Response 2

Learning to teach writing
through tutoring and journal writing

This article says that tutoring teaching can lead to an increased sense of accomplishment and self-esteem, better mastery of academic skills, increased ability to apply and integrate knowledge taught in different courses and a broader, more realistic outlook on the process of teaching and learning. I quite agree with this point. Also, by writing journals, I can learn from the process, self-reflect and then do anything different the next time.

The author suggests that we should experiment with different teaching styles to meet individual student need. I quite identify with this concept. Take the example of my two tutor students, Ivy and Jane. They are both in the ninth grade. At first, I taught both them with direct instruction. Gradually, I found out that Ivy was good in the structure but weak in the grammar while Jane was good in the grammar but weak in the structure, Therefore, I decided to change my teaching style to meet individual student need. For Ivy, I focused more on the grammar. Rather than merely correcting her mistakes, I use collaborative way to encourage her to take more ownership of the revising process. First, I circled the mistakes and asked her if she could recognize and correct her errors by herself. If she couldn’t, I continued to explain the concept and then encourage her to self-correct. By collaborative teaching and self-correct technique, she improved her grammar. For Jane, I focused on the structure and the content of ideas. I taught her how to organize the structure in English composition and helped to decide which idea should keep and which on did not fit. I adopted more direct teaching style because I was dealing with the aspect of writing which my student was unfamiliar. By more controlled way, the student would feel secure and sure of learning.

The article says that the relationship between students will influence teaching. Take the relationship between my tutor students for example. The relationship between Ivy and I is like friends. We sometimes go out together after the class. The advantage of friend-relationship is that she would like to share her feelings and not feel shy to show her weak points to me. Therefore, I can realize more of her strengths and weakness in her writing and help her improve her writing. For Jane, our relationship is like traditional teacher-and-student relationship -- I teach and she learns. She is a little shy to express his feeling to me. She feels a little uncomfortable to write private topics, such as “My Mother”, or “What I Want to Be in the Future”. I find out this and try hard to communicate with her and encourage her. Now, she feels more comfortable. To sum up, the positive relationship between students and the teacher can help students learn and improve more.