Third week...

  This week's observation consisted of the tutor working individually with the student. The tutor and student were both on time which is something I always notice in every session.

    First things first, she took a look at the students paper, of course read it over to try and get an idea of what the paper will be about. I noticed that in every session I have attended, every tutor reads the paper before they start doing any other work. The student had some grammar issues and some corrections needed to be made. Corrections like spelling, past tense, when to add commas and how to start a sentence in a more proper way. When i noticed that the tutor informed her about this issues, I remembered that in class correcting errors on a writers work was not something they should start doing right away. The tutor instead needs to encourage the writer to revisit the piece of writing not throw her off by telling her right away that you have grammar issues. When i begin observing, I will not address the issues right as soon as i read the paper because than the student will feel discouraged and feel like their paper is not good enough. Eventually the tutor will find a way to tell the student about the errors, but at a later time. 

  The paper the student had written was about a personal experience her friend had gone through and her friend getting into trouble. When the tutor told the student to get more into detail about it, the student said that it was too revealing for her to talk more about it. In a way at that point i noticed that the student was a little uncomfortable, even though the tutor didn't  mean for that to happen. The tutor told the student that she didn't have to get too personal about her paper but at least try to expand the paper more. It was a great thing that the tutor continued to encourage the student to expand her paper more instead of just ending it on the note of saying don't add anymore details. 

Second Observation! Ohhhhh the excitement

My second time at the writing center, my observation did not go as i thought it would. I could not hear the tutor at all, and let me remind you i was sitting right behind her. Her voice was not loud and clear like i had hoped it would be. The fact that right from the beginning i had noticed that, i was already wanting to leave the observation, but of course did not.
As i continued observing the "quiet tutor" i did notice that she read over the essay before starting to give any feedback. Perhaps i did hear the student speaking clearly so i understood what she was trying to get help on which was, grammar and corrections on her paper. There were a few good things about the tutor and i wont lie. She did look over the students paper more than once and checked for grammar errors as well as punctuation. Some of the students sentences were being used as the past tense and the tutor pointed out that it was not the right thing to do for the sentence she had. She of course did not write on the students paper but allowed the student to make the corrections and take notes.
Another good thing about the tutor was that she did give the student specific ideas to expand her writing on, even though i could not hear what those ideas were. The tutor told the student that the more details she had, the better her writing piece would be and i strongly agree on that.
This observation was a very different one compared to my last one. I did learn a lot of things from this observation and one thing that i learned was to be LOUD and CLEAR. I am glad that i had the chance to experience this so when i begin tutoring a student, i know i would have to be loud and clear.

Observation In the Writing Center

I am a student in Teaching Writing ENG 220 and i observed a tutor helping a student come up with ideas to compose her essay. What amazed me was that the student had not started the essay coming into the session and all she had was her notes from the class. Using those notes both the student and tutor discussed the essay question and started jotting down ideas to help start the paper. During the session, i noticed that the tutor questioned the student many times about the notes and that way the student went more into depth about what she was writing about. Most of the time the student was confused about what she was speaking about and she as well questioned the tutor if her work was making sense. The tutors responses helped her understand the topic in a more clear way. The student was coming up with more ideas not just from her notes but from having a conversation which lead to writing more about her topic.
 I noticed that the student wrote down all the tutors ideas down onto her paper and when she finished writing, she read them out loud. Reading them out loud helped her realize if it made sense or not and of course the tutor recommended she had done this.
One thing that i really liked about the tutor was that she made the student feel comfortable and not nervous. She did that by making a few jokes comparing the essay into real life. The student came in with no essay for the tutor to look at and left with a full page essay.