Monday, March 31, 2008

Morgan and Fannie

The issue in the second article was something that is really hard to address. The main issue that Fannie faces is that she is a non native english speaker. She has struggled with teachers, classes, and now with the tutoring group because she doesn't know how to express herself. It seems like the tutor, Morgan needs to address her concerns and not tell her what is right to say and what is wrong. Fannie needs to be able to speak and write her own thoughts, and even when Morgan returns from the CCCC, she still finds herself worthless to helping Fannie, because she still does not know the underlying issues.
The article about therapy being a lot like a tutoring session was interesting. There are parallels that can be drawn to that idea, but there are questions that can be addressed. When does it become the tutor's duty to ask the student what is wrong? When does there need to be a line drawn between a therapeutic sesssion, and a learning session? I mean if the student has a problem with writing, and that is causing the "block" then I do think that the tutor should make some type of attempt to address the writers concern, and offer assistance to them.
What really needs to be noticed is the level of comfort in the tutoring session. The small group tutoring caused Fannie to be uncomfortable, and perhaps this should have been noticed and altered. Also, she was uncomfortable with the notion of her Nativeness being unaccepted, and she should have never felt this way.

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