Blog # 19

Literature Review:
Sara Cushing Weigle and Gayle Newton state that the role of a tutor plays is highly dependent upon context and is negotiated with every tutorial. In order for successful tutoring sessions, tutors have to find and provide a suitable role as a tutor and sometimes act as teacher in a way especially if the student is not familiar with a category such as grammar techniques etc… They also argue that specifies the contextual factors that influence this negotiation of the tutor role contributes to the perceived negotiation and how the negotiation of the tutor roles contributes to the perceived success of a tutoring sessions.
Successful roles can vary on how a particular session went. However, interactions within tutorial systems can affect each session based on variables such as gender personality and language background can affect interactions within tutorial systems, but these are only a few of the many potential variables that could influence how tutors and tutees perceive the tutor’s role. However, successful sessions varying based on sometimes the location of where the tutoring actually takes place.
Method
Over the course of about approximately four weeks, I have observed various session and various case studies used to investigate student/tutor pairs because I was interested in analyzing when there is an ESL student who sets the agenda and who takes the control of the coaching. When I had tutored students as a tutor some of the questions that I had considered when preparing my data were the following questions: Does the tutor use low order concerns with ESL students? Who takes control of the coaching and how that might affect both the student and the tutor? Does the student take control in the beginning of the session or does the tutor have to set the agenda? What is said by the tutor and what is said by the student? What did the student need to work on? How prepared is the student? Is there a balance between talking between the tutor and the student? What subject matter does the student need help in such as what kind of paper was it for such as an English class etc…?
The sessions were held about an hour long. The students that I have tutored were considered to be speakers who were not familiar with the English language. Out of my five sessions, I have documented various instances where I taken notice about where I the tutor had to take a little control of the session because the student did not know where to begin. I have had previous experience tutoring students and they came from various backgrounds where I have tutored people who were enrolled in developmental courses at Union County College. I was able to tutor five students for my research and I hope to prove that through my research that I indicate that in my research. Due to lack of a lot of cancelled appointments I was only able to tutor five people.1.1. Context for the studyTutors for the study were both undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in a Peer Tutoring Writing Class held at Kean University. One of the course requirements was to tutor students enrolled in various courses such as an English composition class.ESL students were enrolled in either various sections of freshman composition. The course instructor had assigned asked each student to focus on a particular aspect that he or she wanted to focus on during designated times that the students have signed up for.Before the tutoring began, both the undergraduate and graduate students in the class took a test and had to pass it before moving forward to earn a certification in order to move forward and be able to collect data.To document and collect data tutors were to observe what happened in the section after the tutoring center and when it was time to observe other students in the writing center we were to have a checklist, and observation forms. Tutors/writing coaches were expected to keep a progress on how their sessions were going by writing on our blogs that each individual have created for class. Finally, at the end of the semester, each student was asked to write a paper summarizing his or her experience as tutors and the collections that each student was focusing on. Graduate students have to write a longer paper and undergraduate students have to write an eight-page paper and have sources to back up the data that he or she is collecting.
Data analysis
Janice is an ESL student who is studying Psychology here at Kean University. She hopes to become a teacher one day. Janice came into the tutoring center and she was late to begin with. I believe she was approximately ten minutes late. When she came in she was very enthusiastic. Janice had a paper to write based on how she felt in general about life and how has that incident affect her life. Janice paper was due in a couple of hours on that given day.
Janice spoke in an effective manner. She had an assignment sheet and she wanted the tutor to go over the paper such as proof read the paper. I looked at her paper and saw a
lot of problems in her paper such as grammatical errors all throughout the paper. After I had read the paper to her, I asked her could she read the paper out loud to me and she did. She was able to read the paper out loud but was not help to grasp the idea of the sentences in her paper. For example, the student had sort of an idea of what went on but her paper did not make any sense at all. From my understanding as I tutor I felt that she needed to get a grasp of when to write in present tense and when to shift to past tense. Not only did the student did not understand what was saying. I felt that she was being attentive to what I was saying because she was just in a rush to get the paper done.
Case # 2
Tommy who is enrolled in an English course came to the writing center with a goal in mind. Tommy was a very well received person. He came in with a paper that he wanted to revise. So we worked on that. Tommy who is an undergraduate student knew what he wanted and knew how to adjust his paper by referring back to the professors comments and tried to incorporate those ideas into the paper.
Tommy is an example of the student being in control of the session because one Tommy who is an ESl student came in with an assignment sheet stating the guidelines. Tommy read his paper out loud to me and while he was reading his paper out loud to me he was able to go back and forth to see what kind of comments the professor made to his or her paper which was excellent. Tommy was a student who was focus about his work. He was on time and he had told me that he had benefit a lot form the session because he pushed himself to see where he could elaborate more things in his paper.
Case 3
Sasha who is an ESL student enrolled in an English course came to the writing center course such as Business and Professional Writing Course came into the writing center without an assignment sheet. She just wanted someone to come in and proofread her assignment. The assignment sheet was to write an essay based on how she decided to come to Kean University and along with the assignment the student. She spoke very quietly in an effective manner where at times I felt like I had to led the student and guide the student in a way. For example, I felt like the students that students should come prepared with some sort of idea of what they need to do. However, even though I was a tutor at the instance, I had to encounter the students level of education and whether English was the students native language. I had to keep repeating myself to the sense to see if I understood what the tutor was saying, Sasha seemed like he was very apprehensive, because the bulk of the work was fallen upon me. Sasha was one of those students who kept asking “Is this right”. I felt that I did this best with that I could possibly with this student because one the student was looking at the tutor for comfort.
Case 4
Aliyah is a twenty five year old woman who is from Russia and she had lived in the United States for ten years. She was enrolled in ESL classes when she had enrolled at Union County College.
It is clear from the data that Aliyah came into the tutoring center with high expectations. She came into the writing center because she wanted to improve her paper because she had received a B on he rapper. She wanted to get an A on her paper.
After the brief discussion Aliyah sat down and provided details on what the assignment was. Her assignment was to write an essay on her experience of the Japanese culture and to go to a restaurant. Aliyah essay was on point and it was very focus and detailed. There were some grammar issues such as verb tense fragments, and some run-on sentences. She came prepared with her grammar book, a dictionary and a thesaurus. One sentence that she had was Americans shake hands when they meet the Japanese bow.