Review: Tutoring Second Language Writers (eds. Bruce/Rafoth)

Tutoring Second Language Writers by Shanti Bruce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This anthology, edited by the same team as ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors is an excellent collection of essays--all of which have use for anyone who teaches L2 learners. There is a strong leaning toward incorporation of diversity, equity, and inclusion principles in various essays that consider the complexity of "competency", multiple frameworks, and "accommodationist" principles (Carol Severino, 2006). Some of the offerings are short, but potent, such as Jose L. Reyes Medina's "Some Things I Did to Help Myself Learn to Write." Others, like Rebecca Babcock's "Examining Practice: Designing a Research Study" and case studies in Puerto Rico, as well as working with specific identities (such as Jocelyn Amevuvor's "Building A Cultural Bridge Between Ghana and the United States in the Writing Center") have more striking relevance in the writing center context. Those who are new to the concept of multi-faceted identity and how that informs a student's experience will appreciate Ben Rafoth's "Second Language Writers, Writing Centers, and Reflection," which, taking its cue from Harris and Silva (1993), recognizes the "diversity of concerns" of the L2 student. Likewise, Michelle Cox outlines the different facets of identity: those which we are born with, those we inherit, those we create, and those constructed for us as key to understanding how to address the multiple challenges of teaching a non-monolithic group of students who are nevertheless categorized as "ESL" (see her essay "Identity Construction, Second Language Writers, and the Writing Center."

As a teacher, the set of the essays that make up the fourth part ("Academic Expectations") was most useful. Valerie Balester reinforces the idea that understanding multiple identities is key to providing an equitable and inclusive experience for L2 students: "In truth, no single approach works, and applying a single approach to all L2 writers/speakers regardless of their needs, desires, or learning preferences, simply because we assume learning English grammar means learning English rhetoric, would constitute Othering." (200-- See Balester, "Tutoring Against Othering: Reading and Writing Critically"). Beyond philosophical considerations, Balester also provides helpful and concrete ways to use meaning to discuss local (lower-order) concerns in a student's writing. While Jennifer Craig's essay "Unfamiliar Territory: Tutors Working with Second Language Writers on Disciplinary Writing" addresses working with students outside one's own discipline, it is very helpful in understanding the challenges of building a general language proficiency and a disciplinary lexicon at the same time--not to mention writing conventions, tone, and style. Primyupa W. Praphan and Guiboke Seong's "Helping Second Language Writers Become Self-Editors" reconsiders "error correction" and its role in the tutoring experience. The authors also help clarify distinctions such as pragmatic errors vs. grammatical errors and recommend a set of strategies for before, during, and after a tutoring session. These principles are easily applied (and should be) to anyone who is assessing/reading L2 learners' writing. This last essay is particularly important as there are several alarming examples (throughout the book) of instructor/professor commentary on student papers that is ego-maniacal, counter-productive, and glaringly unhelpful in its Othering or complete cultural incompetency. In the context of the book the authors see the Writing Center as a place that mitigates this ignorance/bias on the part of the instructors, but teachers would do well to curb these practices at the outset.

Cross-posted at Rebecca's Reading Rants and Raves

PowerPoint Presentations: Proceed with Caution

There may seem like no drier topic than writing about PowerPoint, but I think it is an issue worthy of conversation, particularly in how it is used in academic settings. I've seen PP presentations improve over the last few years, but occasionally I still encounter the PP presentation that tries to compete with a Broadway show (rather than support the speaker), or falls flat out of some sense that PP slides are an obligation.

 I heard many wonderful papers at the Fall meeting of the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society yesterday.* I was particularly struck, however, by Dan DiCenso's paper, "More Roman than "Gregorian," More Frankish than "Old Roman": What a Newly Rediscovered Italian Source Reveals about the Roman and Frankish Character of Chant Transmission in the Mid-Ninth Century." The presentation was not only full of intriguing content, but was an exemplary use of PowerPoint. Dan's presentation was also a good model for engaging a mixed audience on a topic that may be relatively foreign to a large group within the audience. He included comparative tables which clearly illustrated the various relationships between the Monza manuscript and the Sárospatak fragment, as well as other Old Roman sources. There was no need to be well-versed in medieval manuscripts, as Dan presented his information as clearly-defined visual data. Thoughtful use of circles and arrows highlighted particular elements of a slide as he spoke.

