Andrew TS #4

 Date/Time: 06/02/21

Location: Hecht House 

Topic/Skill: Parallel structures, writing practice, writing review

Feedback provided to tutee: We started this tutoring session by going over parallel structures. Aziz had just learned this new grammatical structure earlier that day, but felt as though his understanding of the form was still lacking. I briefly reviewed when and where to use parallel structures and then gave him a few more examples. At first he was having trouble using the structure on his own because he kept switching between verb forms; However, he did eventually start to get the hang of it after about 10 more minutes of practice. After this I reviewed another one of Aziz's in class writings about the on going debate of whether or not to pay college athletes. I was very happy to see just how much his writing had improved since our first session. There were still a few errors in his language, logic, and grammar, but far fewer than the first composition of his that I read. After this review I gave him another short writing assignment. After speaking with both Dr. Rios and Aziz it became clear to me that the biggest challenge in his writing is his own self confidence. It was especially obvious to me after we had our first conversation partner session. He would speak well with only occasional errors or difficulty in expressing his ideas, but his writing was very choppy and contained many more errors in verb form. As such, I have been trying to help build his confidence or, at the very least, building up his courage to get words on to the page. I gave him another timed writing assignment to see if he had improved at all in this regard since the last time I tried this assignment. While he did write with much greater accuracy than the last time I had him try an assignment like this, he only wrote marginally more than the last time. So, while I would have liked to see more words on the page, I was still happy that he has progressed in some fashion. Another activity that was recommended to me to help Aziz in this area is having him start journaling. The journal won't be for me to grade but just for him to practice writing in a non-stressful environment and to practice getting words out. I am also going to have him start doing this when he has free time to serve as a bit of extra practice.

Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: As seems to happen at each of our meetings, I learned as much new grammar as he did. There are rules related to many sentence structures that I use regularly that I had never previously known until Aziz pointed them out to me. Our sessions are a constant reminder of just how much I need to improve my own understanding of English grammar if I want to be an effective teacher. Once again, it was also a great mental workout for me figuring out how to explain a problem in his writing without flat out giving the answer.