First Tutoring Experience

Meiyin Hago

Professor Justin Rogers-Cooper

ENG220.0908

 

Class Agenda 5.4

First Tutoring Experience

In my first tutoring experience, the student wrote about the low paid salaries that immigrants, teenagers and undocumented people receive in fast food companies. She has sort of an idea about the topic unfortunately she did not have enough evidence to support her statements. The students mostly referred what she has experienced when she used to work in a fast food company such as Burger King. I told her that she needed to refer to the textbooks that the professor requested and the articles that were required for the assignment.

She had good ideas about her topics as well as good separations about each paragraph. The student had well-structure topic sentences about what she wanted to write in each paragraph. She separated each paragraph to talk about immigrant people with lower salaries, teenagers with an over exploitation in the workplace, and illegal people with mistreatment and low rate salary in the workplace. I loved that the student classified by those kinds of categories and had the idea to talk about each one group by separated. I helped the student to identify her thesis statement. She needed to have a clear thesis about the topic that the she explained.

My advice was that she needed to explain in the thesis what kind of people she was referring to, she kindly had that in the paragraph but she needed to explain in her thesis as well as the kind of difficulties that group of people experienced. The student was thinking about what I said so I told her to write down those thoughts on paper. The student followed my advice and the student was more confident with writing down her thesis statement.

The strategies I used were Focused Free Writing and Oral Composing. Those strategies that I learned in my ENG220 in the textbook Tutoring Writing is what I believed were very useful in my first tutoring experience due to the fact that the student grasp the information immediately and the student compromised to write down her thoughts on a sheet of paper. The Focused Free Writing strategy is based on the development of new ideas that the student writes down without expecting spelling or grammar, just those free thoughts that the student remember about the textbooks that was previous read it. As well as the Oral Composing strategy that refers to bring to the student to shape relevant ideas about the development of the topic. I suggested using the library media resources to find articles that the professor requested to be used in the assignment.

The next tutoring experience, I will utilize a different strategy in order to study deeply what would be the best strategies to make the tutoring even more successfully to meet the student’s writing goals and perspectives. The strategies that I would like to apply in the next tutoring session experience would be the Mapping and Playing your Thoughts strategies in the Tutoring Writing textbook learned in class. The Mapping strategy is a visual writing technique that helps the writer to visualize the relationship of specific words that the writer wants to talk about such as the word police station and then crumble this word in pieces such as policeman, detectives, and thieves to give an example. In Playing your Thoughts strategy, this denotes kind of similar than, Mapping, this is the brainstorming thoughts.

Tutoring First Experience Expectations

Class Agenda 4.27

Tutoring First Experience Expectations

In visualizing the first tutoring experience that I will have, I perceive myself confident and well prepared. I have written my tutor strategies rigorously in order to gain self-esteem and gain motivation. I feel inspired by my professor Lalit Bajaj. Besides that, he was my professor, he also was a tutor at the Writing Center where I constantly go for advising for my writing assignments in order to challenge me to do an exceptional work. He tutored me many times and I have gained and learned many writing strategies from his advices. Therefore, I really believe that I will accomplish this important task that I have been in charge, today. I believe that I have multiplied a lot of learning experience throughout my career in the college. I really feel satisfied with everything that I have advanced so far. This course has provided me with great care because I learned a lot in my writing skills and knowing that I can offer my writing knowledge to other students like me; it gives me great satisfaction and pleasure.

My tutoring strategies focus on the lessons I learned from my Tutoring Writing textbook. I have condensed these writing strategies in order to provide with one of the best tutoring experience ever. My idea of tutoring is to facilitate to students with the solutions of their own thoughts by giving them writing tips to ensure the high quality of the tutoring session. First of all, I need to make an welcome greeting so the writer feels comfortable with my presence there. Then, the student needs to make greetings of herself/himself so that the environment is pleasant. Then, make sure the student feels supported throughout their time in the tutoring session. I will ask the student to show me the goal of the assignment. After that, I will encourage the student to tell me more what the assignment is about in their own words. Establishing understanding about the theme of the assignment, I would safeguard the warmth of the words and support of the paper.

