Third case study

For my third session i had one student this time and was very concerned because during my last two sessions i got use to handling two students at a time.  However it went pretty smoothly so i was worried over nothing. This students topic was about weight discrimination and how over weight people are not treated the same as "skinny types". Her topic was very interested and asked her if this is something she is comfortable writing about, her reply was that she wanted to work with something she has no knowledge about and i was bit concerned because she did not have a lot of information down on this topic. So for this session i started by asking questions on the topic, how are over weight people treated in this country, why is it okay for 100 lb models to wear very little to no clothing and not okay for people who are a few pounds heavier? I asked this questions to get her motor starting and to see if she understood the assignment. She gave a few great ideas and basically went back and forth talking about that conversation. After discussing the topic i asked her to write down her thoughts and ideas for a few minutes so she wont forget what we talked about. After her free write, i gave a few ideas on advertising companies and how they use women and their bodies to get profit. Towards the end of the session she had her ideas, her thesis statement and advised her to do more research on her topic and to focus on body paragraphs as well.

Second case study

For my second tutoring session i had two students from an ENG 101 class and both students are friends and had very similar problems with their educational research paper. Both students A and B did not have a draft but had many ideas and because they could go in many directions with this paper both students had problems starting the piece. For both students they had the same topic NCLB act, so i told them to writing about what you think of this topic, is it negative or positive? I let them write for about 10 minutes while i looked over their assignment. Student A finish a bit faster than B, so we worked together for a few minutes while B get her thoughts sorted out. With student A we talked about the ideas she wrote down and what which ideas she felt more passionate about. I told student A to bullet point those ideas as they will be part of her thesis and body paragraphs. I then switch to student B who was ready to present her ideas and pretty much asked her the same questions as student A. I also asked both students if they were for NCLB or against and then depending on their answer write the paper from that point of view. I went back and forth between the students until both tutees had an intro and a thesis statement, and all they have to focus is the body paragraphs along with a conclusion. Both students had all the research and ideas, but were just stuck on how to start and did not how to write a thesis statement. this is proof on high school education today in this country that students who are in ENG 101 are having trouble with thesis statements or do not even what a thesis statement is.

First case study

For my first tutoring session i had two students with different writing skill levels and structure. Each student also had two different topics, student A was writing about illegal immigrants, and student B was writing about the case against marriages. With student A his essay was almost complete with the exception of  the conclusion. Student A had a good main idea about how immigrants are the backbone of today's economy and gave evidence to support the idea. Student A also put a personal experience in the essay as well. what we did in the session is read the paper out loud, found more evidence to support the main idea, worked on the personal experience to give more details, it was a little too vague and one of the teachers comments was too put more detail and finally the conclusion. With student B the essay was only a page and had a main idea but barely evidence to support the idea and had no conclusion as well. Since student B had a different topic we reread the article about marriage and then found evidence to support his idea. I let student b work on that while i worked with student a. After student b found evidence we started to put the paragraphs together by letting him free write about the topic. Towards the end of the session we worked on the conclusion. It was pretty tough working with both students are the same time and going back and forth with the students as well. I'm mostly concerned if i actually helped them out and if i gave good advice. However i just have to keep practicing and learning and eventually gain more confidence.

Final Visit

For the last observation this session was a lot different than previous sessions. The tutor was once again friendly and open, started with a bit of small talk with the tutee as well. Afterwards asked for the assignment and gave some advice on the topic as well. She asked questions like "What are we learning about from your thesis?" to try to get better idea of which direction hes going. With this student he did not bring a paper only an outline and this shows the writing center is able to handle all forms of the writing stage. So they focus on introduction and paragraph structure as a start. The tutee had no research either so she told him to go to the computer lab the writing center have in the back and do some research alone for ten minutes. The tutor left him alone for a short time and then came back to him to see what he found. At the end of the session the tutor tells tutee to get some more research done so he can have a clearer idea for the paragraphs.

Third Observation

Going into this tutoring session i can tell it was going to be a good one. The tutor was very friendly, introduce herself and told the tutees to relax and not to worry about anything. She first asked the tutee what they wanted to fix, and if they were revising or not. She had two students with her in this session. She tells the tutee to write for an imaginary audience not for the professor which is a great idea because you should image the reader to not know anything about your topic and to learn something new at the end of the paper. She reads the paper out loud as well to hear mistakes and also asked the tutee what the message is. She lets the tutee talk about the topic so they have a better answering of the paper. With the first student she mainly focus on Higher order and with the second student it was more lower order. The student is an ESL student so she had a more of tough time with grammar and sentence structure. She basically got a grammar lesson while reading the paper out loud. The tutor also told the tutee some advice by picking a tutor and sticking with that tutor so they can learn their style and refer back to previous lessons.

Second Visit

During my second visit to the writing center the tutor's method this time around was very different than the first tutor i observed. This tutor read the paper out loud to the student and focused on low order instead of higher order. I believe reading the paper out loud to the student is very important as it allows the student to hear what mistakes they made and the main point of the paper. While the tutor was reading out loud, he also let the student figure out what words are missing in certain sentences. This was great because it shows the "tutee" doing most of the work instead of the tutor telling her what went wrong. After the end of each page the tutor also praises the good parts of the paper and telling her if she is going in the right direction. The tutor always goes back to the assignment to see if she answered the main question of this paper and looking at feed back from her professor as well. At the end of the session the tutor tells the tutee that her paper has a lot of good information and gave her advice on to always proof read, revive, and to work on fragment sentences. This tutee is a ESL student and because English is not her first language she has to work a bit harder to make her main point understandable. The tutor ended with telling the tutee what he believes is her main point of the paper and to see if her message got across and what was understood that way she knows what to fix and what her paper should sound like.                 

First Observation

Today was my first observation at the writing center and it went pretty well. There were a lot of students waiting for tutors to take a look at their paper. The tutor i observed had two students each with different subjects, one was an essay on African American literature, the other was focusing on analyzing a poem. With the first student he read the assignment first then focused on one page at a time when it came to the essay. the tutor praise the student saying the paper is great but the first half of the paper the student is not really answering the question. The tutor focus on sentence structure and paragraph structure as well. However he mainly focused on LOC than HOC. The tutor then went to the next student with the poem, he reads the assignment and they talked about the poem and ask what the student thinks are the main points and to focus on those ideas about the poem. He also told him to get away from summarizing the poem and give his opinion. With this student the tutor focus on HOC and structure of the paragraph. In the end the tutor did some good things and things i wouldnt do as a tutor. For the first paper the tutor read it to himself which made things a little akward and boring for the tutee, she was waiting there and playing with her phone. I would have read it out loud as it really brings the tutee into the session, besides when reading to yourself you go in to your own pace and that can be painfully slow. Besides that it was a good first session.