Observing Tutors and Writing. March 27th, 2012.

Yesterday I went to the Writing Center again to witness students being tutored. The two students I worked with were on their second draft of the papers they were working on. Sarah, my tutor, was very informative with the way she tutored and spoke to me on what and why she was doing the things she was doing. The first student was Mohammad, and he was mainly focusing on the overall piece, trying to get what he wrote to a more "readable" and understanding paper. It was well written with strong ideas and personal information, but Sarah was focusing on how the grammar would be improving what he wrote. Overall, Mohammad was confident in what he was writing but to get to the bottom of handing in a well-written paper he'd have to focus on the grammar and punctuation.
For the second student Rezwana, Sarah didn't let her mark the paper she was working on before they both spoke about how to make the paper better. Rezwana was focusing on her problems with the thesis and maintaining her idea's through out the paper, but Sarah was making sure she'd talk to her before changing anything. While they were talking about ideas Rezwana wrote, she was able to catch her mistakes while reading aloud. Sarah was on top of the conversational aspect of tutoring, getting exactly what the student wanted to say into her work. After briefly talking about it, she was able to put an unclear sentence that she wrote into a more understanding and fulfilled sentence.
I felt that Sarah was a good tutor, and knew what she was trying to do by helping the writers with higher order and lower order concerns, evening out both to get an overall good paper. Also leaving the student with a lot of work to be done by themselves when they got home.

Observing the Tutor March 20th.

Yesterday on March 20th, 2012 I went to the writing center to observe how tutors in the center acted and worked along-side writers to improve there writing. I saw a lot of things that were interesting and yet, things we've talked about in our previous classes. For instance, I viewed that the tutor read aloud with the writer the questions at hand, along with the answers that they were taking down. The tutor asked many questions [mostly about the thesis] and have the writer find supporting information in the actual text to help their work. They also made the writer jot down important points to improve their writing at home so they wont forget what was talked about in the center.
The tutor made the writer talk about all their opinions and ideas which allowed them to get an idea of what they were working on. Then putting those spoken words in their work.
Through out the entire time between the two students the tutor was working with, she never stopped asking questions to get the student to write and talk as much as they can. She spoke slow, and comfortably to let the writers know/ feel comfortable about writing and talking with her. Showing a sort of equality between them, instead of having a tutor speak and/ or treat them like "underlings".
What I found interesting was that the tutor asked both writers when the paper was due, which I found interesting because the two students I was observing had completely different answers. And lastly what i found interesting was that the tutor made it clear to switch lines and words around but not telling them where to place them, but letting them know, that it was a particular sentence or phrase and moving it to a more understandable place in the text.

LaGuardia Tutoring Writing 2012: Blog: Tutoring Observation Expectations

LaGuardia Tutoring Writing 2012: Blog: Tutoring Observation Expectations: What are your expectations for your observations? What are your feelings? What are you going to look for? What do you expect to happen? What...

When seeing the tutoring take place in a classroom first hand, I think it'll help me with my future dream to become an English teacher. For instance how a teacher/ tutor act's and carries themselves in a classroom, along working with someone.
Viewing techniques and certain ways to care of a classroom and see how the tutee takes care of certain scholastic situations. I feel a little nervous because I've never done something like this, being a peer to someone I never met before. This makes me a little nervous, sitting and analyzing someones paper, yet at the same time I'm looking forward to meeting new students, and helping [if I can] with their work, being a part of the tutoring system.