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.
I found it kind of shocking that the student you observed didn't really start her paper and was so confused. It probably wasn't easy for the tutor to handle that because she was working from scratch. It was interesting to see how the tutor helped the student by making a list, that way the student would have something to go off of and focus her paper on. This strategy is definitely something that can benefit us when its our time to tutor.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that a lot of students come in without an assignment started, some without even notes. Sounds like the tutor handled it well.
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