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.