World of English

SQ3R Reading Method--Q

"Q" is for QUESTION

1. Questions should have the effect of reducing a reading to smaller, more meaningful ideas. Ask yourself what you already know about this topic. What can you expect to learn from the chapter? Did the instructor say anything in class or on a handout about this chapter?

2. If the author is trying to present a particular point of view, ask yourself if the evidence justifies the position. Are there alternative explanations or points of view?

3. Convert topic headings into questions. A typical heading in a chapter on the American Revolution might be: "ECONOMICS EFFECTS OF THE REVOLUTION." You might shift this to: "What were the economic effects of the revolution?" "Who benefited from the revolution?" "Who suffered the most from the revolution?" "Who had the most to lose from an unsuccessful revolution?" Then read to answer these questions.

4. Try to answer the questions printed at the end of the chapter, if there are any.

5. Formulate "in-depth" questions as well as obvious ones.

6. Asking questions makes your reading more active. It stimulates curiosity and it establishes a kind of dialogue between the author and the mind of the reader.

Making the most out of online writing tutors and consultants

Online Writing Labs are certainly not something many people were imagining twenty years ago, but today they offer a convenient way—and, in fact, for many people, the only way—to share your writing with a professional writing consultant or writing tutor. Students can meet online with a writing consultant and have their paper workshopped, or they can submit it for a review and then get it back with feedback. There are a few differences, and therefore I would like to outline some strategies at making your session with a writing consultant as fruitful as possible.

1. You may need to shop around before you find an online writing consultant that is well trained and qualified. My experience has been that often times the online consultant is more likely to take over your paper, focus on grammar and editorial problems rather than content. This is because they have not been well trained in writing or one-on-one pedagogy, or they think that you want them to rewrite your paper so you get a “better grade.” Many online services will offer essay review, but they will not offer the one-on-one time with a professional consultant. Also, more expensive doesn't mean a better job. Paper reviews range from $20 to over $60 to have an essay reviewed, and most of the $20 services are as good as the $60 services. Don't hesitate to ask about the qualifications of the writing consultants you are working with or their training.

   Some services also offer to write your essays for you . . .

   HAVING YOUR ESSAY WRITTEN BY SOMEONE ELSE IS CHEATING—IT IS ACADEMIC DISHONESTY AND YOU CAN (and should) BE EXPRELLED FROM ALMOST ANY UNIVERSITY FOR CHEATING IN THIS WAY. NO CREDIBLE LEARNING INSTITUTION WILL OFFER TO WRITE YOUR ESSAY FOR YOU!!!

2. One of the most important matters, especially when working one-on-one with a writing consultant, is determine beforehand what you want to focus on. Since the sessions are often only one hour, and you may or may not be able to reschedule with the same consultant, coming up with a short list of things before the session that you want to focus on would be very helpful in making the best use of your time.

3. Make sure you will get your paper returned or your one-on-one session scheduled in time to incorporate your revisions into your essay before submitting it. Most essay review services guarantee a 24 hour turn around or can set you up with an appointment with a writing consultant within 24 hours. Be sure that gives you enough time to complete all the revisions you would like to make and do the final editing before submitting your last draft.

Just rereading Brooke's Minimalist Tutoring

I just reread Jeff Brooke's article, "Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work."  Brookes argues that the goal of a writing tutoring session is not to produce a perfect paper, but instead that the student learns by writing him or her self and has responsibility over the paper.  He carefully distinguishes the writing tutor's role from that of an editor.  I think this article, which I have from the St. Martin's Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, is a piece of timeless wisdom.  I think that is very important that the session be a learning experience.

I also think, however, that playing editor in a constructive way can assist students.  When going through a student's writing and noting grammatical errors, supplementing that with an explanation of how to avoid that error in the future, can be very corrective in a student's future writing.  If it is a continued mistake, and you take the time to point out why it is that mistake, and strategies to correct that mistake in the future, it is likely to impact the student him or herself when they sit down to revise by themselves, and when they write in the future.  Sometimes it takes continual reinforcement, too, to make writing grammatically something the student does out of habit, not only by thinking of it.  It is much the same as being able to speak in a second language, or being able to think and then speak in a second language.

