Tutor Recruiter 1

(Devon walks into the Writing Center with his paper in one hand and iPad in the other).

Devon: Hey I need to fix my paper. My professor said something about structure and organization of ideas.

Kat: Well alright, let's take a look at your pap- (gets interrupted by Devon).

Devon: Or was it grammar? It might be grammar. Grammar's spelling and stuff, right?

Kat: How about you just give me a couple of minutes to read this over and get back to you?

Devon: Yeah, sure, whatever.

(Kat reads paper, makes notes and redirects attention to Devon, who is distracted by his iPad)

Kat: Ok! I've read it over and I think I....Devon?

Devon: (still absorbed by his iPad) Almost done!

Kat: Ok, I'mm not sure how serious you are about fixing this paper but we've got a lot of work to do if you want this paper done, and playing with your iPad isn't going to help at all, so please put it away and lets get to work.

Devon: (sucks his teeth) Great. You made me lose. (looks at the notes on the paper).

Kat: I apologize for the inconvenience. After reading your paper I see that you lack a thesis statement. I had no idea what you were specifically trying to talk about, who the quotes belonged to, your ideas were all over the place, and yes, your spelling was a little off, as was your grammar.

Devon: All of that?! How long will that take?!

Kat: It all depends on your effort and concentration. So let's get to business.

(After realizing how many errors his paper had, and that time was of the essence, Devon finally shifts focus entirely to his paper and working on it collaboratively with his tutor Kat).

(Frames show that Devon is focused and determined to understand the help the tutor is giving to him to apply it accordingly to his present paper).

Devon: I always thought writing papers was hard until you showed me how to outline, and by doing that I think you just saved me a whole lot of time with future papers as well as patience. 

Kat: I'm glad you understand that and hope it's something you seriously apply in the future. Is there anything else you might want help with?

Devon: Not really, that's it. My spelling is still not great, that's about it.

Kat: You'll notice your spelling mistakes as you go, but don't focus too much on that, but instead focus on outlining, making sure your ideas are clear and finding ways to clearly deliver the points you're trying tom make.

Devon: I'll definitely be back, Thanks!

First Time Tutoring

Today we (as a class) had to tutor two students who were preparing for their CATW exams at once. Though the thought of tutoring college students at first seemed a bit frightening, it wasn't as bad as most of us had thought, at least in my personal experience. The two guys I had to work with during this hour were pretty different in their writing approaches and this is something that proved to be challenging for me more than anything. One guy (we'll call him Ray) was very friendly, willing to listen and to apply the suggestions given to him, and asked questions, while the other guy (we'll call him Alex) was very stubborn, and seemed to have personal issues that prevented him from really focusing on the task at hand, or from any of my suggestions.

Both Ray and Alex had to summarize two passages based of different topics as a CATW exam practice, making sure that they apply concise examples from the text as well as providing relevant personal experiences. I started with Ray since he was prepared (had his assignment sheet and his blog on the screen for me to read), and suggested to Alex that he re-read his writing to see if there are any last-minute mistakes he might want to revise. I also suggested to Alex that, if he remembered what the passage talked about, he jot down main points the author made in the passage; a suggestion that he immediately rejected by basically stating that he's bad at remembering, writing and talking. While Alex read his writing, Ray and I discussed the mistakes I found on his paper. Ray was very helpful and eager to know how to improve his paper by asking plenty of questions. By Ray asking questions and actually applying my suggestions to his writing, I knew he was serious about getting his work done right and actually learning from the feedback given to him. His main areas of concern were really just trying to say what he really wanted to say. Ray mentioned that English wasn't his first language, and though this was evident in his writing, it was good to know from him that English was his second language because this allowed me to understand why certain mistakes were made and how I could address these problems properly. We mainly worked in improving his paper by fixing around the information in his sentences, breaking up long sentences into two sentences, and even omitting certain information that seemed irrelevant and even contradicting. He knew what he wanted to say, he just had a bit of a hard time putting it into words. While I feel that some significant progress was made with Ray, I can't say the outcome was the same for Alex. I really wanted to give Ray and Alex equal amount of attention, but quite honestly, Alex's indifference to the assignment and overall stubbornness to my suggestions made it a little hard for me to remain motivated with him. This sounds horrible to say, but I felt at that moment, as a college student, he needed to put in a bit more effort from his part in order to make some sort of progress because no matter how nicely, or often I asked him to do things (I even wrote on a paper what his beginning sentence should be after speaking with him) to progress with his paper, he didn't get them done and his answer was always the same: "I'm not good at talking. I'm just not good." Like mentioned earlier, I feel that Alex has some personal aspects of himself to work on because these are aspects of himself that are preventing him from having enough self-confidence to develop as an academic writer.
Though I felt pretty alright with tutoring, I definitely feel that there are things I will do differently next time. For starters, I will remember to introduce myself properly (Ray was the one who asked for my name and I felt pretty embarrassed when I realized I didn't introduce myself). I will also try not to focus most of my attention to just one student, even if I come across a similar situation as the Alex-situation. However, I did learn a lot, even about my own writing, while tutoring; so, I definitely look forward to doing this again.

