Learning From Our Mistakes

For this tutoring project, my student participant is a young woman of Latina

descent. She is from Venezuela and came to the United States to complete a
program with Center of English as Second Language (CESL) at Southern Illinois
University (SIU). She successfully finished the CESL program and is now enrolled
in at SIU with a major in Exercise Science. She is currently enrolled in Linguistics
101 as it is a requirement for all international students at SIU.
My students language ability is proficient-advanced. Her writing sample had
good flow. It was apparent that with practice she could become a very good writer.
The assignment that I worked with my student on was for her LING class.
The assignment was to write a five-paragraph essay written in response to the
following prompt:

How does family pressure + culture play important roles in career decision? How important are
these factors in your country? To what extent have they influenced your choice of career?

Her stage of writing for this tutoring session was in a rough draft of her essay. So
we polished it up for her to turn in as the final draft of the writing process.
I tutored her in the manner that I thought would be most beneficial to her
growth as a writer. I gave her abundant feedback on all of the errors in her essay. I
marked her essay with error marks, and an introduction to an error log/correction
table. I had marked all of her errors in the essay prior to our session, along with
marginal comments. Then when we met, I showed her my editing marks and
explained to her what the various correction abbreviations mean. We went over
each error with her doing the corrections on her own based on the clues I had given

her with the error abbreviations such as VT for Verb Tense, etc. (See Appendix
A: Rough Draft with Tutor Feedback).
Essentially, training the writer to be a self-editor was my overall tutoring goal
with this session. Editing the rough draft is one of the most crucial steps in the
writing process. To this end, I enthusiastically suggested that she keep an English
writing notebook or a digital log that included error tables. These error tables
include the error ID, the erroneous sentence or phrase, and the correction. I gave
her an example in Spanish that I had used in my L2 composition class of an error
table that I had made as a student for my class. I happily expressed my success
with acquiring more writing skill as an L2 writer using the correction tables. By
creating a log of errors, the writer will more readily identify her repeated errors in
successive works to come. The idea being that eventually, all the errors will be
eliminated and the writer will become more confident, fluid, and prolific. (See
Appendix B: Spanish L2 Error Correction Table).
To help her start her error log, I briefly sketched out a paraphrased version of
a table on the same page as the example of an error table in Spanish that I had
given her. If I were to tutor her again, I would provide more context for her error
correction table. However, I think it was clear from the examples of error logs that
I had given her in Spanish that the more context that was included with the
grammar error, the easier it would be to understand the error. (See Appendix C:
Error Correction Table)
The tutoring session for this report occurred earlier at the start of the
semester. Admittedly, being at the end of the semester now, and having learned
substantially about error correction throughout the course, I may have tutored her
in a different manner than I did. However, I feel confident now and I felt confident
then in my teaching methodology from some previous teaching experience as well
as my own personal learning journey/knowledge of L2 acquisition. As such, I feel

confident concluding this report that as my student participants tutor, I helped her
along the journey of L2 acquisition as a writer. By showing her some tools
necessary to become a better self-editor, I also showed her how to become a better
writer.

Appendix A: Rough Draft with Tutor Feedback

Jessica Joy Leatherman

Appendix B: Spanish as L2 Error Correction Table

Jessica Joy Leatherman

Appendix C: Error Correction Table for Student 1

Jessica Joy Leatherman

Learning From Our Mistakes

For this second tutoring report, my student participant was a student of Asian descent from
China. The student participant, whom I will call Jeremy is a graduate student enrolled in
Linguistics 584, Teaching L2 Composition. Jeremy is a non-native speaker of English facing
serious challenges on his path to become a teacher of English composition as his native language
(L1) is Chinese which has a vastly different writing and phonemic system when compared to
English. I obtained permission to tutor Jeremy from our mutual professor as Jeremy has
stigmatizing errors in his writing. Our teacher felt that he could benefit from a tutoring session
with a fellow graduate student who is being trained as a writing teacher too, but who is a native
speaker of English (me). I was happy to accept this challenge to tutor an advanced writer who is
at risk to plateau and/or fossilize if he doesnt face his grammatical challenges head on.
I have a tremendous amount of compassion for his process to become a proficient writer and
teacher of writing in an L2. As a writer in Spanish as an L2, and a teacher of Spanish grammar, I
relate to his learning process. My personal language experience combined with my newfound
knowledge about his L1, Chinese, and the complexity of the pictorial writing system along with
being a tonal spoken language, gives me this abundant compassion for Jeremys process in
becoming an effective writing teacher.
The assignment that I helped Jeremy complete is in response to the rubric referenced in
Appendix G: Rubric for Tutee 2. The assignment is to write a Philosophy of Teaching L2
Writing. During our first session, I corrected all of the errors in Jeremys rough draft. I talked
with him about this approach. Since we are both students of Teaching L2 Writing, we realize
that total error correction could be overwhelming for certain writers. Since he is an advanced
writer, he requested that I give him a comprehensive/complete error correction of his writing
piece. He also assured me that he could handle it and would not be overwhelmed by all of the
error marks on his essay.

