The Reading and Writing Center (RWC)
Some of the work I've done
Overview
In the fall of 2017, I worked almost entirely with registered students, whereas this spring I have spent time with both registered and one-time students. I have had sessions with students across disciplines and age groups, and have done a great deal of tutoring specifically with ELL students. With them, I often end up noting recurring grammar issues, and we focus on those until they are able to catch their own mistakes.
Other students generally come for revision help. From my experience in the last year, I've learned that, much of the time, a problem in a paper can easily be mended if I just ask students to explain what they meant in so-and-so section, because they almost always voice their ideas in a way that makes complete sense. Then I can simply encourage them to put down on paper exactly what they just verbalized.
Another common issue is the lack of a coherent organizational structure in an essay. But my students and I have tried strategies like reverse outlining, tracing the line of logic in the argument, reviewing the topic sentence of each paragraph, and sharpening the thesis, with great success. Almost every student I have tutored is noticeably more confident about his/her assignment by the time s/he leaves the session.
Example
One of my registered students in the fall was a freshman athlete taking ENC2135. Spanish was her first language, and, since she was still quite new to English, she had a difficult time understanding her professor's explanations of genre and other concepts and the assignments for the course. We often spent the first part of a session reviewing the core ideas behind the prompt for the project that she was working on. Because of the difficulty of English for her, she also lacked confidence in her writing and often said she was a terrible writer. She apologized for this all the time.
Because I was able to work with her every week, we spent time in every stage of the writing process, brainstorming together, discussing how to shape a solid thesis, organizing and reorganizing her drafts, etc. Over the course of the semester, due in great part to her own enthusiasm, diligence, and intelligence, her writing improved drastically. When she came into our last session, she announced ecstatically that she had gotten an A in the class. She then gave me a hug and said, "I know for sure I couldn't have done well without your help." I don't know about that, necessarily, but what I do know is that it was incredibly rewarding to see the progress she made that fall, to see the greater ease with which she could communicate her many ideas in writing.
Student Testimonials
Chan Hee Lee, Master's student in Public Administration and former Assistant Secretary to the President for Civil Service Discipline at Office of the President, Republic of Korea
"I will receive a master's degree from FSU in May 2018. My major is Public Administration. For graduation, I wrote an article on Regulatory Standards for Career Civil Servant's Political Activities in South Korea. This was challenging for me. I have worked in the South Korean government for 12 years, but this was the first time I have written academic articles. So I asked the FSU Graduate Writing Center for help, and they recommended me to Esther Kim. She and I have been working together for three months since February 2018. And I was able to complete my article with her help. She designed the academic logical structure of my writing and refined my expression. And she read my draft as a critical reader and pointed out the issues in my writing from a scholarly point of view. Thanks to her, I expect to be able to graduate safely.
I worked with her and found that she had some excellent competencies as follows:
First, she has expertise in working with the literature. She is accustomed to explaining grammar and expression. Especially, I asked a lot of things that are not understandable to foreigners who are not familiar with English even though they are natural to native speakers. She explained to me the principle of these things logically.
Second, she has excellent teaching skills. She first tried to figure out the needs of the student. And she studied to find the right educational method for me as an international student.
Third, she showed curiosity and enthusiasm. The subject of my article is related to South Korea's complicated political situation and its unique historical and social background, so it was obviously not an easy subject for her. She has not covered this topic before. However, she was very interested in my topic and displayed active explorations of things in order to help me.
Fourth, she showed excellent intercultural competency. The situation in the United States where she lives and the subject in my thesis are different. She understood this cultural difference. And she aimed to create useful conclusions based on this.
Finally, she is very good at making good relationships with students. She formed a rapport with a soft attitude. And she showed great empathy by focusing on the other person's words. This attitude of hers will be a very positive factor in her future career life."
Hyerin Bak, PhD student in the School of Information
"Our tutoring sessions in the last fall semester were helpful. I was writing literature reviews as a doctoral student and revising an IRB application to be reviewed.
I liked that Esther's sessions were instructional. Instead of that she edit all my writing, she helped me to have an opportunity to think about my mistakes in writing and come up with solutions. She also tried to explain grammatical rules for me when I was curious about even small things. As an international student, this helped me correct my writing habit not to have some grammatical mistakes. It was also helpful for me to know how my writing could be understood by someone else. I liked she could suggest better phrases or expressions I did not know. And, I enjoyed the sessions because she was friendly!"