Course Reflection

 

As a student enrolled in Eng 220 Teaching Writing I can say that my general reflection of this course has enlarged my expectancy as an upcoming educator. I can confess that at the beginning of the semester I did not believe that I would get a lot from taking this course. This class was a requirement and I saw it as just that, but I never anticipated learning so much and for that I am appreciative.  As new students presently taking this course I should recommend you take this course very serious because you will learn a lot of new tutoring methods that you can carry over with you when you have your own classroom with students. In this course it is a requirement that you complete four observations and those are very important and will shape how the semester will turn out. Attending all observations gives you the chance to witness genuine tutors in their everyday life. You will get to observe how they handle different situations with students that have many different needs when it comes to assisting their tutees. The course text will also help you get a sense of understanding of why tutors choose to tutor a certain way. When reading the course text you will then figure out which tutoring style best fits you in which you can implement them during your own tutoring session which is also a requirement after you complete your four observations. When the time came for me to tutor on my own I was very anxious because I thought I would not fulfill the needs of my tutee, but to my surprise my tutoring sessions went very well. I practiced many different tutoring styles for all four of my sessions so I could get a different viewpoint from all sessions. This is one advice that I would recommend to all future students enrolled in Teaching Writing.  Professor Cooper was very helpful along the way, always there to lend a helping hand which I find to be important. A professor that is always observant is always nice to have because it shows that he or she cares for their students succeeding and actually learning something in the class. The papers that were assigned for this course are not hard to complete as long as you do not PROCASINATE. I say this because I saw that the assignments that I started early and gave myself enough time to get proofread always received a good grade opposed to the papers I would try to complete at the last minute. I believe your grade reflects the amount of time and effort you put into it.  The class quiz are very easy and I find it to be the easiest way to accumulate points in the class as well as having good attendance. Overall, I would like to wish you all the best of luck as you take part in this journey as tutors and upcoming educators.

Tutoring Session #2

For my second time tutoring I was chosen to help one student with her paper on her views and ideas on Charter Schools. At first I introduced myself to my tutee as I normally would and had her explain to me what her assignment was about. After, I quickly skimmed through her paper and immediately I noticed that her paper had a lot of grammatical errors but instead on focusing on LOC’s I underlined just a few misspelled words just so that she would have an idea on what to work on later on after the session was over. My main focus was to help her focus on the assignment and what her professor was asking for. Her thesis was pretty good but just needed some tweaking we worked on that for about six minutes and began working on the structure of her essay I recommended that she first explain what charter schools are about and their history before giving her argument.  She had a few quotes that she related to some personal experiences which I loved that she could connect to the quotes.  For this assignment my tutee did not have her paper fully written she only had a page and a half.  To avoid ending our session a little earlier than expected I had her work on making a outline on the next few paragraphs that she planned on writing as well as the conclusion. This way all of her thoughts and ideas will not be forgotten when it came time for her to finish her paper. For this session I believed I used more of a teacher-centered tutoring session simply because of the fact that my student was a little shy so in order to take control over the session and get the job done I believed that this style would work best for us. I worked on HOC’s so that we wouldn’t lose focus on the main purpose of the session but I did underline a few LOC’s that I noticed just so that my tutee would not forget about some of the grammatical changes that needed to be made. Overall my second session went pretty well I did not have any complaints and I enjoyed this experience.

Tutoring session #1

For my first tutoring session I was paired with a girl who wrote an essay on illegal immigrants and whether or not they are good for the united states economy. Her paper was good for a first draft although she had a few grammar errors. We worked together on sentence structure because I noticed that she struggled with that. Her professor had already revised the paper prior to me reading her paper so I basically focused on what the professor asked for the assignment. Her professor wanted her to expand a little more on her second paragraph and to answer the "5 W's" who, what, when, where, why. After we did that we looked at her third paragraph in which she wrote about her own personal experiences and I suggested that she try to add a quote from the text to make a connection to what she was writing about.


Since this was my first tutoring experience I can say that it went pretty well. The girl I worked with was very sweet and kind. I made sure that I introduced myself before we began and had a small conversation about the class before starting the session. I wanted to have more of a student-centered session so that she could be as comfortable as possible with me I wanted to her to determine how the session would go. As a tutor I wanted to be an ear for her thoughts and ideas, I made sure to listen carefully and gave non critical advise and suggestions to help improve her writing. For my next tutoring session on Wednesday I will focus more on what the professor is asking for the assignment and not focus so much on correcting grammar errors in the paper. I may want to use the teacher-center strategy just so I can get the feeling of how it is to use these two strategies.

My 4th Observation

Today I was able to complete my fourth and final observation!!! because I had such a wonderful experience the other day I was hoping to be paired with the tutor I had before but he wasn't there :-(.
I was paired with a gentlemen who did not look as though he was having the best morning. He was assigned two students who needed help with their papers. First, I would like to mention that the tutor and the two students were all Spanish speaking natives so I assumed that the session would go pretty good. Now, the first student came in with a paper from her class already written but just wanted some type of feedback because of her difficulty with speaking English she wanted to make sure she worded everything correctly. The tutor mostly focused on high order concerns when reading her paper. He wanted to make sure that the students paper answered all of the questions asked by her professor in which it did. He seemed rather impressed and pleased with how well her paper was written. The student struggled a bit with quoting so he briefly explained to her how to quote and cite the article she was quoting from. When it came time to help the second student he was very annoyed at how poorly her paper was written. For the lack of better words her paper reflected exactly how she spoke, which in my opinion was not proper English. This could have been because of the difference in language since her primary language is Spanish. I felt like the tutor was very rude to this young girl at one point he said to her "this doesn't make sense" which I felt was a bit harsh. I think that he could have been a bit more understanding to her needs. I believe that instead of attacking someone or making them feel bad about themselves explain to them what they are doing wrong because they could really not know how to write a paper and the only way to learn to have a patient person to teach them that's the whole concept of learning. This students paper was about a transfer statement and she had a lot of grammar issues and the tutor spent a majority of the time with helping her correct all grammatical errors on her paper. While he went back and forth with helping the students  there was often an awkward silence when one student was not being helped. At one point on of the girls started combing her hair and applying lipstick during the session. If I were the tutor I would have told the student "Look over your paper and let me know if you see anything wrong or take this time to expand your paper while I help my other student". After he was done with helping the students he sent them on their way, got up from his seat and went into the tutors lounge. He did not ask me if I had any questions or concerns about why he did certain things. He just walked away.