I used to teach at a place that had fully wired classrooms, so I made use of the technology and encouraged the students to do so as well.  When a group engaged PowerPoint slides for their projects,  this was a learning experience for all parties involved. There are two major errors I see in PP presentations: The Gratuitous PowerPoint and The Overwrought PowerPoint. I will define each, and indicate the pitfalls of both types.

The Gratuitous PowerPoint: This is the PP presentation filled with photographs, special fonts, fancy formatting, and all sorts of bells and whistles that offer little more than entertainment value. This is often motivated by a lack of substance in the actual presentation.

PITFALLS:

• Visual input can detract from aural input (for more on this, I recommend reading Rich Mayer's ideas regarding cognitive loads in Multi-Media Learning)

•  The opportunity for students to grasp the outline form of a presentation might be impeded by various kinds of visual miscellanea

• Forced PowerPoint presentations can lead to sloppy work (I remember well a presentation on composer Roger Sessions which began with a slide of software architect Roger Sessions, simply because he was the first result in a Google Image search).

   
The Overwrought PowerPoint:  Similar to the Gratuitous PP (but often stemming from different motivation) this is the PP that tries too hard and probably includes too much information.

PITFALLS:

• There is so much information included on the slide, that the viewer is either distracted by the presenter, or the two cancel each other out. Students often feel it necessary to copy everything down off the slides.

• Highlighting everything can corrupt the structure of a presentation, as well as allowing viewers to hone in on the emphatic points of the presentation.

• Often there is little else left to be said, so the slides become a transcript of the presentation.

There are certainly more pitfalls, but I'd rather focus on what I like to see in a PP presentation, and how I do think they can be beneficial--both in terms of the process of making a presentation and in terms of the impact on an audience.

BENEFITS OF HAVING STUDENTS DEVELOP POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS:

• The student is forced to draw out the cogent and important main points from their topic

• The student can decide what needs visual illustration and what does not

• The student gets experience giving a presentation accompanied by visual media

• Helps engage the student with different modes of learning

BENEFITS OF POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS FOR MUSIC-RELATED TOPICS
   

• opportunities to put faces to names (particularly helpful in the classroom)

• musical examples (CAVEAT: full pages of score with tiny annotations are better viewed on a handout--especially in a large conference setting).

• simple animations to highlight events in score examples

•  in-slide audio examples

• can help reinforce reading of lengthier quotations (as long as they are read aloud with the presentation of the slide).

• using charts, tables, and graphs to represent comparisons, historical trends, etc. Again, this can engage multiple modes of learning by re-framing something with non-traditional illustrations. For example, a melody might be expressed as a graph of pitches (y-axis) in time (x-axis) to effectively demonstrate the concept of "melodic contour" in a music appreciation course.

So, PowerPoint presentations can become a crutch if used incorrectly. The general rule I give my students is: PowerPoint should enhance your presentation, but if the technology fails, your presentation should still be engaging and informative. This encourages both backups (CDs of musical examples) and a sense of responsibility regarding what is presented off-slide.

What are your PowerPoint tips? Pet peeves?

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*All the slide presentations at this meeting were fine to great, according to the criteria I propose here.

On awards, books and the merits of You Tube

First off, I would like to add my congratulations to Alex Ross, for his well-deserved 2008 MacArthur Fellowship. I'm really leaning toward using his book for my non-music majors in next semester's course, Music of the Twentieth Century. If anyone has any other suggestions appropriate for the non-major, I'll be happy to consider them. I find that a lot of the standard textbooks are unsuitable as they get bogged down in musical details that will be meaningless to those without musical background, OR they make blatant (and erroneous) stylistic generalizations about the music of the 20th century. Nope, I'm not naming names.

Earlier this year, Ryan posted about the merits of YouTube as a research/teaching tool, and this resulted in a fascinating discussion. While I took sort of a hard line against the citation of YouTube clips as authoritative sources (since they can be heavily edited), I have found myself calling upon YouTube (in class) a whole lot this semester. We read a chapter in Stephen Marini's Sacred Song in America about the Sacred Harp tradition. Marini is wonderfully descriptive in his writing about the modern tradition, but I have a feeling this particular YouTube clip really helped my students "get it." Somehow, a homemade video of this Sacred Harp convention (they are singing from the Missouri Harmony) seemed appropriate...maybe even more than nuanced documentary footage.

