In our conversations and in her first assignment (a letter to me), Kailin identified coming up with examples and analyzing them as her biggest strength as a writer. From her writing samples I can see that mechanically/grammatically she is a strong writer.
The primary skill she wants to work on this semester is coming up with effective theses. She explained that oftentimes she is overwhelmed by all the ideas she wants to address, but she doesn’t know how to formulate a thesis that suits them. In addition, she expressed that she doesn’t know how to handle introductions and conclusions, so that is definitely something else we’ll work on.
Today in class I introduced the syllabus (KHo_Syllabus) to Kailin, which includes going through the entire writing process (thought letter > first > second > final draft) for two papers, culminating with a final research paper at the end. Kailin and I are both very excited about the class topic, The Asian American Experience. We are starting off by taking a critical look at the “Tiger Mom” controversy that has broken out in recent years, followed by some excerpts from Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.
Today we discussed the importance of using active reading techniques such as underlining and writing notes in the margins (Active Reading) and then looked over the articles themselves: one pro-Tiger Mom, one anti-, a critical perspective, and also a research study that was done recently about the phenomenon. Next we talked about how Kailin should approach her first thought letter (Thought Letters), which is due next week.
On Tuesday, I met with Maricruz. We began by discussing the assigned article, which was an academic article on Chilean protest music. She knows a lot about Latin American protest music, so I was hoping to find something for her that was informative and useful and not too redundant. This turned out to be a good piece, and she came to class having read it thoroughly. She was able to summarize the main points and add her own insight to her summary.
We then moved on to thesis statement practice. My standard approach to this, which is a good measure of how much practice the student will need, is to provide a basic statement or sentence such as “There should be more gun control laws” and asking the student to improve the statement and turn it into a more complex and arguable thesis statement. Maricruz had a lot of trouble with these exercises, and seemed to hesitate to simply “make something up” or get creative to improve the sentences. I am sure this is partly due to not having done this before, partly due to a general need for writing improvement, and partly due to nervousness/being in a one-on-one situation. I am hoping to practice this a lot more with her, and she seems eager to improve in this area. I think she will be great to work with and I look forward to seeing her progress by the end of the semester.