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Sequencing CT Work: Establishing Session Plans and Goals
by Laurie Baker
2002

 I. Assessment of Student Needs
 II. Establishing Goals
 III. Plan:

1. Simple grammatical errors: commas, semi-colons, colons, pronoun/antecedent, punctuation with quotes, etc.
2. Handbook as reference/resource tool.
3. Syntax/parts of speech
4. Sentence types: simple, compound, complex, compound/complex.
5. Sentence variety/combining/economizing sentences
6. Verbs (eliminating "be" verbs)
7. Clear, concise, intellectually provocative premise statement.
8. Introduction.
9. Quote integration
10. Sentence- and paragraph-level transitions.
11. Organization
12. Connecting observations an essay raises to the premise statement.
13. Conclusions. 

IV. Interventions
 V. Evaluation of Interventions.
 
This is only one way to imagine how the CT tutorial might progress over the term.  Over the course of our teaching CT, each of us has established our own interventions and how we imagine the sequencing of CT. Our first step is to think about how we imagine the work of CT: is it to offer support?  Is it to be an adjunct to SC?  Is it to offer the student concrete local writing tools that they can then use along with the work of SC?  When we tutors have established our goals for CT, we can then begin to design the course.  For me, the work of CT is to offer students concrete local writing tools that they can incorporate as they explore larger writing concerns in SC.  The more tools students have, the more control they have in shaping their essays.  One of the exciting elements of teaching is that each of us imagines a course in our own ways and a forum such as this allows us an opportunity to share and enrich each other's courses.

My  CT tutorials often follow this pattern: assess new problems, re-establish goals, evaluate prior tutoring (that is, can student recognize a comma splice, correct it, and repeat the grammatical convention? If so, this is no longer a problem but rather a proofreading error), progress toward long term goals.

1. Assessment: Each student presents with his/her own unique set of difficulties and levels of problems.  It is essential to recognize that each student moves at her own pace, has her own goals that she would like to achieve.  With this in mind, the above plan is only an outline that needs to be adjusted to fit each student's situation.  Some students progress at a faster rate; others require a slower pace. It may not be feasible to complete the entire list, which is why I put concerns that are more the realm of the SC teacher toward the end. They are not high on my priority list.  If I had to prioritize the above list, I'd say that 1-5 are the points I place more emphasis on.  I like to read not only the diagnostic but another piece of writing to establish a pattern of grammatical error. At the first tutorial, I work with the student to help establish some short term and long term goals for the course.  The rational for gathering student input for goal making is to a) allow students to assume personal responsibility for this course; to allow them to have a stake in the course; b) gather input from the student as most students have a sense where they are weak with regard to grammar and can often add valuable insight in planning the tutorial sessions.  (At every session, I always ask students what they would like to work on and try to address this issue during the session as part of my plan.)   Goals should be attainable, reasonable, and measurable.  A short term goal might look like this:  By the end of the third tutorial session, student will be able to identify and use the grammatical convention for using commas with coordinating conjunctions when joining compound sentences.  A long term goal might look like this:  By the end of the term, student will be able to identify a sentence fragment and rewrite phrase into a complete sentence.

2. Simple Grammatical Errors/ Learning to use Handbook: I usually start with the easiest grammatical error--it gives the student a sense of accomplishment and often eases their frustration.  As part of teaching students to identify and correct errors, I also use this time to invite students to crack the handbook and to learn how to use it as a resource tool.

3. Syntax/Parts of Speech: Somewhere around the third session, we explore syntax and parts of speech.   Rationale: 1) If students can recognize parts of speech and understand how they work together to build a sentence, they can begin to recognize sentence fragments and run-on sentences in order to correct this error in their writing. 2) By understanding syntax and parts of speech, students can begin to recognize awkward structures such as misplaced modifiers, dangling modifiers, and other weird structures such as substituting a prepositional phrase for the subject of the sentence. 3) The understanding of grammar requires that students understand how the English sentence is constructed and parts of speech.  By understanding syntax and parts of speech, students can apply the rules. If, for example, they can recognize that a sentence has two subjects and two predicates and is joined with a conjunctive, then they know they need a comma.  (Often times, once students learn that they need a comma before "and" or "but," they will put commas before all "ands" and "buts"  -- even if the "and" or "but" is joining two verbs and not two sentences.)  Also, if students understand sentence structure and parts of speech, this will help them when they begin to experiment with sentence variety and economizing of language.

