posted by Amy on Sep 12
As a precondition to obtaining a divorce, my husband and I were both required to take a class in “parenting after divorce.” I remember thinking how great it would be to have a business where the clients were under court order to do business with me. I now have four clients who pay me to help them with their writing because the seminary told them to do it.
I like my students, and I respect their calls to ministry, their many spiritual gifts, and their compelling stories. And, despite having no choice in the matter, they all have great attitudes, and want to improve their writing. I look forward to our tutoring sessions, and I have been working hard to learn how to be an effective writing tutor.
I want to write about the experience of being a writing tutor without violating my clients’ privacy. I also wouldn’t want anyone to read my blog and think I’m arrogant or judgmental. For those reasons, I will be vague about my students’ identities. That goes against advice that I give them (”Be specific! Give details! Add some life!”), but I want to protect them, and show them the respect they deserve.
Teaching helps me learn. Being the teaching assistant for the summer New Testament Greek class in July and August gave me a perfect opportunity to review the material and reinforce my own comprehension. That was my main reason for taking the job. Having to explain Greek to other people sharpened my skills. Unexpectedly, I also really loved doing it. I was genuinely fond of all of my students, and I wanted them all to succeed. It was a joy to see understanding dawn on a student’s face when I came up with an explanation that finally connected. Some students were struggling at first, and doubted their own abilities. The ones who trusted the instructor and me (and the author of the text), and who persevered, all did well in the class.
One particular student made a huge gain in understanding in the last few days of class. Regardless of their scores on homework, quizzes, attendance, and a group translation project, in order to pass the class they had to come in and translate a passage from the Gospel of John, using any materials they wanted other than a Bible written in English, and get a passing grade on that. This student had done poorly in practice tests, and she asked to meet with me one-on-one. We worked together on a section from John’s Gospel, and luckily we chose a passage that had some good examples of common issues that come up for beginning translators. All I did was give her a few pointers, cheer her on, and tell her I respected and admired her tenacity and hard work. Her grade on the final was significantly higher than the grades on her practice tests. I was so happy for her.
Because of that experience, I am confident that I can be a good coach for my writing clients, and can help them gain confidence, find their own voices, and get the most out of their seminary educations, but I am on a steep learning curve. They are looking to me to help them, and in some cases I do not see a way just yet.
Most of what I know about grammar and composition comes from my own reading and writing. I have been a bookworm since I first learned how to read. I am always reading, and I do a lot of writing. I have always kept journals and written letters. As a transactional lawyer, I’m paid to think, speak, and write. To me, grammar and usage rules seem obvious and intuitive. I’m sure I studied grammar in what they used to call grammar school, but I don’t remember how it was taught. It is so ingrained that I “just know” how things should be, and I “just know” when they look wrong. This is useless to my students. I do think their writing would improve if they read more, and wrote more, but right now they want concrete, specific help with diagnosing and curing their particular writing problems, and I have to figure out how to give them that.
With the exception of the one student who is from another country, they were all surprised and shocked when the seminary told them their writing is inadequate for graduate school. They have bachelors degrees, and they got good grades. One student gave me an undergraduate term paper as a writing sample, and I found it unbelievable that her college professor thought it was A work.
I have been searching for resources. I have collected many articles and books on teaching composition. I have found several excellent university websites with worksheets, short articles on grammar and composition, and even PowerPoint presentations. There is a lot of advice for writing tutors. Most of it is for people who work in university writing centers. That is different from the ongoing relationship that I have with my clients, but much of the advice is still valid, and I’m glad to have it.
One of my students speaks good English, has a great sense of humor, and is fun to talk to, so I know there is innate comprehension of grammar and syntax, but this student is very uncertain about parts of speech, comma use, clauses, and the like. I am trying to figure out how to make up for the fact that in 16 or more years of school the basic building blocks of language were not effectively taught. This student trusts me and likes me, and has said I have already made writing less onerous than it used to be. The first thing I did was assign some free writing, and talk a bit about voice, economy of words, and matters of style and process. At this point, the student needs an understanding of basic grammar concepts and terms, so I will start including giving short grammar lessons and drills.
I have been looking for worksheets that are suitable for an adult learner. I found an internet site directed at home schoolers that has a lot of free worksheets, including several on comma usage, a weak spot for several of my students. The exercises look pretty good, but some of the answers are wrong! Now that I’ve been studying all the rules for comma usage, I can even explain what’s wrong with them in terms that go beyond, “It just doesn’t look right to me.” But, Oh, the internet; the mother of all buyer-beware situations! (As I understand it, in order to home school children, the parent/teacher has to use a standard, recognized curriculum. I hope that’s true. And I hope the folks who wrote these worksheets don’t also write home school curricula.)
The main thing is for me to be positive and encouraging. I am a coach, not a taskmaster. That comes naturally to me. The best parenting advice I ever got was, “You can’t build on weakness, only on strength.” This is as true for teaching as it is for parenting. All of my students, including the foreign student, speak good English. If they can talk, they can write, but only if they don’t get too freaked out to try, and if they don’t give up in frustration. My job is to work my way out of a job. To do this, I have to let them do the thinking, and the work.
Many students think that to get a good grade on a paper they have find out how the teacher expects them to sound, and parrot that. They also think a paper should use a lot of big words and long sentences. This can cause some big problems. One student was relieved to learn that academic writing should be simple, direct, and clear. This helped her relax, and find her own voice. Another student was relieved to learn that I have a hard time keeping up with all the reading and writing for my courses. Since I am convinced that the main difference between a good paper and an inadequate one is time on task, I’ve told them all how long it takes me to write a paper. (About two hours per page, after I’ve done all the research and note-taking.) I could do it in less, but it wouldn’t be as good.
There’s a lot of discussion in the English composition world about whether writing is a “product” or a “process.” I think it’s both, but another bit of advice for my students is that we rarely know where we’re going to end up, or exactly what we’re going to say, when we start writing. Writing is a way to learn what we know and what we think. Sometimes I start off with one thesis, but the paper that emerges is based on an entirely different idea. For example, last spring I wrote a paper about the Woman at the Well, and to my great surprise I found a strong message about the Holy Trinity. If I had not done the research, and written that paper, I don’t know if I ever would have seen that.
Some students have trouble reaching the required number of words for an assignment. I always have the opposite problem. There was one professor last year whose word limits were extremely spartan. My first draft of the final paper for her class was a full 50% longer than she allowed. Having to cut that many words was a great experience for me. The paper that finally emerged was lean, taut, and pointed. It’s among the best things I’ve ever written (although she did say, correctly, that it needed more of a conclusion. After slashing that much text, through several rounds of cutting, I decided to let the main body of the paper carry the weight of what I had to say.) Someone famous, I forget who, said that to write well you have to “murder your darlings.” We have to be ruthless with our pet phrases, our cliches, and our little words that take up space without adding any weight. I don’t do much of that on this blog, but if I ever write a book I know I’ll have to get out the red pen.