Tuesday, September 23, 2014
First Tutoring Observation
Monday, September.15, 2014
In my first tutoring session, I observed a ESL student who was in ENG 101. The student came in the Writing Center with a essay that he had to write pertaining to an article that his class was assigned to read and respond too about stereotypes. The student came into the Writing Center with a draft of his essay which I thought was good. When the student came in he looked very relaxed and alert to what the tutor was telling him. He clearly had an idea of how he wanted his essay to be, but was also open minded to everything that the tutor was telling him to improve on his work.
Firstly, the tutor read his essay then discussed the main points of the article with him. Before discussing the main points of the article with the student, the tutor asked the student what are the main points within the article?, just to make sure that he understood. The tutor did this several times asking the student questions about his work and getting the student feedback instead of just simply talking. I liked how the tutor used the technique of collaborative tutoring, where the student and the tutor are in equal conversation of the paper. The tutor included the student. I really liked seeing that between the student and tutor. The tutor then went through the student's paper thoroughly, observing his sentence structure and making sure that he had supporting details to connect to his argument.
The student gave a lot of quotes throughout his essay from the article, so the tutor explained that he would have to give an explanation for those quotes, not just mention them. I like the fact that the tutor explained to the student what he should do to improve his essay such as, giving examples to show that he understands the article and give facts to support his opinion. According to the text Tutoring Writing by: McAndrew, the tutor in this session definitely focused on the HOC's (High Order Concerns) helping the student develop his thesis statement and supporting details rather than focusing on minor issues such as grammar and spelling.
After, the tutor was finished giving his feedback to the student, the student mentioned that he would come back to the Writing Center with the corrections made. The tutor strongly suggested that. I thought that was a good idea for the student to do since his essay wasn't due until the following week he still had time to improve his work.
I think that when several people read a writer's work they have more time to make changes and are able to receive multiple feedback.
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HI Wynee, I really enjoyed reading about your first observation in the writing center. I liked how well detailed your blog is, I almost feel like I was there. I like the fact that the tutor used a collaborative tutoring style, I find this to be rather enjoyable to witness as well. I find that the collaborative tutoring style feels more natural, that the tutor and student feel more comfortable during the session. I also like the fact that the tutor focused on higher order concerns instead of things like grammar. In all I think the tutoring session was a great success not only for the tutor and student but for you as well.
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