My practice as a tutor has been an enriching and inspiring experience. As I usually say, we humans learn something new from others every day, and I, as a tutor learned a lot from my tutee. I would say that I have taken these experiences as an “intellectual proof”, which I feel I can accomplish successfully or unsuccessfully depending in the student attitude and strategies that I would use depending on the students’ needs. I learned that tutoring is not only reading an essay, using writing strategies and giving feedback; tutoring is also knowing how to interact and connect with the student’s personality during the session. The way that I used to interacted with my students was to even come up with my own tutoring strategy, which I called the language technique. In fact, good connection between the tutor and the student builds student’s writing confidence and the tutor’s tutoring confidence. In addition, this good connection is only achieve when the tutor exhaust all the possibilities to make the tutoring session work.
First experiences sometimes are not as successful as you pretend it to be. When I met my first student at the Writing Center, I felt many things at the same time. I fully understand the theory that says what makes a good professional is the practice. Even though you learned the theory, someone cannot really demonstrate his/her knowledge until he/she works in their respective fields. When my session started I felt I was quite confident, so I transmitted it to the student I was tutoring. First, I asked him to explain the assignment. He said that his professor had showed his class a movie and they had to write a summary, giving their personal opinion and examples on how publicity and movies affects peoples’ minds.
After that, I carefully read my student’s essay and noticed where my tutee’s weaknesses and strengths were. First, the student had the ability to explain every point that he made through his essay, and he proved those statements with examples from readings or personal experiences. On the other hand, the student weaknesses were fragments. As I recall from my readings of Tutoring Writing and Active Voice grammar is considered a Lower Order Concern. I paid close attention to fragments from my student’s essay because it was difficult for me to read and even for the student to understand some of his writing. I decided to read my student’s essay again, but this time I did it aloud with the purpose of the student hearing what he wrote, so he can be able to catch his own mistakes. It did not work; I decided to change my strategy. While I was reading, I stopped where I found a fragment and underlined the sentence. Then I asked the student “what did you notice from this sentence?” he started reading the sentence again, and he did not notice any issues. I proceeded to explain to him that those sentences that I underlined were incomplete ideas. In addition, I went over those sentences and I used as my strategies Social Constructionist, Collaborative Learning, and Talking and writing (McAndrew & Reigstad 1-5). When I refer to those strategies, I mean that I use the power of the language to interact and give writing instructions to my tutee. For example, I explained to the student how incomplete ideas affected the meaning of the sentences. He did not let me finish and he said that he knew what I was talking about.
I would describe the student as someone who is confident in his abilities of writing. He had so much confidence that he made me feel insecure several times throughout the session. I think students’ confidence is very important at the moment of expressing ideas. However, they should be able to listen carefully to the tutor’s advices; otherwise they will not get anything from the tutoring experience. My tutee was Hispanic, so as my last alternative I decided to speak Spanish with him for a while. I came up with my own strategy, which I called the Language Technique, I did explain him that he had quite good ideas and he had the capacity of explaining them well, but also he needed to go over the sentences that I had mentioned previously and try to correct them. I did correct one of his sentences and I tried to explain him that it sounded much more accurate after the change. As a result, he realized that what I had been trying to tell him during the hour section was right, and he began to rewrite the rest of the sentence that were also incorrect. At the end, I saved my tutoring session; I tried many different ways of tutoring until it worked out. My student changed his attitude and he finally understood my advice. At the end I felt very satisfied that even though my tutee had negative attitude most of the session, I achieve good result from my own strategy.
This tutoring experience improved my knowledge and built my confidence. My second tutoring experience was really rewarding. At the beginning my tutee seemed to be shy, but I tried to be friendly and cordial with him, so he would not feel intimidated anymore. The student was very good organizing ideas, but what I noticed from his essay was that he tended to jump out of topic. Also, he wrote a short essay; the student’s ideas and his flow were fine, but to be honest, he needed developing more his ideas on the essay. I told him that it was very short and that he needed to write more. He said that he had noticed the same, but he also explained that when he writes his paper, he had difficulty on coming up with more ideas.