4. Sentence Types within English Language: From sentence structure and parts of speech, students explore the types of sentences within English:  simple (subject/predicate), compound (joining two similar sentences together--I like to tell students that if one sentence completes the thought, action of the previous sentence, that this is usually a good clue to combine the two sentences together), and complex. This prepares students to begin to explore sentence variety within their writing. Often, students write in simple sentence structures which creates monotony, redundancy, and interrupts the flow of an essay.  However, students must first understand the possible ways to construct a sentence before they can experiment with sentence variety. 

5. Sentence Variety/Combining/Economizing Sentences: Somewhere around the fifth to sixth week, students work on sentence variety.  A sample goal for this session might look like this:  students will be able to identify a paragraph in their writing that uses simple sentence structure and re-write it using compound, simple, and complex sentences without changing the meaning of the paragraph.  During this session, students are asked to identify a paragraph or two with predominately simple sentence structure and to re-write this paragraph using compound and complex structures.  Students explore moving subordinate phrases to beginning of sentence for clarity and flow. Once students have grasped how to play with sentence structure, students explore combining and economizing sentences to eliminate redundancy.  Much like the sentence variety exercise, they are asked to identify sentences that are redundant and wordy and to re-write.

6. Verbs:  If a student has a clear understanding of sentence structure, parts of speech, and how to write in a variety of sentence structures, they are ready to experiment with verbs.  Most students resort to simple verbs--mainly "be" verbs. Students are asked to circle all of the verbs in their papers, and often  they are surprised to find a good number (it's not unusual for a student to have 50 or more in a three page paper). Since the verb fuels the sentence with its energy, students are encouraged to use strong verbs and to eliminate "be" verbs whenever possible.  Not only does this make their writing stronger, it also forces them to restructure their sentences.  During this tutorial, students are asked to circle "be" verbs and to re-write a paragraph without "be" verbs. Although this exercise challenges many students, it has a powerful effect and illustrates how sentences and writing can become stronger simply by using strong verbs.

7. After Midterm evaluations: Progressing to Premise Statements: As we know, students work at their own pace.  Some students struggle with learning sentence structure and grammatical rules throughout the term; others progress rapidly.  Whether a student is ready to progress to more advanced writerly concerns remains the decision of the tutor. After midterm, if a student is ready to progress, we begin to explore the premise statement.  Students are asked to consider what their essay is about. They are asked to identify the premise statement of their essay, the moment when the essay defines for the reader what it will think about, work through, and/or invite readers to consider.  Students then begin to explore how to write a clear, concise, intellectually provocative premise statement.  From this moment, students can begin to think about the essay as a whole and progress beyond the sentence itself.  They can begin to consider how the essay develops the premise, how it makes connections (from here, of course paragraph issues can be explored as well as transitions and organizational issues).

8. Introductions:  Students are asked to read their introduction and to consider how it sets up their paper as well as their premise.  They are asked to rewrite the introduction in order to set the paper up and to draw their reader into the essay.  We usually talk about the fact that intros are often written last, after the rest of the paper has been set.

9. Quote Integration:  For me, this is a CT issue.  And throughout the term, students and I have most likely explored how to properly cite and document using MLA citation. As part of learning transitions, we explore how to set up quotes for the reader.  More than actually exploring how quotes are used in an essay to develop argument, we explore ways to connect the quote to paragraphs and sentences within the essay. Students are asked to consider what work their quote choice does for the progression of their paper and the development of the premise. They are asked to identify gaps in the text between their writing and the quote and to explore techniques of connecting the quote at both the paragraph and sentence level.

10. Transitions:  At both the sentence level and paragraph level, students are asked to identify gaps in the text that readers are required to fill in (when in fact, it is the essay's job to fill in the gaps for the reader).  I show them a cheap trick for building transitions: students are asked to list what one sentence (or paragraph) is about and then do the same for the next sentence/paragraph.  Using the language in their list, they are asked to construct as many sentences as necessary in order to link the paragraphs and/or sentences together for the reader.  They are then asked to identify other places in their text that require transitions and repeat this process.

11. Organization:  If there is time in the course, we can explore organization.  There are many ways to explore organization, ranging from numbering paragraphs and cut and paste exercises (this is a good use of the computers in the Writing Center).  Students are asked to group like paragraphs together, and of course, once they group the paragraphs together, they are then asked to write transitions. It is important that students understand that they can't just cut and paste and be done: more than likely there will be gaps and transition writing will be necessary.
 
All of these steps are, in many ways, interlinked, and at times it is difficult to isolate them.  Rarely, do my CT students complete this entire list; at times I have students who require repetitive instruction on sentence structure, grammatical rules and re-writing of sentences. And then, there are those students who progress at a faster rate and who are quite interested in organization and transition work, for example.

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