Chris Ortega - Week 3

When I think about the possible differences between tutoring non-native speakers of English and students who grew up using English, one of the biggest challenges I see is how I am going to explain grammar, or at least make students feel more comfortable with it. Personally, when I’m editing things it’s a very aural process, and things get tweaked according to how right or wrong they sound. There is a lot of intuition involved. I know I’d have trouble describing the technical and grammatical intricacies of some suggestions.

The general sentiment from the Bedford Guide seems to be that helping with idea organization should take priority over helping with specific grammatical mechanics. I understand the value of that idea, but I feel that it shortchanges grammar a bit. All writing students, and I’d argue multilingual students in particular, need to practice using and seeing as much grammar as possible to become more familiar with it. Even if the grammar that is revised in an essay ends up cut or changed in a later draft, I feel that it is important to at least discuss it so that students can gain experience using and revising various types of grammatical structures.

To explain those grammatical things better, I will learn more about the formal aspects of grammar.  

Comments

  1. TatianaSeptember 16, 2020 at 8:21 AM

    Thanks for sharing, Chris! Good point about intuition. It's hard with 2nd language, since there's no intuition since what you know about the language is new and probably straight out of a textbook, which makes writing that plays with conventional forms especially tough. Poetry is often a challenging unit for my 2nd language students.

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  2. Lucie BerjoanSeptember 16, 2020 at 11:23 AM

    Chris, I had a similar thought process regarding whether or not we should be prioritizing grammar. It seems to me that focusing exclusively on content is (kind of) putting the cart before the horse. Perhaps if we were working for a random writing workshop or something like that it would make sense, but being fully successful within academia requires a fairly thorough grasp of grammar. What makes the most sense to me would be making space for conversations about both grammar and content.

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