How to Survive a Dissertation: Part I

Now that I am a bonafide PhD, I do not claim to know anything and everything about writing dissertations. (Nor do I resemble anything close to the above figure). I do know what helped me. Writing it here does NOT mean I always followed my own advice, but when I did, I reaped the rewards. I decided to consolidate my dissertation experiences into a helpful guide (I hope) and this idea has already received an enthusiastic endorsement from several friends who are dissertators. This post will offer some general advice that is applicable to any long writing project, not just a dissertation. I hope you find it useful!


1. Carry a moleskine, small notebook, whatever suits your purpose. Have another one on your bedside table, and another at your home work station.

Ideas have a bad habit of appearing at the most inconvenient times. As any good GTDer knows, the Ubiquitous Capture Tool (UCT) is of the utmost import. This is especially true for the dissertator. If you think you'll remember to write it down, you probably won't. Don't take chances. (Moleskines or a notebook with a pocket are especially helpful if you run into a dissertation contact who hands you their card). While PDAs can be good UCTs, generally they get a little overloaded if you have a flurry of inspiration and your idea translates into an entire paragraph or two of workable material.

2. Envision the end. Use your imagination.

When gravity is seemingly pulling you toward the molten core of the earth, stop what you are doing and allow yourself to daydream. For me, it helped to think about calling my college mentor and introducing myself as "Dr." For you, it might be something else: telling your parents, eating that pint of Ben & Jerry's you promised yourself, whatever. Allow yourself to fantasize. There is a whole lot of data out there about the positive effects of envisioning your goal. Close your eyes and let yourself really feel whatever emotions you'd like. This may sound cheesy, but it really does help when you feel isolated and like no one really cares if you finish.


3. Beware the Vices and the Stress

Watch the drinking, smoking, caffeine, (insert your own vice). Life will continue after the dissertation and you'll want to be healthy enough to enjoy it. Graduate School takes enough of a toll on your health without you helping! That said, I am not suggesting you become an ascetic. Just watch yourself. If you notice that you are using alcohol (for instance) as a crutch, something has to change. I promise that your dissertation won't get written any faster if you drink a martini, or two, or three. I can attest to this (lest you think I'm a hypocrite).

Make time to exercise. You've got to. Even if it is only a half hour of stretching, working on a Liszt piano concerto, whatever. While I didn't graph it, I'm fairly sure there was a direct correlation between the days I exercised and the days I was most productive.


Meditate. I don't mean that you have to sit on a mat in the lotus position and hum. That is an option, however. Just take some quiet time alone to concentrate on your breathing. This can be in your house, or in some nice outside locale. I recommend this especially before you sit down to write.

Take breaks and take them often. Do not even attempt to do three hours of uninterrupted dissertation work. If you have three hours of work in you, it will happen on its own. Set a more reasonable goal, even if it is only fifteen minutes (see book recommendation below). USE A TIMER. A general rule, however, is that the break should be shorter than the work time.

Posture. While this may seem like a no-brainer, most people who sit at the computer all day have terrible posture (myself included). This really will affect your emotional/psychological well-being and your ability to focus. Make sure you have a good chair with good lumbar support. Your abdominal muscles should be supporting your spine. Your arms should be supported on your desk when you type. Better carriage gives you more energy. I forget my posture at almost an hourly rate, so I have a post-it on my computer that says "POSTURE." Your chiropractor will thank you.

4. Fifteen Minutes a Day

I've read quite a few books on how to write a dissertation and I'll be reviewing them here. One of the best, in my opinion, is Joan Bolker's Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes A Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis. Bolker has numerous worthy suggestions and excellent practical advice, but what I'd like to focus on is the "fifteen minute" idea. EVERYONE has fifteen minutes.

The hardest part to writing (anything) is getting started. Sitting down to "draft a chapter" is a far more daunting task than sitting down to write fifteen minutes of material. More often than not, 15 minutes will turn into an hour without you thinking about it. But, on the days it doesn't, the likelihood is that you will have at least a couple sentences of usable material. If you are feeling really unmotivated, I suggest what I call "barfing it out" (elegant, yes?). Don't worry if it isn't pretty or doesn't even make logical sense...just get it out of your head and on to the paper. Leave it be, then return to it the next day to see what you can extract from the gobbeldygook. You may be surprised.


The next installment will feature more practical advice on maintaining bibliographies, MS Word strategies, backups and exciting topics like that! I look forward to comments and helpful tips from my readers!!