The overall and comprehensive feedback that I gave him is referenced in Appendix D :
Rough Draft Feedback. I gave him this feedback in conjunction with guidance. I advised him to
take all of the errors and correct them in an error table (see Appendix E: Error Correction
Table). I asked him to take each erroneous sentence and copy and paste it into the table and then
to put the corrected sentence in a table beside it. I advised him to do this so that he may begin to
recognize any repeated, stigmatizing errors and eliminate them. If Jeremy were one of my
students, he would already have received a hand out with a code to the error marks or an error
marks key. Since he is a fellow classmate, he did not have a key as such. We both thought it
would be a good exercise for him to identify and categorize the errors himself. This way he
would be coming up with the error codes/error identification himself. We both thought that this
additional process of discovery and classification could further assist him in eliminating his
stigmatizing errors.
In addition to the written feedback illustrated in Appendix D, I also give him oral
feedback on his overall situation in regard to his writing. I suggested that he simplify his ideas to
the bare bones structure of the language to ensure that he was communicating his basic points. I
identified the sentence that could be his thesis sentence and asked him to simplify it. We
discussed that once the basic idea was related with appropriate syntax, he could then practice
communicating that same ideas in different ways with varying syntax.
This discussion of syntactical variance led me to share one of my favorite practices with
him for writing class: the fluency test. My favorite undergraduate English Composition teacher
did this exercise with our Advanced Composition Class. Every day she would write a simple
sentence on the board, such as The brown fox jumped over the fence. We would then be given
5 minutes to write the sentence keeping the idea but changing the syntax with various literary
devices. For example, I would write, The muddy colored fox jumped over the magnificent gate
bordering the farmers land and so on, until time was up. By the end of class, my fluency had
increased dramatically. I was significantly increasing my output as well as my creativity. Jeremy
really liked this idea.

I also suggested to Jeremy that it was still considered a good academic style to write
simply and to not worry so much about advanced syntactical variety until he has a firm grasp on
simply expressing his ideas. Jeremys ideas are really quite excellent but his problems with
grammar are clouding his writing. Jeremy really liked the fluency exercise as well as the error
correction table. I suggested that he could continue on with error logging on his own for all of his
writing so that he could eventually produce error free writing pieces.
To finish our tutoring process, Jeremy sent me his final draft via email and I then gave
him digital feedback. I was happy to gain some experience with digital feedback as it is the first
time that I have had the opportunity to give feedback in this format and use the recently learned
skills from our LING 584 course.
For this final stage of his writing process and of our tutoring, I was pleased with the
progress that Jeremy had made. It was clear that he had further polished his essay to a point
where the stigmatizing errors were glaringly obvious. The majority of the remaining errors were
prepositions, possessives and article use. I sent Jeremy an email with feedback about the final
draft revisions that I had made. I mentioned in the email that this revision process is like going
over something with a fine toothed comb which eliminates tangles and smooths everything out.
Through the process of error logging and correction during the writing of various drafts, Jeremy
will be learning and correcting his stigmatizing grammatical errors in context. The more
completely, thoroughly and repetitively that Jeremy goes through this with his writing process,
the more refined and clear his writing will become. Also, judging from my own experience as an
L2 writer and language learner; by going through this process with his own writing, he will
become a more effective teacher of L2 writing.

Appendix D : Rough Draft Feedback

Jessica Joy Leatherman

Appendix E: Error Correction Table

Jessica Joy Leatherman

ERROR TYPE

ERRONEOUS SENTENCE

CORRECTED SENTENCE

Wrong

The changing regarding the

The changing pedagogy

subject /

pedagogical has been encouraging

has been encouraging

subject verb

and challenging the new teachers

and challenging to the

agreement

who is ready to step into this field.

new teachers who are

ready to step into this
field.

Errorly

I keep the best way to help students

the best way to help

develop their writing skills is to take

students develop their

every writing process into consideration writing skills is to take

with patience.

every writing process

into consideration with
patience.

Register/style In addition, the exchange of new

Furthermore, the

ideas between me and my students is

exchange of new ideas

what keeps them motivated

between me and my
students is what keeps
them motivated

Register/style Under such circumstance,

Individuality, although

Individuality, although under discussion

under discussion for

for decades, has yet to be paid

decades, has yet to be

attention to.

paid attention to.

