Fix My Grammar

Pushing Essays – A WC Tale

Based on actual experiences

Not long ago, a bright, young woman worked as a writing consultant in the Writing Center at MiraCosta College. She was very confident in her abilities to help others turn their dull, formless essays into “Mona Lisas” of the written word. All the students who needed help loved to have her read their papers; her suggestions were always so perfect and inspiring. No shift she worked ever left a student still needing the insights that she could provide. In her mind, not an essay existed that she couldn’t read and give constructive input to the student about in less than twenty minutes. Little did she know that she would one day be challenged beyond anything she, at that point, could possibly imagine.

 She was working in the Writing Center one dark, stormy night, nearing the end of her shift, when an unexpected gloom settled over the Writing Center in the form of a dejected student with a ten-page essay.  Holding up the thick mass of paper barely held together by a single, tiny staple in the upper left corner, the student looked at the writing consultant and simply said, “Kind lady, could you fix my grammar?”

 The consultant looked at the paper with a bit of dread. If she took this student on and did not live up to her usual performance, her record would be blemished beyond repair. Thinking to use the lateness of the hour as an excuse, and thus make him someone else’s problem, the consultant looked at the seemingly stationary hands of the wall clock and quickly realized that she still had fifteen minutes left in her shift. She could not just tell the student to come back tomorrow and send him on his way. Then her pride and ego took control. Taking her mighty pen in hand prepared to slay this monster paper, the consultant and the student sat down at a table, and the consultant began to read.

 The essay seemed to mock the consultant with its powerfully boring  recitation of old arguments about gun control, a topic so widely written about that it had been banned by most professors. The overly used dry facts and quotes endowed the essay with power to put even the most stalwart of professors and tutors into an endless stupor. The consultant had already read so many essays on this topic in her extensive career in the Writing Center that the topic couldn’t possibly hold any interest whatsoever for her; thus the essay held the greatest power of over her. However, determined to justify everyone’s faith in her abilities, the consultant buckled down, resolute in her task, and continued to read.

 Swiftly reading through the first page, the most obvious problem just seemed to be that the thesis was not clearly written. Easily fixed, the consultant thought. Then, as she turned the page and read further, the consultant’s face gradually became more and more contorted with horror. Too many ideas filled each paragraph, and organization was nonexistent. There were run-on sentences everywhere, misspelled words galore, and not a citation in sight. The task before her daunted the writing consultant.

 How could the student do this to her! Her track record was so perfect to be marred now by a student who seemed unable to perform the simplest of tasks: clicking the “spell check” icon. What was she to do? Where should she start? What did she say to the student? Then the writing consultant remembered that she had been taught all her life to be honest. And so, with a small shrug of her shoulders and a little shake of her head, she folded her hands on the table, leaned toward the student, looked him squarely in the eye, and said quite honestly, “Your essay sucks!”

  As much as that is exactly, and succinctly, what she wanted very much to say, she had also been taught to be polite. With a little smile, as much tact as she could manage, and choosing her words very carefully, the consultant took the remaining five minutes of her shift and began to explain to the student how to reorganize the paragraphs and essay so that every paragraph had just one idea, how to better word the thesis so it was more obvious to the reader, how to avoid the pitfalls of plagiarism, and yet still had a minute for a few finer touches of proper grammar and syntax.

 As the student gathered his things and began to walk away into the night with an offhanded “Thanks” in the consultant’s direction, the consultant had doubts that the student would take her suggestions to heart. As she prepared to leave, she began to contemplate what she had learned from the experience. What she learned was this: Not everyone willed be pleased with, or take, your advice; although most will. Also, not all papers will become the “Mona Lisas” that they are capable of becoming; but however little or much you are able to help, it’s always better for the student that you saw their essay first, even if it was just the first two pages.    

- Christina C.

Two semesters ago, I facilitated a learning community for English 201.  We met the very last day of the semester for one last shot at their final essay analyzing Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” Did protagonist Mookie do the right thing?  Everyone had their own tangled perspective on this prompt. Several students were present, and it was a chance for everyone to complete those finishing touches and receive any final input from their peers.  I’d met with one of the students the day before and during our tutoring session she ran through her litany of personal problems -which ran the gamut from insomnia to family members in rehab - that impeded her focus on the essay.  Well I couldn’t be the hero to get her life on track, but I did offer some fairly significant recommendations, so I was eager to see what she had done with her essay.  To my dismay, the paper seemed more convoluted than the day before!  I was overwhelmed:  any changes made at this point shouldn’t have been attempted the day of the final draft because they were too complex.  So instead my brain decided to fixate on surface errors…anything that I could help her fix was my target.  Unfortunately, I misunderstood her when she said that she wouldn’t be able to reprint her paper, and so I made a correction in pencil.  She was very upset by this and explained that she didn’t have a way of reprinting at MiraCosta.  Then matters got worse.  I tried to erase my mark, but of course instead of erasing properly it left one of those nasty gray streaks on the paper.  At this she started looking desperate and over wrought emotionally.  Her hands had that unsettling tremble people get during a panic attack or drug withdrawal.  I offered to white out the mark and attempt to write over it in black pen – yet another mistake.  By this point she was on the verge of tears because the paper looked “ugly,” her professor would be unhappy, she couldn’t reprint it, and I was pretty certain that Armageddon was around the corner as well.  Suddenly this LC was breaking down into a question of whether or not tutor Nicole did the right thing – and the evidence for analysis was pointing to a large NO.  The other students sat there awkwardly, until one of them kindly rose to the occasion and offered to retype the first page for her.    This dried up her would-be tears, and within five minutes the crisis was averted.  I, of course, was painfully conscious of the mistake I’d made.  It wasn’t my responsibility to make significant changes to her essay at the last minute. I had to let it be whatever it was at that moment, not easy for an enabler-rescuer-fixer like me.  But doing too much to help her pass English 201 arguably wouldn’t have been helping her to help herself, nor would it get anyone out of rehab or make the world a better place.  And taking grammatical matters into my own hands as some sort of parting gift wasn’t the proper course to take either.  I’m just thankful that other student jumped in to save the day and redeemed, for the most part, the objective of a learning “community.”

