readings (Old English) seemed imposing. I don't think this is possible for Cortes's letters, unless I'm wrong and this resource is out there, but for some other texts I wonder if there could potentially be online summaries of the text for her to familiarize herself with the material and give her some confidence going into it. It sounds like you were very supportive of her.