Shadowing 4/1/10

My shadow session tonight was with the same student that I observed last week. I was excited for this session, because I saw this second visit as an opportunity for me to observe the aftermath of revision, and if what Brittany told the student to work on really sank in to produce a better paper. However, as the session began to progress, I noticed that Brittany was telling this student to correct the same mistakes as before. Grammar was still an issue that Brittany had to make note of while going through the student’s paper. Small errors, such as the absence of commas, or incorrect punctuation and capitalization, were all addressed in this session, however these problems were not as frequent as they were in the initial session last week.

Stemming from these grammatical errors, were formatting errors that concerned the student’s inability to produce a correct heading on her paper and also the misuse of citations and quotations. Although these issues were prevalent last session, they seemed to be issues that Brittany more so had to “remind” the student to fix, rather than a “re-explanation” of why these areas needed adjustment. Despite the fact that these issues could be seen as “smaller” errors, in comparison to the bigger and broader ideas of the paper, I found that these issues were not actually so small, because they concerned the clarity of her paper and thus hindered the clarity of the ideas in the paper. Even though the student could tell Brittany what she was trying to say, it was very difficult for her to express her ideas clearly in the paper because the grammar and structure was not correct and clear.

Another problem that Brittany faced with this student again was the student’s lack of confidence in her ability to discuss the problems she was having in her paper. For example, the student would ask Brittany “What title should I have?” or “do I have transition here?” instead of first explaining to Brittany what she initially was trying to do before asking her how to correct an issue. Because the student struggled to express her thought process and actions taken towards revising this paper, effective communication could not be obtained in this session.

Although my observation may seem pessimistic because the same mistakes came up again, and also because of the communication barrier between the student and consultant, I ultimately think that this session showed improvement and progression in the student’s writing. Even though the same mistakes were made, they were not as frequent and as obvious as they were in the last session, which allowed for Brittany and the student to talk more about the ideas in this paper.