My tutoring strategies, I would use in the tutoring session are the reader response literacy, and the feminism theories. In the reader response literacy theory where emphasizes more on the reader and their experience of a literacy work rather than focus their attention on the author or the content of the work as well as in the feminism theory, where synthesizes the theories of social constructionism, reader response, talk and writing, and collaborative learning as a whole. Also, it brings the relationship between  the interaction that lead between tutors and students and where it is taking consideration that students are the ones that guide rules.

I imagine an enthusiast student with focus and determination to learn something new from my precious advices. I have focused whether the student has a draft, or lack having a draft. The ones who has a draft, I visualize helping the student with preventing writer’s block which I will utilize that the writer be encouraged in order to sustain the flow at all costs, as well as with nut-shelling and teaching, because the writer requires to make decisions about major issues and minor ideas. I also believe that it would be a good idea the mapping strategy due to the writer force himself/herself to decide whether or not the ideas in the piece are important and how they are related to each other.
Can I point out new places when the writer seems confused. The writer would write short sentences about important issues. Most important is that I should pay attention in observing whether the writer is doing good and praise the writing. To conclude, I may give some feedback and suggestions about how can the writing should be improved?

Tutoring Observations

Meiyin Hago

ENG220.0908

Professor Justin Rogers-Cooper

Class Agenda 4.13

                In my second tutoring observation on April 2, 2015, I went to the Writing Center to observe it. I observed two students’ revision papers. The tutor was able to help students successfully according to the textbook Tutoring Writing. The tutor grabbed the essay to start reading it. She started explaining what the problems of the paper were immediately. She starts saying about how quotations are supposed to be written in order not to cause any plagiarism. First of all the tutor started by saying to the student to take deep breathe in order to get the mind clear when start writing a paper. When the tutor observed one sentence, she explained that some words do not belong there for example: “Immigrant for people from Puerto Rico” the tutor said that Puerto Ricans are already U.S. citizen therefore they are not immigrant anymore. What I like most is that the tutor did not correct the mistakes of the students otherwise she explained the rules. She explained for example: when numbers are from one to ten, it should be written and from 11 to higher numbers should be place in numbers. Also, she explained about contractions that students should not be doing on the essay because contractions are used in oral communications.

The tutor used "High Order Concerns"; she explained to the writer what the thesis on the paper was and what the purposes of writing it were. She said to the students that they need to figure out where their mistakes were and the way to notice that is to read aloud to themselves. As the quote from the textbook Tutoring Writing that said that all writers are able to compose through their inner speech while they are talking aloud (McAndrew & Reigstad 4). This represents that the person can identify better their mistakes when they speak aloud their own papers. This is what makes a writer to improve in their writing skills. The tutor used a feminist theory because the student is the one that lead the learning process. The tutor is the one person who adores teaching knowledge. She was given excellent feedback to the students without facilitating the words to them. The tutor explained that when they place “In the article, John Smith said…” a better way to say that would be “Tutoring Writing by McAndrew Reigstad said…” This tutor really knew what to say to the students in order to be understandable. She explained simple basic things about writing such the use of capital letters when starting a sentence. She explained that the need to give credit to the words of the main authors of the sentences. She included that when using “You” or “I” is not allowed to place it and she showed a note on her wall hat said “Your duty is to inform or educate your imaginary reader.” This means that students need to write to an audience in general. They need to write in third person. The tutor added that they are not writing to the professor, they are writing to an audience who does not have any knowledge so the writer is the one that is explained them in details. She clarifies that she is not an editor and she is only an English tutor. She has a MLA book to show to the students that they need to follow the guidelines in order to write right. The tutor explained that the paper does not need to be asking questions instead it needs to make statements as well as not correctly using street words. She basically was explaining the rules of writing. She also explained a little bit about subject, verb agreement as well as not repeating same words over and over again. They need to alternate similar vocabulary and transition words to make the paper more interesting to the audience.

