Dr. B’s PACER PROGRAM

Dr. B’s ENGLISH PACER PROGRAM

A Program guaranteed to change your academic perspective and achievement!

pac·er

ˈpāsər

noun: pacer; plural noun: pacers

1. a pacesetter.

2. US. a horse bred or trained to have a distinctive lateral gait in which both legs on the same side are lifted together, used in some types

The Hidden Problem of English School Coursework and its Mismatch with SAT/ACT TEST PREP

PROBLEM #1

INADEQUATE FOCUS ON VOCABULARY BUILDING

Vocabulary Building is important across the curriculum from language arts and social studies to mathematics and science. It is intimately connected to both effective reading and writing skills, and these skills in turn are necessary for doing well in school. Unfortunately, the school curriculum ignores a systematic vocabulary building program.

Vocabulary Building has five specific advantages:

1. It gives your child the ability to say what he or she means. By having several words at their disposal for describing an event or emotion, they can be explicit when sharing their ideas and opinions.
2. It helps your child understand what other people are saying and what she/he is reading.Vocabulary is the foundation for comprehension. Unfamiliar words become holes in the text, preventing your child from completely understanding what he or she has just read.
3. It bolsters their ability to grasp ideas and think more logically. The greater number of words your child has, the more he or she can interpret ideas from others, and express their own ideas.
4. It boosts your child’s power of persuasion. Having a rich vocabulary will help your child communicate in a more engaging way. Relying on one or two words to describe an idea will be repetitive and not as persuasive, as relying on a vocabulary of 10-15 similarly descriptive terms.
5. It helps your child make a good impression on others. How articulate your child is constitutes a big part of the impression she or he makes on others.

VOCABULARY BUILDING FORMS THE CORE OF THE LANGUAGE ARTS CURRICULUM!

HOW Dr. B’s ENGLISH PACER PROGRAM SOLVES THIS PROBLEM?

Dr. B’s English Pacer Program is designed to create a solid foundation in vocabulary. The INITIAL DIAGNOSTIC TEST helps to place the student in the correct level of Vocabulary. Regular weekly classwork and homework exercises along with weekly unit wise tests helps the student in substituting rote memorization with understanding.

PROBLEM #2

FOCUS ON LITERATURE READINGS AS OPPOSED TO ACADEMIC READING COMPREHENSION

The school curriculum focusses on reading books and submitting book reports. Reading books is usually a leisurely activity and preparing book reports is usually not a timed activity.

By “Academic Reading Comprehension”, we mean “reading a passage along with a set of specific questions and selecting the correct answer choices in a very limited time period usually 10-15 minutes”. To be successful in academic reading comprehension as described above, the student requires special strategies that are not acquired by the student when reading literature as prescribed in school curriculum.

HOW Dr. B’s ENGLISH PACER PROGRAM SOLVES THIS PROBLEM?

Dr. B’s English Pacer Program is designed to teach students strategies in academic reading comprehension. The program trains the student to handle different reading comprehension questions such as finding the main idea of a passage or paragraph, inference questions, spotting specific details or supporting ideas, author’s tone, author’s attitude, author’s purpose, etc. – all this in a timed manner. It creates the requisite expertise and the resultant confidence in a student to handle reading comprehension successfully in tests.

PROBLEM #3

ERRATIC FOCUS ON GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION SKILLS

Grammar is to writing what arithmetic is to calculus. You need to learn to add before you can do calculus. Unfortunately, the American school curriculum does not systematically build student understanding of very basic grammar concepts such as subject-verb agreement, noun-pronoun agreement, verb tenses and so on. Students have a very superficial understanding, if any, of such important grammar concepts. The last time students received thorough grammar instruction in U.S. public schools was the 1960s, so many teachers who themselves went to school in the 1970s or later have the attitude of “I didn’t learn it, so why should my students?”

In the meantime, U.S. students and parents find it odd that although grammar is a relatively low priority in the classroom, it still has a sizable portion on high-stakes tests like the SAT & ACT. Many international students report to score higher on grammar questions due to the fact that they are require to take classes that drill U.S. grammar rules.

Anybody interested in having a detailed understanding of why grammar is ignored in American school curriculum (The Downfall of Grammar in American School Curriculum) can visit the following website:

https://ttlearning.com/blog/why-dont-us-schools-teach-grammar/

By the way, it’s a very illuminating experience reading the above website! The comments section to the above website is equally revealing!

HOW Dr. B’s ENGLISH PACER PROGRAM SOLVES THIS PROBLEM?

Dr. B’s English Pacer Program recognizes the fact that lack of rigorous grammar instruction in U.S. schools as a disservice to students that puts the U.S. at an international disadvantage. The Pacer Program is based on the premise that the problem isn’t grammar instruction itself, but the kind of grammar of instruction – that the solution isn’t to stop teaching grammar altogether, but to teach it better.

PROBLEM #4

DEPLORABLE EMPHASIS ON DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING SKILLS

Writing today is not a frill for the few but an essential skill for the many.

• The National Commission On Writing in America’s Schools and Colleges

Visit the following website for the related report:

http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/writingcom/neglectedr.pdf

Many young people come to university able to summarize the events in a news story or write a personal response to a play. . . . But they have considerable trouble with what has come to be called critical literacy: framing an argument or taking someone else’s argument apart [and] synthesizing different points of view. . . . The authors of the [writing] crisis reports got tremendously distressed about students’ difficulties with such tasks, but it’s important to remember that, traditionally, such abilities have only been developed in an elite: in priests, scholars, or a leisure class. Ours is the first society in history to expect so many of its people to be able to perform these very sophisticated literacy activities.

