Role Playing and Punctuation Project

Today's punctuation paragraph was interesting. It was quite the project to try to include all of the different marks and all of the different ways that they can be used. It seems like it would be a lot easier to identify them from a piece that was already written they to purposely use them in one's own writing, but it was still fun.

The best part for me was when we read the textbook's tutoring dialogue. Several of the lines seemed really cheesy, but it still provided good insight into what techniques could be beneficial to use in such situations. It was a good springboard into an effective discussion about how to handle people who really haven't done anything to prepare for their assignment. I thought it was funny how, it seemed to me, people gave recommendations of what to do in that circumstance that corresponded to their personalities. I don't know exactly how I would respond, it would probably depend on the exact situation, but I think I'd do all I could to help the student. I also thought it was effective a the beginning of class to address how we would approach the ESL papers. Just discussing the issues in the paper from a detached perspective helped me to evaluate how I work with ESL students. I think that the worst-case scenario would be if an ESL student came in without having done any preparation for their paper... however, I'd imagine that has and will happen on occasion. The techniques discussed today will help: just work with what you have, be positive, and invite them back for more help.