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.
