Communication Basics: Being Willing: (A Tutoring Story)

Some of my best experiences come from one-on-one tutoring.  What is especially helpful is to know that for young minds the emotions are especially paramount based on the development stages of Fowler and others. In all my tutoring, I always assess the student and parents before I agree to take on an assignment.  I perform a basic SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis and then determine whether or not I can help or if they need someone else.

During the start of my tutoring contact, the general parent plea is help my child do better in school.  The general plea of the student is help me do better, so my teachers and  my parents will get off my back.  I say the latter a little tongue in cheek.  They seriously just want to be able to do the task that the school is asking them to perform.  They are usually very willing to take me on as long as I indicate what it is that they need and they agree with that assessment and the realize I can also provide what they need to their satisfaction.

Because here I am referring to things in a more confidential setting in the case of tutoring, I am not going to use names.  If I did that, it might be harder for me to find students to tutor.  I've tutored in California and the Midwest and it can be really gratifying.

On one occasion, I did have a young student for whom friendship was particularly important.  It came down to counseling them through the issue of a supposed best friend who wasn't very friendly.  They needed a little coaxing to help them be willing to find another best friend.  That experience of letting go of a not so good best friend, helped that student flourish, but while they were not willing to let go of the not so good friend, their grades were suffering.  Once this change happened where there was a change in friends, this student experienced more the joy and the connections with other students that feed that joy.  I helped her reduce her grief at school.

It was fun afterward to watch this young student joyfully jump into their seat happy to learn.  Sometimes all you do is give a person a reason to smile again, by helping them to let go of those who are barriers to their life rather than openings for joy.

One other quick note on this student relevant to the struggles of students today.  I shared with the student a saying: "If you chase two rabbits, then both will escape".  It helped them then to focus enough on each assignment rather than suffering from significant distractions.  They even ran around the house teaching the rest of the family this principle.  Sometimes tutoring has its own rewards.

One last part of this story.  So as usual, I worked myself out of my job and the student became strong enough to handle what was needed on their own.  Every parent apologizes to me as a tutor, when they say I am no longer needed.  They don't realize that this is my greatest badge of honor:  "I don't need you anymore, because I can now do it on my own".  I'm so glad they can.  That is my satisfaction.

Sincerely,

Jon

Communication basics: Classical Rhetoric and the Cutting Edge Logic of Computers

Quintilian, a Roman rhetorician, organized rhetoric into its classical five parts.  Later rhetoricians like Campbell tried to also organize words into similar categories like those of the larger aspects of a public address.  Some have speculated that this is the source for the semantic domains of Eugene A. Nida called TEAR.   But I rather think that his semantic domains may have risen out of the success of computers and their technical language.

Computers and their wild success are based on approximately 6 major themes, logics, or categories. Computers are critical to understanding both the logic and the history behind my ARWAT approach to basic communication.  Nida could have derived his four categories from the language of computers.

He chose to speak of four primary semantic domains (as seen in the acronym TEAR):

Things
Events
Relations
Attributes

Things of course is not really much of a clue either way, but events, relations, and attributes all have the ring of computer relations or basic categories.  If you were to read the technical discussions in the computer field on relations, you would see some of this language.

It is no big stretch to expand Nida's TEAR to include the relations between parts and wholes.  And in the recent articles dealing with object-related relations in a computer context, there is some evidence that the sixth category could fit into one of the other five.  This is no place for that technical discussion.

Let it suffice to say that the language of computers with its six categories and the language of rhetoric with its five categories show a great deal of overlap.  While rhetoric speaks more to the macro level and computer language more to a micro level there is no reason not to see the parallels between them.

In any case, a pretty good case can be made for Nida's TEAR idea whether you argue for a classical origin in rhetoric or a cutting edge origin in computers.  I favor the latter, but I think there is further support from classical rhetoric that is helpful as well..

 I think lending further support to their method is the core course labels of undergraduate level linguistics classes while I was a student at Bethel University (St. Paul, MN).  They were:

Continuity and change  (this I believe parallels "Attributes", ex. old or new, etc.)
Bond and Barrier (this I believe parallels "Relations", ex. connected or disconnected, etc.)
Models and Theories  (wholes  - not listed by Nida, ex. these are each comprehensive competing options)
Rule and Freedom (this I believe parallels "Events", ex. the rules and freedoms in the game of Monopoly)
Sense and Nonsense  (this I believe parallels "Things", ex. a thing is something you can sense, nothing is not the same thing, etc.)

So perhaps Nida's idea of semantic domains, which I consider his best idea, may have the most lasting legacy because of its ties to computers and to the classics.  This blend would be a sales marketers dream.

Sincerely,

Jon