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.