By Lauren Lim
I want to introduce to you two students who represent a cross section of the pie that is my tutoring world. Although all of my students inspire me, Eric and Thomas probably stuck out because they were the only two boys I worked with. However, this is not an essay about male learning characteristics; instead, I barely touch on how self confidence in the personal arena affects learning and writing, and I also explore the different methods I’ve used with each student. I don’t really have any overall conclusion; I just want to bring to life for other teachers and tutors two characters who have challenged me as a writing assistant. I offer ideas about how to work with these two individuals, but really I’m just telling a story.
Let’s begin with Eric. He kind of freaks me out. He’s not scary in a normal way, but he reminds me of my younger brother, who at the tender age of almost seventeen is self conscious and has low self esteem. Of course, this forces me to dance on eggshells whenever I’m around him, and I get the same feeling around Eric. Eric is pretty similar; he fools most people into believing that he’s centered and self-assured. This façade hides the self-doubt he feels over his own identity but exposes itself in his writing and learning styles.
Eric doesn’t necessarily trust me. He listens to what I have to say and probably leaves it all behind once he bolts from the table. He dreads our meetings because he believes that they reflect a deficiency in his intelligence. I, in turn, feel uncomfortable around him because of this reluctance to be helped, which affects not only the way I teach, but his comprehension of what I’m trying to impart. I feel in my skin that Eric passively resists tutoring because it seems remedial, beneath him. It’s true that mostly likely he only failed the Subject A exam because he partied the night before and was too impatient or hung over to bother sitting through the next one and half hours of the test. However, his writing is basic high school writing; he garnishes the pages with flowery words but fails to reveal analysis.
At our last meeting, Eric showed up with a vivid introduction for his essay. It seemed awesome: it showed spirit and life and voice - except it wasn’t his voice. He lambasted the McDonalds, the Shells, the Nikes of the world with the utmost feeling, but then his thesis supported the actions of these giant corporations. First of all, it was just easier for Eric to describe the mainstream, progressive ideas, even though he disagreed with them. He didn’t have confidence in his own opinions so he joined the choir, muting his own voice and letting stronger ones speak in place of him. He also didn’t care enough about the issues to argue. Why waste the breath?
Secondly, he claimed that he didn’t have more for us to work with because he had late night writer’s block. Well, I understand writer’s block - no ideas, nothing real to say. Eric’s writer’s block stemmed from not knowing the articles well enough to analyze them. He vaguely knew what they were about, but his method of skimming had garnered no knowledge or opinion. His disinterest for the class itself coupled with lack of reading comprehension rendered him unmotivated to understand and marinate on the issues. Eric had plenty of words but nothing to say.
I often tried the Socratic method, asking questions in order to gauge Eric’s interest and opinions. After all, globalization is a pretty big topic and many people spend lifetimes arguing about it. Eric would present a bland, vapid summary of an article followed by a sentence agreeing with the author’s opinion, and I would ask him to challenge it. I felt like if Eric had thought even a little bit about what the author was trying to convince their audience, he’d have much more to say, either in support or in opposition. He’s not used to making decisions for himself, especially in issues that don’t directly affect him. He prefers to follow the sheep. Asking questions and probing into different perspectives probably cracked open Eric’s horizon a little, but didn’t always get us very far. In fact, sometimes I literally felt like we were beheaded chickens running around in circles.
It was difficult to help him understand the readings. We didn’t have enough time to begin with, but Eric also felt that it wasn’t important to go over them. He always wanted to put off reading the articles in the depth until he was alone. So of course, it was difficult to have a meaningful discussion about what he didn’t really have a good grasp on. I emphasized that basically he just needed to read the articles more carefully and put in the hours in order to get the details. I think he knew that but was unwilling to put in the effort.
Because we met erratically, I didn’t have time to try other methods. Although at times we both became frustrated, I strongly believe that the Socratic method was the best way to interact with Eric. Even if we both got confused, the chaos allowed him space to revamp his ideas and listen to new ones. He definitely has potential to evolve as a writer, but first he must let down his guard and accept his own individuality. Eric was tricky; I didn’t know how to let him know that it was ok to be completely himself and choose whose opinions and criticisms he valued. He wasn’t there to listen to me talk about personal evolution; he just needed help with his homework. So I’m really not sure of how far along I got with him, because lacking a personal relationship really affects how much a person learns. Once his ego out of the way, I think Eric will be able to focus much more on learning effectively.
I find that with many of my students, there are four main problems with their writing: basic wording and grammar, or lack of a strong vocabulary, comprehension of the text, analyzation of the text, and confidence in writing. Eric possessed a good enough lexicon, but had trouble with the latter three concepts. However, with more effort his writing will improve vastly. Thomas, on the other hand, was a bewildering project.
