My First Tutoring Session: Into the Fire

When we entered the English 99 class for the first time, I felt so overwhelmed and nervous. Many thoughts ran through my head but the main one that kept playing over and over was if I would be good enough. As soon as I sat down with the first student, my nervousness subsided as we introduced ourselves and I told him why I was in his class. Soon after the introduction, we began to discuss the assignment which was a blog about an essay written by Timothy Sexton. The essay was about reality television and the dangers that it may cause. After reading the first student's blog, I was relieved because he had a great understanding of the essay and formulated good ideas. He had some structural issues that needed to be corrected to make his piece better. We worked together to find the main ideas that he wanted to discuss based on what he had already written. I had him write down the top three ideas that he wanted to discuss then we printed the blog and I told him to go through his work and underline and highlight the sentences that go with each main idea. Just when I thought I was in a good position to relax, I was summoned to assist two additional students. I got nervous all over again. I had to use my time- management skills to give both students equal time as well as the correct advice to assist them in correcting their blogs on The Matrix. When working with these students, they both had similar issues in their writing. They had difficulty writing a concise summary that gave the reader a full understanding of the piece. In both instances, the student only had three vague sentences. To assist the students in writing more comprehensive summaries, I asked them to re-read the prompt and identify three main ideas from the piece. After both students completed that task, I instructed them to paraphrase the main idea of each topic into a complete sentence. This exercise helped the student develop a clear summary of the work.

Observation Four

During my fourth observation, I witnessed a tutor that had a great rapport with a student and crossed the fine line between professional and too friendly. It is important that the student feel comfortable during the student session, however, I believe the tutor should maintain an air of professionalism throughout the interaction. The tutor was very honest with the student about errors she made on her paper, even pointing directly to the errors and telling the student to correct it. The tutor did that numerous times.

The tutor mainly focused on LOCs during the entire session with the student. The tutor explained that she had a great rapport with the student and she could be blunt with her. As the tutor read the paper, she bluntly pointed out every single grammatical error the student made and didn’t discuss any HOCs with the student at all.

Instead of primarily pointing out LOCs, the tutor could have concentrated on helping the writer perfect the overall development of her ideas. Since the tutor and writer had a great rapport, the tutor could utilize their positive relationship and use the strategy of “Oral Composing” illustrated in the book Tutoring Writing. This strategy helps the writer develop relevant ideas, sentences and phrases that will aid in making the paper better. Only focusing on LOCs interferes with this process.

Observation Three

During my third observation of a tutor in the Writing Center, the student needed assistance editing an English paper that received a poor grade from the professor. The student was discouraged because the professor wrote many negative comments all over the work and stated that the student completely missed the topic of the assignment. The tutor sensed the student's desire to quit and made an effort to validate the student's work. He pointed out that the overall language of the essay was clear and informed the student that there were a number of good ideas throughout the piece.

The majority of the session was spent on HOCs, especially the overall structure of the piece. The tutor helped the student create better connections between the ideas in the body of the paper and the thesis. The tutor asked the student questions to gain a better understanding of what the student was trying to say in each paragraph. Then, the tutor informed the student that each paragraph should begin with a topic sentence that will let the reader know what will be discussed in that particular paragraph. After the session, the student was more optimistic about editing the assignment. The tutor instructed the student to return the following day after making the revisions discussed during the session.

I thought that the tutor was effective in engaging the student by validating her work, assisting with proper structuring and giving the student a deadline of when to return to the Writing Center. When I am given the opportunity to tutor, I will borrow the engaging techniques this tutor used if I encounter a disenchanted student.