I decided to interact with my tutee and used the strategies free talking and mapping (McAndrew & Reigstad 34, 47). These strategies would help him to practice his writing and think on new ideas. The student had to write from an article and he had to give his opinion on why some people prefer fast food instead of healthy food at their meals. First of all, I gave him my opinion and then I asked him to describe in a piece of paper what fast food was. He completed the exercise successfully and after he finished it I asked him how he could relate those words with the question that he had to answer. We exchange some ideas and after a while he started writing an entire new paragraph. When he finished it he seemed to be quite satisfied with those new lines. He asked me to go over the entire essay and I did it. I pointed out some sentences where he had jumped off topic; he realized it was true and confessed that he did it because he did not know what else to write. In fact, he changed that sentences and he tried to connect them with his previous idea. The student fully participated in the activities and the conversation helped him to improve his essay greatly. I am convinced that the student’s optimism and willingness to learn were two significant factors that made this writing section successful.
In my third tutoring, I tutor a different ENG 099 student. At the beginning of the tutoring, he seemed to be very disappointed; he told me that he had been taking the writing placement test many times before. I talked him that the most he practices, the most he gets better. Then, the session started; he had to write a response from a movie and article that he had watch previously on class. I read the essay aloud and I stopped many times to ask him what he meant on any of the lines. I tried to only concentrate on his thesis, main ideas and body paragraphs (Higher Order Concerns), but I could not concentrate only on that, I worked in grammar (Lower Order Concerns) the same way as I was correcting his higher order concerns. He had severe Lower Order Concern problems such as fragments, punctuations, and spelling. I made him to rewrite some of his sentences, but he kept making the same mistakes. Then, I decided to ask him to do free writing (McAndrew & Reigstad 33). As a result, I asked him to write anything that comes to his mind based on the movie that he had watch. He did take long time to write two sentences, so I helped him with more ideas and he wrote two sentences more. At the end of the free writing exercise, I tell him that he needs more practice. Moreover, I advised him that free writing and reading is very helpful to develop his writing. After the exercise, I went over the grammar. I was surprise that he knew how to correct some of his sentences and I told my tutee that is very important to always read aloud and go over his own writing. When the session end the student hopeless said to me that his writing was not good at all. In fact, I said to the student that he had the ability to understand deeply the context of the movie and article and it was a good factor, but I told him that he needed to pay more attention to his grammar problems, which made the essay difficult to understand. In addition, I shared my personal experiences with him and I said that I went through the same writing process as him and with hard work I overcome my goal and I passes the ACT test. In fact, I said to the student that if I passed the test he will do it as well. My last advice was to practice as much as he can, look for help at the Writing Center and trust in his own abilities.
Overall, I experienced unforgettable moments tutoring at the Writing Center. This tutoring opportunity was quiet interesting for me. As I mentioned before, to have a successful writing session the tutor needs to connect and interact with the student. In addition, it is very important to get positive results from the hour session. Even thought I consider that to achieve effectively results from the tutoring session tutors are 50 percent responsible and the other 50 percent are the students’ responsibility, I believe the tutor should encourage, motive and even use improvised strategies to involve the student and make him/her interest to improve his/her writing. The must closest to tutoring is teaching; my major is Childhood Education that is why, I feel so identify with this experience. This first experience is meaningful and helpful for me as a future teacher. I do associate my tutor experiences with Kozol’s New York public schools experiences. In the article “Savage Inequalities” by Kozol, according to Edward Flanery the principal of one of the low-income schools said that “They get the worst teachers. For children of diverse needs in his overcrowded rooms… you need an outstanding professor” (Course packet-80). In addition, an outstanding teacher like an exceptional tutor is the one that has the ability to transmitted enthusiasm, motivation, and encouragement to the students. It would be the key for teachers or tutors to set up education to students as their primary goal.
Bibliography
McAndrew,Donald A. and Reigstad Thomas J.Tutoring Writing.Boynton Cook Publishers.Portsmouth, NH. Heinemann 2001.
Rogger-Cooper, Justin. “The seminar in Teaching Writing.” Spring 1, 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment