Writing Center Part 3

Yesterday I had my first real experience shadowing in the writing center. The tutee was a freshman girl writing short essays for her English 103 class and she was asking for help with her third essay. The assignment was to choose 2 articles, in addition to one required article, and develop a single cohesive thesis while making the articles "speak to each other". The tutor did not read the paper before hand, so she read the paper out loud to the writer. I think that it is beneficial to read the paper before the session, but if that isn't possible for some reason, I think reading the paper out loud was an awesome way to get the writer listening and catching her mistakes on her own. In this case, the writer did stop the tutor at some points and say that she realizes that is a mistake, or ask the tutor how she could fix that because it sounded awkward.

This was an awesome session to sit in on, because a lot of the issues we have been talking about in class came up. The writer had tons of specific questions, and the tutor would address the issue at hand, usually using a single example in her paper, and then leave it up to the writer to fix the issue wherever else it came up. I felt that this was a good approach to take because it wasn't a "fix it shop" method, but the writers concerns were still being addressed.

The writer mentioned in the beginning that she wanted to talk mostly about content, because she wasn't sure if her argument made sense. The tutor used techniques that we have been discussing, mostly asking the writer to talk through her ideas and explain her argument. The tutor mentioned that she knows the writer knows what she is talking about, but her writing is not accurately reflecting that. The tutor made marks directly on her essay, and the writer was also taking notes of her own.

There was definitely a gracious attitude from the writer, and I could tell that she genuinely wanted help. The tutor was also passionate about helping her and she had a lot of knowledge on how to help her.

This session started at 5 and ended around 6:10. Generally, sessions are limited to an hour, so the question that I thought of while 6 pm neared was this: what do you do as a tutor if the session is going to run long? There is no guarantee that you or the writer will be available to stay longer. So, what is the protocol for the long session? Do you schedule another session? Continue via email? This question is something I will continue to think about.