The keys to a successful tutoring session....

 

My idea of an effective tutoring session is when the tutor starts off very positive and enthusiastic about what is about to happen. The tutor should start off by introducing themselves; ask the student why he/she came into the writing center and thanking them for coming in because it is not easy for everyone to ask for help. The tutor should focus on a lot of high order concerns instead of low order concerns because grammatical issues can be fixed at a later time. During the session the tutor should show proper body language because if you are not confident or comfortable it shows just as Melissa mentioned in her blog that her tutor maintained a high-tone and showed his involvement through his body language. During my own personal tutoring observation the tutor had prior knowledge of the person the student was writing about and this made him feel more comfortable. In Cindi's blog she had a similar experience she mentioned  that her tutors’ “attentiveness made the student feel a lot more comfortable because he opened up rather quickly”. I believe that tutors should focus on a lot of high order concerns but still try to help out with some low order concerns because there are some people whose first language is not English and struggle with grammar. I believe that a few corrections with the grammar and examples throughout the session can go a long way. Michelle explained that “low order concerns should be considered a priority for the student because it can prevent them from the grade they deserved”.

MY THIRD OBSERVATION!

My third observation was very entertaining I must say. I was able to observe this guy that came in with paper from another psychology class. The tutor was very friendly he introduced himself to the student; they spoke a little bit about the class and began with the session. This student’s paper was about Scarface he was asked to analyze a scene from the movie that he liked. The paper was all over the place and it was a little difficult for the tutor to understand what the student was trying to explain in this paper. He read the paper out loud to the student and he was able to see some of the mistakes he had made with his paper. After reading the paper the tutor explained to the student that his strongest paragraph was the conclusion and that he needed to focus on the beginning of the paper because he had no thesis. The tutor and the student had a great session in my opinion because it was two guys talking about Scarface; the tutor was very engaged in this project and was able to give him a few ideas on how to make his paper better. He advised the student to come into the writing center more often because they can help with strengthen a student’s writing especially when the students comes in the writing center with previously graded papers from a professor.  One thing that stood out to me was that the student was slouching in his seat and at one point had his chin on the table. I took this as a sign that he was not really interested in this paper but once the tutor found a way to get him more involved in the session , it went great.

Observation #2

For my second observation at the writing center I was able to observe a girl that needed help with her paper she wrote for Abnormal Psychology.  The tutor I observed at first skimmed through the assignment to get a better understanding of what was needed from the student. The format of the paper was somewhat off when asked what format the professor requested the student said MLA. The tutor then began to explain give her an explanation about the difference between MLA and APA. I observed that this conversation went on longer than expected and the session was not entirely spent on helping the student with the paper but more so on the formatting. I felt like this was a little odd and that the student would not get the right assistance she would need with her paper, also the tutor took a second during the session to go and grab her laptop so that she could show the student different websites that helps people who have difficulty with citations. As far as the students paper , she  had some stuff highlighted in a different color when this was brought to the tutors attention she said that these were some of the things she was confused about and wanted to know if she had wrote the sentences correctly.(I thought this idea was BRILLIANT!!)  . The tutor saw that the student had some issues with run-on sentences and the use of comma slice so she gave her a few worksheets to do at home or leisure time. We ended the session with the student asking if the writing center would be able to help her with writing her college essay because she is planning on transferring to another school. This observation was not that great I think my first observation was better because I got to see how the tutor helped her students with their paper. Hopefully my third observation will be better J

Observation #1

Today I had the chance to observe two students in the writing center and I must say it went better than I thought it would. The tutor was very polite she introduced herself to the student, which I believe to be the ultimate icebreaker when first meeting a stranger. The first student came in with an assignment, which was on a dialogue that he was suppose to come up with. Immediately the tutor pointed out all the things she liked about the dialogue and also told him about some of the grammatical errors she noticed as well. During the session the tutor noticed a lot of missing verbs, which in which I assumed that this must be a trouble area for the student when writing. The second student came in during the session what I observed is that since he came in a little after the session started he wasn’t greeted the same way the first student was welcomed, this could be due to the fact that he was late. The second student had a paper fully written but just wanted a feed back from another person to see if there was anything he was missing. The tutor was very familiar with the philosopher that the student was writing about which I believed to be a good thing. Since the paper was already written the tutor began a conversation with the student on topic about the paper just to get a better understanding about what the student wants to do. There were certain questions asked that the student seemed a bit confused about but the tutor reassured the student that everything would be ok. She made a good suggestions such as 'tweaking " the thesis, she explained to him that a lot of people have trouble when it comes to writing a thesis. After the tutoring session was over I was able to talk to the tutor for a bit and she told me she has been tutoring since 2005 and she also walked through the writing center and showed me some grammar activity handouts that I could use with my future students that I may tutor soon.