- Nicole C.

 I like Nicole's term of being an "enabler-rescuer-fixer." Pretty common in this work. So how do we remedy that? And how do we avoid doing the wrong thing? No easy answers. It strikes me that when it comes to grammar, the "fixer" part of the label is especially apt. Hmmm...

~Denise

Sometimes, especially toward the end of the semester, it's going to be just too late to "fix" anything.  And while "fixing" is generally discouraged anyway, I like my pencils, and there are times when I cannot restrain myself.  The trick is to ask first: "OK if I make a few notes on here?"  No one has ever told me no, Nicole, but thanks for reminding me why it is important to get permission.  I hate it when they cry.

Scott H.

Today was my very first appointment.  I was excited because I would finally get a chance to try out the techniques I'd learned in training.  I learn a lot from experience too so I knew this would help me get an idea of how I will do in this job.  I looked at the appt sheet and it was pretty self explanatory-ENGL 100, essay, teacher's name.  Then I looked at the name of the tutee.  I didn't know how to pronounce it, but it looked Russian.  I then grew very afraid as I struggled a lot with the ESL scenarios in tutor training.  The tutee came and was very kind.  She brought her flash drive (I had no idea how those worked, but luckily she did).  She showed me what she had written so far, which was a good three-quarters of a page and it had lots of good ideas to work with too.  She read the prompt to me which was pretty simple and really interesting.  Then she began reading her paper.  As we were reading, I could make sense of a lot of what she said.  It was not too bad.  There were a lot of fragments and lots of misspelled words but I had to hand it to her, her ideas were great!  I remembered an important tip from tutor training "Don't be grammar police", so I completely ignored her grammar and started to suggest that we work on the structure of her paper.  She needed paragraphs and she initially said she came in to make the paper longer so I thought that'd be a good place to start.  Unfortunately, she could not work past her own grammar issues.  As she scrolled through and read every sentence, she would continually turn and ask me things along the lines of "Is that the right word?", "Do you know a better word to explain what I am saying?", or "Am I spelling this right?"  When I really could not understand what she was saying at all, I would help her reword sentences but I still tried to redirect her to the structure of the paper and not every grammar error.  In the first paragraph alone, she went through almost every sentence picking apart all her words.  I looked at the clock after we finished going over the first paragraph and it was 4:30.  We finally moved through to the second and third paragraph and as we moved forward I encouraged her to mark places where she felt her grammar was particularly muddy and then come back later and try to make it more clear.  We finally reached the conclusion and our time was up.  I finished the session by telling her that she had great ideas throughout the whole paper and that now she just had to conclude it, which she was fine with.  I also told her that the next time she started a paper she might find it helpful to outline a bit.  Get some main points and then add the details that way it'd be easier to stick with one idea per paragraph.  She wanted to continue working, so I told her she could but that I just couldn't be there while she did.  She was very kind through the whole thing and she just continued working.

I walked away from the session and felt a little dissatisfaction.  I felt like maybe I hadn't helped her enough.  Like maybe I didn't tie up enough loose ends or maybe I could have said a little more in regards to the grammar.  The paper is due tomorrow and I only had one hour to work with her.  I also thought, "Am I always going to feel like this when I tutor an ESL student?"  I felt I did the best I could.  Of course, now that I've had time to process certain things, I wish I could go back and do some things differently.  I guess like Christina said you can't turn every paper into a "Mona Lisa" and in the end it is up to the student to change their paper.  So why do I still feel weird?  Haha...

- Nicci A.

 We have a natural desire to be "good" at what we do - which is helping students improve their papers.  So, when we find the paper won't be drastically improved or the student probably won't impliment the needed changes, it feels like a failure.  The "fix my grammar" request is one that I find particularly challenging.  It seems difficult to strike a balance between the natural inclination to just "correct" the mistakes versus creating a learning opportunity.  Sometimes their grammar skills are so basic that they can't figure out how to fix their sentences without being told.  Particularly in a drop-in, I'm learning that we can only do what we can in the time allotted, and if they are "in over their heads" it's not my place to say so, or take responsibility for it.  I just have to help in the ways that I can, and let go of the nagging "worry" that their paper won't be "A" material.

-Janette L.