Article: Essid, J. & Hickey, D. "Creating a Community of Teachers and Tutors." Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum. Eds. Donna Reiss, Richard Selfe, and Art Young. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1998: 73-85.Link to Article:
Before reading this article I always thought that a writing fellow like any other tutor job's to help you "fix" your paper by telling you want to do to make it acceptable for the professor, after which that was the end of the process. However my assumption like most was wrong, the authors, Essid and Hickey explained in the article the main aspects and expectation of the University of Richmond writing fellow. A writing fellow at the University of Richmond is should play the role of a peer editor, in other words, they should resemble or act in the manner of an authorative figure; but as a friend helping to collaboratively write the tutees paper. Students should also be made aware that the suggestions the tutor makes are in facts just suggestions and not law. By doing this the tutors seem less intimidating to the tutees. Also because it is a collaborative effort the student should be more involved because it is in fact their paper by having equal say on how to improve their writing skills.
This method is an interesting way of looking at tutors and tutees relationship, for any other subject it's usually a very formal and rigid way of going about the process. Usually the tutee is a confused vessel waiting for the tutor to fix the problem in the same matter a teacher would. So it's interesting to look and refer to the writing tutor as a "fellow". Students helping students achieving writing success together, learning for each other and improving on their writing skills as partners in the learning process. However I do think it would take a while for this teaching method to catch on since most students are used to being told what to do and what is the right way of doing something and really thinking for themselves on how to do the process because most people in my generation are used to being babied and spoon fed everything.
The authors also talk about using technology mostly online programs to help English as a Second Language (ESL) students in their writing progress since there is a predicted increase in these students and it may be beneficial to be more accessible to them and other students of course by offering online sessions. This could be a good idea if this is done in addition to an one on one section or else students would just take what the tutor suggest as law and not really put a lot more revision effect into the writing process. I say this a very important reason, as a student from a different country, I personally think it's a bad thing. Technology makes it more efficient to handle more people at a time but IT MUST be done in addition to one on one sessions. It would be more helpful to do especially for an ESL student, it helps to hear suggestions out loud than to read them on paper or on a screen.
In the book, Online Education: Proceedings of the Sloan Summer Workshop on Asynchronous Learning Networks By John R. Bourne, Janet C. Moore, Sloan Center for OnLine Education, Sloan Center for OnLine Education, SCOLE, SCOLE; the authors talk about the going the technological way with online schools. Although the schools are online the students are still encouraged to be an Organic Intellectual and collaborate because that is what works for the students and that is how you find out about your writing skills. Even though the students are in different place doing work online they must learn also that learning is an inactive stage and so when they work together not only will they write a better paper but they will learn more about their writing skills.
Click on the link below to have a look at the online book:
1 comment:
Though I'd like to see a bit more citation of our texts to support and exemplify your discussion, this posting is substantial and makes effective connections to other assigned readings as well as new texts you introduce.
Post a Comment