• Mike Rose,
  Lives on the Boundary, 188

The most important point in teaching effective writing is to understand that it involves not just using appropriate vocabulary and following a set of grammar and punctuation rules but also development of deeper thinking skills among the students and an urge on the part of the individual student to make the requisite effort to express his or her thoughts.

HOW Dr. B’s ENGLISH PACER PROGRAM SOLVES THIS PROBLEM?

The writing component of Dr. B’s English Pacer Program is based on building strong vocabulary and grammar skills. Emphasis on “brain-storming” makes students deep visual and verbal thinkers which is an essential element of the pre-writing stage, often ignored in school curriculums. The subsequent stress on “revising” one’s own draft and making it better helps the student to understand how to improve one’s own writing. The focus is not on simply using some bombastic vocabulary words but to build strong ideas on the topic and learn to communicate effectively.

PROBLEM #5

Exposure to “textisms”(the abbreviated spellings of text messages)

If you think that young people seem to be spending more of their time “face-to-screen” than “face-to-face”, you’re probably right. And a lot of that screen time seems to involve reading or writing English that duznt look quite lyk it shld. Get it!

It’s not surprising that many teachers, parents, and young people themselves feel concerned about this constant exposure to non-standard written English. It seems quite plausible that frequently seeing to/too written as 2, or people written as ppl, might mean that these kinds of spellings could start to creep into students’ formal writing. More serious repercussions of textisms are not the re-spelling of individual words, but violations of grammatical conventions. capitals get ignored, theres no apostrophes in sight, and sentences get separated not by standard punctuation marks, but by ironical laughter lol or expressions of emotion ☺. If it’s okay to write im coming, sarah!!! when texting, how will younger children learn, or older children remember, to use the conventions of grammatical English writing?

Nenagh Kemp, senior lecturer and co-author of the most recent study, however, believes her team’s findings uphold texting as a positive predictor of language skills, so long as students can keep the two linguistic worlds separate from one another. “As long as young writers can maintain this awareness,” explained Kemp, “then the violations of grammar common in digital communication need not be perceived as a reduction in writing skill, but rather as the addition of an alternative, casual style to the writer’s repertoire.”

Source: Wood C, Kemp N, Waldron S. Exploring the longitudinal relationships between the use of grammar in text messaging and performance on grammatical tasks. British Journal of Developmental Psychology. 2014.

HOW Dr. B’s ENGLISH PACER PROGRAM SOLVES THIS PROBLEM?

Honestly, there isn’t much that the Pacer Program can do in this respect. We must admit that texting has become one of the primary sources of communication even between family members when they are home what to speak of communication among the members of the society/community. However, by making a student aware of this problem and encouraging them to keep the two linguistic worlds separate, the Pacer Program attempts to reduce the impact of this problem.

TYPICAL PACE OF THE PACER PROGRAM

¹The start and end times are approximate and indicative and are given to given a sense of planning. The actual start and end dates may be a few months before or after the above-mentioned dates depending upon each student’s convenience.

² In counting the total duration for the 50 Session program, a cushion period of 5 weeks has been added for make-ups of sessions in case for certain weeks the student is not able to do 2 Sessions as planned. For the 40 Sessions PSAT/SAT/ACT Program, a cushion period of 10 weeks has been added in case the student decides to skip certain weeks because of school quizzes/tests/quarterlies.

WHEN TO SCHEDULE THE ‘SAT’ and ‘AP’ TESTS?

SAT 1600

First attempt –In August, just before entering the 11^th grade

Second attempt –If necessary, in January/March of the 11^th grade*

* Suggested 6 TESTS & 6 REVIEW SESSIONS PROGRAM before the second attempt.

SAT LITERATURE SUBJECT TEST

In December, in the middle of the 11^th grade

AP ENGLISH

In May, at the end of the 11^th grade

Grades 1-6

The curriculum at each grade level focusses on life science, earth science, physical and chemical properties of matter.

Students are given a Science Reading Essentials Workbook which is rich in content material and serves as a guide to improve their understanding of the scientific concepts. This book forms the basis of all classwork activity. The tutoring is interactive where the goal is to clarify the concepts and encourage students to develop the scientific temper and spirit of inquiry.

Along with the Reading Essentials Workbook, students are also assigned a Writing Workbook in which students must answer questions pertaining to each lesson. This book forms the basis of the weekly homework. The Writing Workbook is aligned with the Reading Essentials Workbook so there is close coordination between classwork activity and the related homework.

Grades 7 and 8

Life Science and Physical Science–Students taking Life Science in Grade 7 or Physical Science in Grade 8 will be given supplemental materials to guide theirstudy. Students in this program will channel their curiosity to find answers for the questions raised by the gee-whiz phenomena that have ushered our world.The program will be synced with the school’s curriculum and will go beyond what is expected in school. This will allow the students to cover topics that the teacher might have skipped in school due to the limited amount of time available.

NEW JERSEY STUDENT LEARNING ASSESSMENT FOR SCIENCE (NJSLA – S)

Special Test Prep Programs for Grade 5 and Grade 8 focusing on the above-mentioned State Test.

To know more about the New Jersey Science Test, click on the link below:

http://measinc-nj-science.com/

For Grades 1-8, we recommend either a 20 Sessions or a 30 Sessions Program.

Each tutoring session is of 2 hours.

Grades 9-12

Science tutoring programs at high school are one-on-one for Biology/Chemistry/Physics. These programs are initially for 10 Sessions of 2 hours each and can be extended for additional sessions on a pro-rata basis.

Programs are for Regular Level/Honors Level/Advanced Placement (AP) Level.

There are usually 3 goals of these programs:

1. Improvement in School Grades.
2. SAT Subject Test Prep.
3. AP Exam Test Prep.

Since the programs are one-on-one, we can customize the content and pace of each program to suit an individual student’s need and thereby maximize its effectiveness.