Writing Center Observation 2 [3.28.12]

Unlike the last tutoring session, the tutor had previously worked with the tutees and was more aware of what the tutees' writing areas of need were.  Like mentioned earlier, the tutor had already worked with these two individuals in the past, so the tutees knew what the tutor would ask/"expect" and the tutor knew what each tutee would expect as well. Tutee #1 (we'll call her Lucy) was writing a summary that lacked structure but not as much as proper grammar use or proper spelling. However, the tutor was very aware of this but put these LOC's on hold until she was done addressing her structure issues and suggesting to her what she should add or take away based on the material she was given (which the tutor quickly skimmed through.) The tutor was very effective in communicating what she wanted Lucy to do by using clear words, prosody and eye-contact. While Lucy spent some time improving her paper, the tutor turned her attention to tutee #2 (we'll name her Moesha) who seemed to be an ESL student, even though it didn't show too much when she spoke. Moesha was soft-spoken and had a clear understanding of what her professor wanted from her but was not too clear on how to get started on her writing. Additionally, Moesha had a problem with fully embarking on the purpose of her writing (which was to start controversy in her Communication class) because she thought it was a waste of time. It seemed to me that there was an underlying cultural reason behind her decision to not spark any controversy (at least not bringing up points to her topic that were too controversial) because she kept repeating that "students shouldn't be told that something is wrong because their parents already told them that when they were little." Moesha was a little tougher to handle, only because the first and main obstacle she had was detaching herself from her culture for the paper's sake. The tutor handled this very, very well by asking Moesha open-ended questions to allow Moesha to listen to her own reasons and little by little defying these reasons herself to complete her writing. The tutor did, finally, touch on the LOC's in the last 10 minutes of the tutoring session. Overall, the tutor was able to address Lucy's problem areas as well as Moesha's very well in the amount of time given to them.

Writing Center Observation 1 [3.21]

The tutoring session I observed today was between the tutor (obviously) and two other students whose native language was not English. Though these two students had grammar errors and clarity issues throughout their paper, the success of the tutoring session differed for each student. The tutor, I think, did a great job at explaining what each of the paper's errors were and what they each had to do in order to clean up these mistakes and leave the writing center with a much better understanding on what their next step will be. One of the tutees (let's call her Ana) had a pretty good understanding of what her professor wanted from her and the structure she had to follow in order to complete her assignment. She was not shy at all and was quick to speak up when she had a question about what the tutor had  throughout the session. Ana's overall understanding of the assignment was good, which I think helped tremendously in the outcome of the session. The only issue Ana had was of being sure she was able to say what she needed to say in English since her first language was obviously not English. While Ana worked on being a bit more clear with her sentences and her thesis, the tutor proceeded to help the other tutee (we'll call this tutee Mary.) Mary's first language was also not English so, like I mentioned earlier, she had problems in her paper similar to Ana's. Though Mary went into the writing center solely wanting to focus on her grammar, the tutor suggested that they work on other issues first before worrying about the grammar. Mary had trouble understanding what the professor wanted from her and how to go about meeting his/her requests.  Unlike Ana, Mary was way more shy and reluctant to speaking up when she didn't understand something; it was then when the tutor had to read Mary's body language and explain what she meant several times in order for Mary to fully understand what was wanted from her. In contrast to Ana, Mary didn't answer her professor's question and had provided irrelevant information in her paper, meaning that she would have to re-do her paper. Along with structure issues and lack of clarity on the assignment, Mary also had trouble wording out her thoughts.
For both the tutees, the tutor brought in several outline handouts which she suggested to both of them to make use of. I found interesting that she gave the tutees the option to pick which structure of the outline handouts worked for each best (because not all students learn the same.) The tutor's hand gestures were also (I think) very important in the way she explained  herself because it was a bit of an alert for both tutees to pay attention to what was going to be said.
Overall, I feel that the tutee did a really good job with two similar, but also very different tutees; and though I feel that Ana benefited more from the tutoring session than Mary, I think that Mary will definitely be back to the writing center with clearer thoughts and encouragement taken from the tutor to do better writing.

Tutoring observation expectations

Though I have a number of things going on in my life right now, taking up time, not allowing me to concentrate on one thing at the time 100%, I have to say that I definitely look forward to observing the upcoming tutoring sessions simply because I feel that whatever I can "absorb" from these sessions, will be serve as important tools when I tutor. The thing I'm expecting to see most of  is a variety of approaches to a single issue in writing. As a tutor, I understand that there are different ways to work at an issue with the tutee but I'm certain that I can apply new "tactics" to my own practice.