Student Essay Feedback: Spelling

Spelling

1. How would you work with the writer in a tutoring session to develop the ideas into a more sophisticated essay?: I would first begin by asking questions about why their title is spelling and how his overall theme fits into what he has written so far. I would point out that although other goals he wrote are great goals, he needs to find one main goal and stick with it. In his case, I would ask more about his spelling issues and have him expand on this. What about spelling issues does he want to work on? I would also encourage him to expand on reading and its relationship to spelling. I would then have him organize these thoughts into outline and restructure his essay.
2. How would you work with the writer to express the ideas in more formal academic language?: I would work with this student by talking about how to transcribe his thoughts onto written language. For example, I would point out that although saying "my spelling kills me" gets point across, we need to be mindful of our audiences who are academic audiences. I would encourage him to think of several other phrases that might be more fitting for this expression.
3. How would you help the writer proofread for "oral" grammar/spelling errors: This is a difficult task because the student is not a native speaker. It would be difficult for this student to hear his own mistakes. Fortunately, the mistakes he made are something that can be visually identified unlike grammar errors. For example, if he were to fix the word 'faith' which he has spelled as 'fait,' I would repeat the word to him and ask him what syllable he thinks is missing there since 't' and 'th' has distinctive sound. Another example from his essay would be 'a star' which I assume he meant to write 'I start.' I would ask him about this and make sure this is what he was trying to say and proceed onto show him that 'a' although sounds a lot like 'I,' ultimately it is incorrect because it does not have a long 'e.' Also, when pointing out 'start,' I would emphasize that there is almost very silent 't' at the end and 'star' means something completely different than 'start.'