Haley, 5/10/13:
Haley turned in the final draft of her third paper for this week’s meeting. She had changed it drastically to improve her structure and flow and, in doing so, had added many repetitive or awkward sentences. She stated that she had been a bit short on time and had had to turn it in before she was completely satisfied with it. I told her that she could revise it as part of her final project, but made it clear that the revision would not count as the final version of Paper 3. She was relieved to be able to revise it. I had highlighted some of the awkward sentences and we spent some time going over them. She understood the problems and started to notice problematic sentences that I hadn’t highlighted. We discussed repetitiveness in general and the fact that it is a fairly easy problem to fix. I told her that I believe she is simply going through a waxing phase- I always think of my writing as waxing and waning (my sentences are too short and choppy, so I fluff them up, but then they get too repetitive and “fluffy,” so I have to cut them down again.) She just has to work to find a happy medium. We discussed her final project. She didn’t have too many questions about it and felt confident with it once she learned that her answers do not have to be as long as she thought (I showed her the handbook example on google docs- not long enough that she could read the answers, but just so that she could get a more concrete idea of what is expected of her.). Finally, she asked me for general feedback about her writing and for advice if she decides to take an English class in the future. We discussed the many ways in which she has improved and she stated that she is now more confident with her writing.
Maud, 5/10/13:
Maud turned in the final draft of Paper 3 for this week’s meeting. The paper had a solid argument and organization and contained very few grammatical errors. I was quite impressed with it and told her so. She plans to revise it for her final project and I supported her in this decision because I think that she can turn it from a good paper into a great paper. Her other papers have been edited many times and would give her less room to work. We discussed some of the improvements she can make to her third paper, the most important of which is changing the thesis to reflect the argument in the rest of the paper (it is too general at the moment). We also discussed comma use and some other sentence level issues. Maud will also revise two of her thoughtletters for the final project. We looked at both of these and discussed ways she can improve them. She pointed out most of the possible improvements herself. She stated that she was embarrassed by the amount of grammatical errors in the thoughtletters and we discussed the many ways she has improved since the beginning of the semester. We also spent some time discussing her cover letter and the appropriate format for cover letters. She had stated in the past that Professor Johnson gave her a document on cover letters. I have emailed Professor Johnson and will post the document if she sends it to me. Finally, Maud asked me for advice on writing papers for an English class she plans to take next semester.