How Your SAT Essay is Scored and What the Scores Mean

Use this audio presentation to learn how your SAT essay is actually scored, get some tips on maximizing that score, and understand what the SAT essay scores mean.

How Your SAT Essay is Scored and What the Scores Mean

Reading Skills

Often times, a student's reason for falling behind his or her classmates is not because of any lack of academic ability, but poor study skills. It is an important task of the tutor to not only teach the subject matter, but also to provide study skills training to help the student maximize their own time. Good study habits, effective reading and studying, good use of class time, and time management can all help struggling students achieve their potential. Study skills cab be learned, practiced, and perfected.

Often, a student would complain to me that they had “read the text,” but still had performed poorly on an exam or assignment. I would then ask them how they read the text. Some students are surprised for someone to ask them “how they read,” thinking there is only one way to read. That is very wrong—when I read a 6^th century logic text, a 20^th century play, a text for class, and the daily news, I likely read them all in different ways. It is important for students to understand what and why they are reading the text, and therefore the approach that they should take in reading it. Did they take notes? Did they underline things? Did they skim and then reread the text? Did they ask themselves questions about the text, or summarize the text to themselves as they read? Did they use a dictionary when they read? All these questions can help understand why the student did not do well on their test or homework assignment.

For teachers and tutors (and students), I suggest having a look at Vincent Miholic's “An Inventory to Pique Students’ Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies” in the Journal of Reading, October 1994, where Mr. Miholic discusses reading strategies. I have used a reading strategies inventory based on his research, and I find that helpful when initially working with a student on reading comprehension to better understand where they are in terms of their approaches to reading.   Students, you can actually print a reading strategies inventory test at this Web site offered by the Curry School of Education. 

Some Tips for a Good SAT Essay Score

There are several strategies to improve your SAT essay scores. Unfortunately, most of them aren't just a quick one sentence tip that will suddenly allow you to break through your threes into the upper echelons of the regular level six writers. Therefore, I suggest two elements that a good SAT essay should have. You can work on developing your writing skills by practicing essays and trying to incorporate these elements into it. I suggest you work with a teacher or tutor and have them review your essays and provide critical feedback and individualized strategies to help your writing where it needs it most. You can improve writing on your own, but if you are working with a teacher, tutor, or writing consultant, you are likely to have better results than by practicing alone.

1. ORGANIZATION—I normally try to ensure all of my students master the five paragraph essay format as they prepare for the SAT essay section. While it is not necessary to use this particular format for the SAT essay, it is effective. I use it, however, to ensure that the student can organize their essay and information in a readable, clear format. I make sure the student knows how to write a strong thesis and introductory paragraph, develop main supporting points, and compose a good conclusion. Another important part of organization, which I cannot emphasize enough, is the use of appropriate topic sentences. All the topic sentences should directly relate to your thesis and, of course, support it.  By making your topic sentences relate to your paragraph, and then making sure your supporting sentences relate to your topic sentence, you can ensure that every sentence relates to and supports your thesis statement.

2. GOOD SUPPORTING EVIDENCE—The way you use evidence an examples to support your points is where you can make the difference in a five rated essay and a six rated essays. Try to use original examples which clearly and unambiguously support your point. Often, the difference in a five and six essay is in the “cleverness” of the examples. Do they illustrate a unique point, supporting your thesis? Therefore, I try to ensure that a student understands what good supporting evidence is, knows how to introduce it, use it, and then analysis it or relate it to the point it supports. To do this, I often use either Aristotelian logic or the Toulmin model to demonstrate what an effective argument is and how to effectively support a claim. Good supporting evidence can be examples from literature, history, science, or from your own experience.

We will look at some of the big issues, like organization and supporting evidence, in more detail later.  I will be posting on some more elements of a good SAT essay, as well as some approaches to answering the essay questions in the next couple of days.

The Tutoring Cycle

The tutoring cycle is an important part of one-on-one tutoring as it helps to first, maximize the use of time, and second, ensure that realistic goals are set for the student and tutor's time together.  The tutor might be able to help the student develop a working thesis and outline of their primary points for a paper--they are not likely to be able to do that and help a student develop their body paragraphs and conclusion in the same session. 

