Course Credit Tutoring
English 393 and Honors 290 and 291 are restricted to sophomores, juniors, and seniors. In addition to the orientation and the tutoring, these students meet twice a month at 5:45 p.m. for about 50-60 minutes. These meetings give tutors a chance to ask questions, compare experiences, and talk about paper topics. We also have presentations of topics which are of interest and concern to the students. These are self–managed courses. You have some flexibility in deciding which meeting you come to, because each meeting takes place twice.
Class meetings - Please see the Syllabus on this website for current schedule
Note: All activities, including class meetings, take place at the Literacy Center, 1122 W. Loyola Avenue (773-508-2330). Please note that the FIRST REQUIREMENT is the orientation session you attend if you have never tutored at the Literacy Center before. Please check the main page of the website for the orientation schedule. The 5 required meetings take place in the late afternoon before tutoring begins, with each meeting being offered on two separate days. You choose one of the two. If you have an evening class and cannot attend either of the scheduled class meetings, please contact the instructor. The course is taught by Ms. Jacqueline Heckman, Director, LCLC. There will always be some students who will not be able to come on the days selected; in that case you are obliged to email and arrange another time to meet. If you miss a meeting, that is missing class and that will lower your grade (see the grading requirements on the syllabus).
Credit-hour requirements:
For 1 hour of credit you agree to:
1. Attend the orientation program. Tutor one night each week for the semester and attend all bimonthly class meetings. You agree to arrive before 7 p.m. one night each week and to tutor or to undertake other volunteer duties for the evening as needed (filing, typing, sorting books, etc.) as requested by the managers. You agree to make up any evening of tutoring that you miss because of your absence.
2. Write all the papers outlined on the syllabus. Instead of the last research paper, you will write a final paper that will be approximately 3-4 pp.
For 2 hours of credit you agree to:
1. Attend the orientation program. Tutor two nights each week for the semester and attend all bimonthly class meetings. You agree to arrive before 7 p.m. two nights each week and to tutor or to undertake other volunteer duties for the evening as needed (filing, typing, sorting books, etc.) as requested by the managers. You agree to make up any evening of tutoring that you miss because of your absence.
2. Write all the papers outlined on the syllabus. Instead of the last research paper, you will write a final paper that will be approximately 5-6 pp.
For 3 hours of credit you agree to:
1. Attend the orientation program. Tutor two nights each week for the semester and attend all bimonthly class meetings. You agree to arrive before 7 p.m. two nights each week and to tutor or to undertake other volunteer duties for the evening as needed (filing, typing, sorting books, etc.) as requested by the managers. You agree to make up any evening of tutoring that you miss because of your absence.
2. Write all the papers outlined on the syllabus including the last research paper which will be from 9-10 pp. or, with permission of the Director, complete a research project.
Tutoring Policies: You are required to tutor one or two nights a week, depending on the number of credits for which you are registered. If you are ill, you must phone the manager at 773-508-2330 to report that you will be absent; you must make up the tutoring session at a later date. If your regular learner is ill and notifies you, you must still come to the Center where you will be assigned to tutor a different learner or to perform some other task for the Center (filing, typing, etc.).
Written Assignments
There are two kinds of writing assignments in addition to the assigned readings:
- 1) Journal: You should start keeping a journal immediately, reflecting on the orientation session and, soon, on your tutoring experience. You may submit these in person or on Blackboard. Later journals will have other assigned topics. Consult the syllabus for more information. One journal will be due for each week that the Literacy Center is open - 10 in all.
2. Writing Assignment: The aims of these papers are also clearly spelled out in the entry for each meeting on the syllabus. You may submit these in person or on Blackboard.
In this group, the strongest papers integrated ideas from Colvin's book with tutoring experiences, sometimes showing that her advice did not apply well to advanced learners (certainly true). These papers also incorporated specific details from lessons. For example: Not "my learner mispronounced lots of words" but instead, "My learner had difficulty with vowel combinations, especially ea and ei, always trying to make them two sounds rather than one." Not "we had free conversation" but "we discussed what we had done that day; I made a mental note of her pronunciation problems and a couple of big grammar errors, and before we finished I had spent a few minutes talking about each one, writing her sentence and then helping her correct it."
In your account of your tutoring, it is crucial that you are specific. If you write that your learner "has a good command of the sound system," how does that correlate with the five levels we use at the LC? Did you consult our 5 levels when you made this assessment? What suggests "good" to you, as opposed to "adequate" or "basic"? What letters and groups are pronounced almost perfectly? Which ones need work? If you write that the learner has "a good grasp of grammar," why do you think so? What sorts of breakdowns in communication occur? None? Some? Are such breakdowns frequent? For example—what exactly? Generalizations about your learner's skills are not useful. They don't suggest a careful assessment or a basis for a lesson plan, and they don't suggest that you are using the LC's published guidelines as you form your assessments.
If at any time you have questions about grading, please contact the instructor. Well-written but general papers fare less well than well-written papers that are specific to your experience. Papers with grammar errors or major writing problems will be graded in the C to B- range, no higher. Specific writing problems will always be identified and suggestions for their improvement offered.
These assignments are not the place to repeat generalizations about literacy; they are the place to comment on your experience and what it means. After all, if you paraphrase the discussion sheets used in the orientation session, you are pretty much repeating what you have been told. That doesn't fit most people's ideas of a good learning experience. There are lots of general things to say about literacy and adult education; the task—the whole point of this course—is to see what happens when theory meets practice.
There will be comments on your paper and suggestions for editing changes, along with your grade; for the grading scale, see the syllabus. Ask questions if you are not sure what the issues are!