Now meet Thomas. Tom is the polar opposite of Eric - a supergeek who isn’t extremely perceptive and quite visibly has very low self esteem. He almost always looks timid as a mouse and has admitted to being nervous much of the time. Now, I give mad props to geeks in college, because really there’s nothing cooler than a geek who has survived high school intact. But Tom lacks the boldness, the vitality, and the intellect of a cool geek. I like him, but frankly, sometimes he just doesn’t get things. However, it’s not hopeless. Tom improved quite a lot before leveling off, and I think he just needs more time and confidence before his true SuperTom! shines through.
Although he is not an ESL student, Tom hasn’t learned to write effectively because he lacks word power. His sentences are very simplistic and sometimes confusing. He was fully aware of this problem, but didn’t quite know how to fix it. Tom often focused on the repetition of words, even though it seemed less of an issue to me. Or, worried about transitioning between sentences and paragraphs, he would use order phrases, like “first of all” or “then,” and conjunctions, like “too” and “also.” Usually, these phrases came out of nowhere, especially when he used “also.” I became a little crazy when it came to his use of “it.” He used “it” every other sentence, but I couldn’t divine what “it” meant, and on my grumpier days I would circle them all and exasperatingly tell him to be more explicit.
In an attempt to create a more exciting introduction, I tried to explain that he needed to vividly describe a scene that came into his head when he thought of sweatshops. Tom tried really hard, but the essay he brought me the next meeting started with something similar to, “Imagine this. There are people who are poorly clothed working in a factory. They are in bad working conditions and they look hungry.” Partially because he’s not very imaginative, his style is very elementary. Although I know what he envisions, Tom just doesn’t possess the words that will make this scene come alive. He can’t express himself clearly in writing or in person, and that made it all the harder to work with him.
Global problems riddled Tom’s writing, but he often chose to focus more on the smaller details because they were easier to grasp. Instead of noticing the repetition of ideas, which stemmed from him not knowing the topic well, he noticed the repetition of words. When we first met, repetition was his main concern, but I quickly realized that the bigger issue was the repetition of concepts. Looking at his first paper, I found that Tom repeated the same idea several times for lack of other ones. He wrote the summaries of three authors, but really only understood one of the articles. For our second meeting, I asked him to reread the texts carefully and to review his draft and assemble a bare outline, making certain that no ideas were repeated. I estimated that about three quarters of the draft could be thrown out because they were just words that said nothing. Of course, when we next met, he had not done anything that I asked. Instead, I became accustomed to going over the drafts with him and crossing out entire lines with his help. This seems to work; Tom now quickly points out repetition of concepts in his papers. Unfortunately, sometimes he does this only because he’s missing the point I’m trying to make.
The vagueness of the word “it” reflected the overall ambiguity of his papers. I think sometimes Tom just became lost; he didn’t know when to be specific and when to more broad, and without specific guidelines, it was all a roll of the dice. In addition, the vagueness of his drafts indicated that he didn’t understand the texts. Even after he’d read them, Tom couldn’t quite pinpoint the most important ideas that the authors were trying convey. I tried using the Socratic method to help him understand the different attitudes towards globalization, but with less success than Eric. Tom would stare blankly in front of him or down at the table, his brain hard at work, but he just couldn’t make the associations. I don’t know what to do with that; at times I just had to pointedly tell him how to connect the dots, and inevitably, I’d see a light bulb turn on above his head and receive a long, “Ooh.”
My remedy for Tom is reading, no, attacking as many books as he can with much of his free time. I strongly believe that waging war on books, devouring poetry and novels and newspapers, will improve Tom’s writing infinitely. At this point, it really doesn’t matter what he reads as long as he reads outside of the classroom. In fact, all the better if he reads mostly about his interests, because that will inspire him to fully absorb the entirety of the reading. It will push him to think about new ideas even after the book is closed and compel him to consider different opinions. Reading will excite his imagination and increase his word power. I’m getting excited just thinking about it. Also, I think shedding the anxiety and embracing his own individuality will help Tom in many ways, and at least inspire confidence within him as a writer. He definitely needs to talk to more people and explore various ways of thinking. Being closed off dramatically hinders Tom’s ability to understand the world around him, let alone different perspectives on globalization.
All of my students challenged me - all of them, as equally as Tom and Eric did. I think these guys, though, were definitely two students who were much more affected by their own self confidence as an individual than others that I worked with. Even with their respective problems when it comes to writing, I feel that as they become more comfortable with their personal identities, both Eric and Tom will evolve as stronger writers.
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