In the third observation session on April 13, I experienced a new way of tutoring and I believe was not as successful as the others two previous ones. The tutor phone started to ring and the chewing gum was annoying. It makes to believe that the tutor was bored and uninteresting in the tutoring. Anyway, he started reading the digital copy of the student’s essay. The paper was about the teaching learning in the school education for the ELN120 course. The tutor was focused on the checking grammatical errors as I learned in the Tutoring Writing textbook in my ENG220 class. The quote said “Premature concern about grammatical correctness and the rules of standard written English may truncate the rhythm of writing or even raise anxiety about writing to a crippling level” (McAndrew & Reigstad). This represents that the writer is harmed himself/herself the goal of tutoring which is called "Lower Order Concern". The good thing that the tutor explained was that she did not introduce the topic properly. The tutor explained that the writer needs to state a clear thesis and the purpose which is learned to be "High Order Concern" in the Tutoring Writing. What I notice was that the student wanted to know if the tutor understands what she meant to say in her writing paper as a way of an editor. So often the tutor was feeding her words to the student which becomes what the Tutoring Writing called “Usurping Ownership”. I learned that the tutor needs to respect the writer’s ideas and thoughts.

The tutor is not supposed to rewrite the meaning of the writer’s words in order that makes more sense. The tutor needs to help the writer to figure out by herself about her own mistakes because she is the one who needs to do so. The tutor is not supposed to change or facilitating words that take a better understanding to the audience and neither to check grammatical errors. The tutor needs to explain that the writer needs to place her time to her paper. What I noticed was that the tutor explained that she is making long paragraph connecting many ideas at one. By the end of the tutoring session, the student was happy about the tutor explanations unfortunately the student needed more time to finish it. I noticed that in the Tutoring Writing the “Responding Too Late” part, the tutor make the student to be engaged in the writing process so the tutor took advantage face to face in order to give the writer more ideas concerning to her paper.

Writing Center Observations

Class Agenda 3.30

            Today, Thursday 26, 2015, I went to the Writing Center to observe a tutoring session. At the beginning of the tutoring session, the tutor was very agitated as well as talking very fast. As the session went giving it calmed, the tutor was explained to a student how to develop her essay. First of all, when the tutor saw the assignment sheet, he said that he have seen this assignment sheet many times. He started explaining the student about how to develop the paper. She ended up upset and puzzled because the explication was not as she expected to be. She was not very content by coming to the session. She said that it was a wasting of time coming there.

            In the second student he had a better feedback because he had done some work. The tutor was asking questions about how the assignment was. The tutor made the student explained what he wanted to say on his paper. The tutor started explained what the student was supposed to writ in his paper. The tutor was reading the essay and then he point out specific details that would help the student to develop better his final draft. The tutor is not supposed to correct grammar mistakes or changing the meaning of the words. In the session, the tutor did not do that, instead the tutor enlightened him to clear out student’s thoughts and to coordinate better his points. The student did the entire job in writing what he was in his mind at that moment. The tutor also acknowledged the student for some good words that make good connections. Unfortunately, the student also needed to polish and to clear some point that makes sense. The tutor explained to the students that he needed to better organize his paper because some ideas were mixed. The tutoring ended up 15 minutes earlier. The student was satisfied with the tutoring session.

            The tutor has a well-structured high order concerns about the paper of the student at all times. The tutor explained to the student that he needed to focus on what he wrote on his thesis and from that thesis points continue analyzing on his three main paragraphs. The tutor did not focus on lower order concerns because he was more focus on analyzing the meaningful part of the paragraphs of the essay. He managed to enlighten to the student that he needed to pay attention that the sentences make senses of what the student needed to say in his writing.