Course Description
a. LCLC Internship in Adult Literacy: Teaching English to Adults (English 393)
The LCLC is officially connected to the curriculum of the Department of English and constitutes a major commitment to service learning in the Department. The LCLC sponsors an internship in adult literacy, English 393: Teaching English to Adults, for one to three hours of credit. Interns tutor in the LCLC one or two nights (any two that they choose) each week and form the core of our tutoring staff (volunteers often prefer to tutor on one night only). The purpose of this internship is to offer students experience in teaching adults to read and write English in a program that combines tutoring adults at a literacy center with a program of reading and writing about the impact of adult literacy on the discipline of English linguistic and literary studies. For details on variable credit requirements, see the current syllabi.
The internship is supervised by a member of the Department of English who meets regularly with the students who enroll in the course. The faculty member coordinates the students' experience at the tutoring center with the academic program of reading and writing and also meets with the students privately two or three times each term. The internship balances direct experience in tutoring adults with research into such issues as the history of literacy programs; the nature of local, state, and national governmental support of them; the response of professional organizations in English, including the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) to literacy problems; and the efforts of colleges and universities to use literacy programs as means to bridge narrowly professional and wider social concerns.
b. Honors Tutorial (Honors 290 or 291)
Students enrolled in Loyola's Honors Program may take a one–to three–hour tutorial for honors credit (Honors 290 or 291). The syllabus, assignments, and requirements are the same as those for students in English 393.
College of Arts & Sciences Statement on Academic Integrity
A basic mission of a university is to search for and to communicate the truth as it is honestly perceived. A genuine learning community cannot exist unless this demanding standard is a fundamental tenet of the intellectual life of the community. Students of Loyola University Chicago are expected to know, to respect, and to practice this standard of personal honesty.
Academic dishonesty can take several forms, including, but not limited to cheating, plagiarism, copying another student’s work, and submitting false documents. Academic cheating is a serious act that violates academic integrity. Cheating includes,
but is not limited to, such acts as
• Obtaining, distributing, or communicating examination materials prior to the scheduled examination without the consent of the teacher
• Providing information to another student during an examination
• Obtaining information from another student or any other person during an examination
• Using any material or equipment during an examination without consent of the instructor, or in a manner which is not authorized by the instructor
• Attempting to change answers after the examination has been submitted
• Unauthorized collaboration, or the use in whole or part of another student’s work, on homework, lab reports, programming assignments, and any other course work which is completed outside of the classroom
• Falsifying medical or other documents to petition for excused absences or extensions of deadlines
• Any other action that, by omission or commission, compromises the integrity of the academic evaluation process
Plagiarism is a serious form of violation of the standards of academic dishonesty. Plagiarism is the appropriation of ideas, language, work, or intellectual property of another, either by intent or by negligence, without sufficient public acknowledgement
and appropriate citation that the material is not one's own. It is true that every thought probably has been influenced to some degree by the thoughts and actions of others. Such influences can be thought of as affecting the ways we see things and express all thoughts. Plagiarism, however, involves the taking and use of specific words and ideas of others without proper acknowledgement of the sources, and includes the following:
• Submitting as one's own material copied from a published source, such as print, Internet, CD-ROM, audio, video, etc.
• Submitting as one's own another person's unpublished work or examination material
• Allowing another or paying another to write or research a paper for one's own benefit
• Purchasing, acquiring, and using for course credit a pre-written paper/
The above list is in no way intended to be exhaustive. Students should be guided by the principle that it is of utmost importance to give proper recognition to all sources. To do so is both an act of personal, professional courtesy and of intellectual honesty. Any failure to do so, whether by intent or by neglect, whether by omission or commission, is an act of plagiarism. A more detailed description of this issue can be found at http://luc.edu/english/writing.shtml#source .
In addition, a student may not submit the same paper or other work for credit in two or more classes without the expressed prior permission of all instructors. A student who submits the same work for credit in two or more classes without the expressed prior permission of all instructors will be judged guilty of academic dishonesty, and will be subject to sanctions described below. This applies even if the student is enrolled in the classes during different semesters. If a student plans to submit work with similar or overlapping content for credit in two or more classes, the student should consult with all instructors prior to submission of the work to make certain that such submission will not violate this standard.
Plagiarism or any other act of academic dishonesty will result minimally in the instructor’s assigning the grade of "F" for the assignment or examination. The instructor may impose a more severe sanction, including a grade of “F” in the course. All instances of academic dishonesty must be reported by the instructor to the chairperson of the department involved, and to the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The chairperson may constitute a hearing board to consider the imposition of sanctions in addition to those imposed by the instructor, including a recommendation of expulsion, depending on the seriousness of the misconduct. In the case of multiple instances of academic dishonesty, the academic dean of the student's college may convene a hearing board.
Students have the right to appeal the decision of the hearing board to the academic dean of the college in which they are registered. The decision of the dean is final in all cases except expulsion. The sanction of expulsion for academic dishonesty may be imposed only by the Provost upon recommendation of a dean. Students have a right to appeal any finding of academic dishonesty against them. The procedure for such an appeal can be found at http://www.luc.edu/academics/catalog/undergrad/reg_academicgrievance.shtml .
The College of Arts and Sciences maintains a permanent record of all instances of academic dishonesty. The information in that record is confidential. However, students may be asked to sign a waiver which releases that student’s record of dishonesty as a part of the student’s application to a graduate or professional school, to a potential employer, to a bar association, or to similar organizations.
Approved by the CAS Council of Chairs & Program Directors on 9/17/07; Endorsed by the CAS Academic Council on 9/19/07