Sean Tyler: Week Six

    While working with one of my enrollment students, a freshman in Rhetoric 1040 and a second language writer, we have worked on reading primary sources. Many of the issues my student had working with his choice of document, a letter from General Patton to then General Eisenhower (linked below), came from uncommon phrases, complex sentence structure, and missing context. 

    A large part of the student's assignment is to provide context of the historical period in a presentation where he discusses the rhetorical techniques on display in the letter. Beyond that larger historical context, there is a context of this being one letter in a series of letters between two people with extremely detailed expert knowledge of American military operations. The student and I discussed that both of us were on the outside looking in to a letter writing conversation that was already in progress so there was so information we couldn't have without all of the previous letters. The student had done quite a bit of research on WWII as a whole so he understood the larger context it was just the smaller details referring to previous letters and incidents that wouldn't have been included in historical surveys. There are a few details that are impossible to clarify without other documents, but knowing that helped the student make sense of the letter as a whole and focus on the information more relevant to his work. 

    Part of what the student struggled with were less common phrases such as "in line with," and "talkative" that he just had not encountered in English before. These phrases occur often enough that most native English speakers have probably encountered them at least once but they are not common enough that there would be any reason for a ESL student to prioritize them when learning vocabulary. The time difference from when the letter was written to know is significant enough that slang and common vernacular have changed significantly. As a tutor I felt like I was working with the student to help clarify what Bean refers to as cultural codes by providing knowledge of expressions that are somewhat out of fashion.

    The student also had some difficulties with some sentences with more obtuse construction. The student and I looked at the phrase “It may interest you to know that the very talkative, alleged former member of the murder camp was recognized by a Russian prisoner as a former guard” (Patton). This sentence is complex enough that I had to read it several times to clarify it for myself. As the student had read the letter multiple times before our tutoring session and worked to clarify it for himself, I walked through the sentence step by step and helped him outline who Patton was referring to in each clause. 

    I think that providing the student with some background information, aiding with relevant vocabulary, and helping him relate the letter as a part of a larger conversation helped him to focus on the relevant parts of the document and start analyzing it for rhetorical techniques. I think working through the basic comprehension issues allowed him to start reading for structure and argument, a deeper form of reading, so the work felt productive.

 

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/12007734

 

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