There are several approaches to the tutoring cycle.  Some work best in the context of a writing lab, while others can be seen to work through the disciplines.  I like the "Twelve Steps in the Tutoring Cycle" model that is now used at tutoring centers in many universities.  It runs like this (click on the image to view in a separate window where you can see it all):

(You can read a much more indepth explanation for each of these steps at http://smccd.net/accounts/perezf/Cycle_Tutor_Explained.htm)

If you are a tutor, using the cycle to define your tutoring sessions can help ensure you make the best use of your time, meet the student's goals, and are realistic about what you can do together with the time you have.

How to Write a Thesis Statement

This is a short audio lesson on the thesis statement.  It discusses what a thesis statement is, how it functions in an essay, and some qualities of a good thesis statement.  It is most helpful for high school and college writers.

Download ThesisStatement.mp3 (10031.1K)

Chicago Report on Tutoring Services

Chicago Public Schools' Department of Evaluation and Data Analysis recently released its SES (Supplemental Education Service) report with interesting findings. It did demonstrate that students who had access to tutoring (at least forty hours) made more progress than students who were not tutored. But what was most interesting was the fact that in reading, students working with online tutoring made the most significant gains, often with the fewest hours of instruction. Students working with an online tutor and content made more significant gains than with any onsite provider. In math, significant gains were also made by students receiving online math tutoring. Hour per hour, some of the highest gains were made in online tutoring programs.

(It is also important to note that this was not one-on-one tutoring, which is most effective—these online tutoring courses had 10-15 students).

Attendance was lower in online tutoring programs, ranging from 72% to 64% (compared to the average of 82%), likely because of the flexibility and the fact it is easier to “skip out” on someone you don't have to see face-to-face. I hypothesize that students were also less likely to do any assigned homework from their online tutors as well, for much the same reason as attendance rates were lower. This may have also impacted their gains.

Eight percent of parents surveyed agreed tutoring had improved their children's study effectiveness. Eight two percent said their child could do their homework easier after tutoring. Eight percent agreed that tutoring had caused their children's grades to raise.

Tutoring is Teaching, But Teaching is Not Tutoring

Anyone familiar with the literature knows that there are great pedagogical differences between one-on-one tutoring and teaching in a classroom.  This makes sense, since in a classroom environment the teacher is trying to enable learning in 30 individuals at the same time, where varied approaches to reach different learning styles must be taken, and information must be delivered on multiple levels so that all the students can acquire knowledge, even if at multiple levels.

With on-on-one tutoring, however, the approach is much different.  If I know a student is going to be working with me long-term, use of a learning style/multiple intelligence assessment, such as the Index of Learning Styles, or personality type test, like the Jung-Myers-Briggs test, is very useful to determine how the student is likely to acquire knowledge.  I have also found that an enneagram test can help determine approaches that might be suited for the individual student.  After the individual’s learning style has been determined, the tutor can better shape instruction to favor the student’s individual learning style.  Using a varied approach is still helpful to help expand the student’s abilities and keep interest levels high, but by focusing on the students learning style, the tutor can maximize knowledge acquisition.

Tailoring the instruction and tutoring sessions to the student’s learning style and personality type is only part of the difference.  With one-on-one tutoring, the instructor does not have to present information on various levels, but instead can meet the student where they are at through an initial assessment. As the tutor works continuously with the student, they can also identify further strengths and weaknesses as they learn what the student struggles with and more easily acquires.  While teachers in a classroom environment also learn what particular weaknesses an individual student might have through errors on homework and tests, they must use a constant time/benefit analysis to determine how much to focus on that particular issue for the individual student and the needs of the greater class.  The tutor does not have this problem; he or she can quickly determine the student’s weakness and devote extra energies to correcting it without hindering the rest of the learning process.  For example, building in a review of a weak area each session or giving some take-home problems allows the tutor to address the student’s deficiency over time, even if moving on to other areas.

Tutoring is teaching, if teaching is “enabling learning.”  However, teaching is not tutoring, which is a personalized and effective approach to knowledge acquisition.  Check back for more about one-on-one tutoring pedagogy in the upcoming days.