On Teaching (Part I)

As someone who has taught and wants to continue to teach, when I read things like THIS it makes me terribly sad. While I know that particular example was meant as satire, it is not without a grain of truth. Academia seems to have a love-hate relationship with teaching. At some universities there is definitely more hate than love.

While I do not have vast years of experience, I do have a good sampling of different teaching environments...as a teaching assistant, as an instructor of my peers, as a lecturer for 300 students, as an instructor of record for 7 music majors at a small Christian liberal arts institution, and as an instructor for 25 non-music majors at the same institution. I have looked upon each of these opportunities as a learning experience. I hope that this does not change even when I have tenure somewhere.

I must say, I love the seminar model. While I have witnessed many wonderful lectures, my preference is for interaction...among the students and the professor. One of the best seminars I ever had was one where the professor gave an angle to the course with which he wasn't totally familiar. While "Women in Music of the Italian Renaissance" was a topic near and dear to his heart, we investigated some feminist theory which he admitted was a "stretch" for him. In the end, I think we ALL came out of it with more than if he had merely regurgitated the same syllabus of "standards" with which he was familiar.

I'm struck at how often a TAship has very little to do with merit and everything to do with financial aid. This is a huge disservice to the students and to the TA. I happen to think I've become a pretty great teacher, but I certainly didn't start out that way. When I was given my first TAship, I didn't even know what a TA was! I had never had a TA in undergrad. And there I was, expected to guide students who, in some cases, were merely a year behind me. I understand that first year TAships can't exactly be based on experience, so I'd revise my statement to say that continued TAships should be merit based. And merit? What does that mean?

The "merit" of teaching
Here are my top 5 indications of good teaching:

1. Never claiming perfection (but no self-deprecation either)
2. Willingness to learn
3. Seeing each class, no matter the subject, no matter how many times the course has been taught, as a new experience.
4. A student-centered model (as much as possible--difficult in large lecture classes).
5. A desire to teach in the first place (!) not just viewing it as an obligatory side-effect of being paid to do research.

So while it might be easy to fall into the cynicism expressed by the folks over at Rate Your Students (see first link), I'd much rather go the way of Barnet Bound.

Part II coming soon!

Teach to Learn

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies offers a three-part work* with an extended coda. I can't say I agreedwith everything, but I am grateful that someone is speaking out in defense of classical music. While I think his speech meanders a bit (it seems to cover a lot in one sitting), there are some true pearls of wisdom. This one was buried in "Part I":

Teaching is an education for the teacher, too, for you learn far more than you teach.

Good. Someone gets it. Unfortunately, I think there are far too many teachers who believe they have stopped learning (aack--what reason to live then??). When I tell people I'm getting a PhD in Musicology, the next question is usually: "So, are you going to teach?" asked in a way that insinuates "Well, what else would you do?" It just so happens that yes, I am going to teach. And yes, I WANT to teach....not just as a means to finance my research, but because I'm not done learning.

*three-part, I believe, courtesy of the Guardian.
Thanks to Elaine Fine for the original notice.

A big hole in MassCore

This is bad news for the Commonwealth, as far as I'm concerned. Why, in a state that is host to numerous conservatories and music schools, would there be no arts component in the core curriculum (MassCore)?

I get frustrated that we are still defending the value of the arts. It isn't as though the statistics don't exist--it is that no one wants to accept them. To accept them would mean changing the status quo and taking risks. It means throwing money in the direction of those forlorn painters, those stoned musicians, and those spacey actors!

Of course, I'm referring to stereotypes, but in a place where their contributions are valued so little, can we really blame them for being forlorn, stoned and spacey?

UPDATE: Some people get it.

Music-centered curriculum

Malcolm adds: "Sometimes I use music to do my math. I'll think of adding quarter-notes, half-notes. I put my notes together as math."

Here is an article about a remarkable charter school in Boston that centers its curriculum around music. The children are learning how to play the violin, yes, but also discipline, social engagement, listening skills, etc. Yet, in many public schools around the country, music programs are being slashed and burned. That's because you can't measure what one learns from music in a standardized test. Sure, you could have them identify chord progressions and define musical terms, but you certainly can't measure the skills they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

I wonder what would happen if we handed a violin to every child in every elementary school. I'm not naive enough to consider this a plan to save the world, but I do think it is time to invest in our children with renewed vigor...not by worrying about creating standards by which they should measure their achievement, but by helping them desire to achieve in the first place.