Inappropriate

Students are not ready to get

Students are never

expression

overwhelmed by tons of information,

ready to get

instead, they ought to acquire

overwhelmed by tons

knowledge in class while knowing

of information, instead,

clearly what they are going to

they ought to be given

achieve in their writing and what

course specific

they want to get from their

information related

teacher.

goals

Inappropriate

As a writing teacher, Im not the one

As a writing teacher, I

expression

who provides them with concrete

provide them with not

knowledge, rather, I teach them with

only concrete

ideas and guide them through the most

information but rather,

of confusion.

I teach them with

concepts to guide
them through the mist
of confusion.

Register/style My teaching approach would be best

My teaching approach

fit my philosophies with regard to the

best fits my

focusing on individuality and process-

philosophies in regard

oriented approach.

to the focus on
individuality and
process-oriented
approach.

-My teaching
philosophy is to focus
on individuality and
process-oriented
approach.
Inappropriate

Students in the class are be able to

Students in my class

expression

Gerund

voice themselves by interacting with

are be able to voice

teacher, their needs are not considered

themselves by

as naivety.

interacting with me.

Students are going to acquire

as well as improve..

knowledge as well as improving

writing skills in the class.
Illogical

Students who draft poorly would

Students final score

subject?

affect their score little as long as he

would not get affected

/she revise or edit their draft with care

by their first drafts as

and great effort.

long as he /she revise

or edit their draft with
care and great effort.

Article

Even though students in my class

Even though the

students in my class

Register/style Sometimes, there might be something

Sometimes, there

you consider as bizarre voice coming

might be something

out.

you would consider to

be bizarre voice
coming out.

Idiomatic
phase

In another word

In other words

Appendix F: Final Draft with Digital Feedback

Jessica Joy Leatherman

Appendix G: Rubric for Tutee 2

Jessica Joy Leatherman

LING 440/584 Dongmei Cheng

Philosophy of Teaching L2 Writing
1- 2 single-spaced pages; 4% of final grade Due Dates: Rough Draft due on 11/19
for in-class peer review; Final Draft due on 12/3 via E-portfolio

The purpose of this assignment is for you to reflect on your own teaching philosophy in an L2
writing classroom, drawing on ideas gained from the reading, writing and discussion activities
you have participated throughout the semester.

This short essay should address your personal beliefs about the factors that influence L2 writers
development and how your approach to teaching writing will address these factors.
Contextualize your teaching philosophy statement by discussing ideas regarding the roles of
teachers and students, as well as your classroom practice (e.g., overall teaching approach
drawing from composition theories, needs analysis, curriculum and syllabus design, texts and
materials, approach to response and error treatment, writing assessment, and/or peer response).

You may include relevant sources from the textbook and supplementary readings we have read
in this class. No additional research is required.
Though this is a short assignment, it should offer plenty of concrete details so that your readers
can get an idea of how you are/will be in an L2 writing classroom. The I (first person point of
view) is not only fine but your best rhetorical choice herefor example, Because I believe in X,
I do Y; or Since the research shows X, I plan to do Y and so on. No modal verb is allowed! I
dont want to hear about what teachers should do but what you actually plan to do, or do do in
your own writing classroom.

You have a multiple audience for this assignmentfirst of all yourself, as it will help to distill
what you have learned from the class into a concise summary. Your classmates will be interested

in your position as it will give them insights into their own; and I want to see, as your instructor,
how you translate theory into practice, so I can also learn and improve the quality of the course
in the future. Finally, but not least important, is that this is exactly the kind of thing prospective
employers will ask you to articulate during job interviewssometimes you must include such a
statement with your C.V. to even get to the interview stage.

Your teaching philosophy will be graded on the following criteria (4% total):
Content: relevance to the field of L2 writing with detailed support (2%) Organization: one main
idea per paragraph with natural transitions (1%) Style & Language Use: appropriate tone, word
choices & careful proof-reading (1%)

Note: Although in real job applications, you may not use APA style in writing your teaching
philosophy, I suggest you to follow APA convention in providing relevant in-text citations and
references, if they are necessary. However, theres no space for lengthy discussions on any
quotes/paraphrases. No need to include a title page and running head for this assignment. You
will include your teaching philosophy statement directly in your E-portfolio for the final
assessment.

Assessment

Jessica Joy Leatherman

According to the rubric for Project #4, I meet all the criteria to receive full points. However, I
am submitting the second tutoring session late as I had major complications with my first
tutorage. In spite of my efforts to contact multiple sources to find a new student, I was unable to
find a student until serendipitously, I found one who is actually a classmate in this Teaching L2
Composition class. This student, referred to as Jeremy has had tremendous difficulties in
overcoming his stigmatizing errors with second language acquisition. I have over tutored him
with three editing sessions in all including my editing of his final draft. It is my hope that with
this extra effort with his tutelage, that I can compensate for turning in the assignment late.

12/3/2014 6:26:00 AM