Tutoring Session #1

In this tutoring session, there were 2 girls. The tutor came in and sat us down, but first she asked the girls if they were comfortable having me in the room. She started off with a student that had an ENG 102 paper, which touched on apple pickers. The tutor working with her was very attentive, and she sat close to her, giving her one on one help. Reading her paper, she doesn't tell her whats wrong with it, or if it needs any fixing, but she asks her questions, that makes her explain. It makes the student talk more, and when she explains it out loud she hears her mistakes and understand what needs fixing. After she figures out what needs fixing, then the tutor finds a way to help her fix the issue. As she read the paper, she laughed a little - making the writer very calm and relaxed. After this she tells the writer of that paper to look at her paper, and highlight any problem areas she thought needed fixing.

The next student came in with an explanation of a poem. She wrote a very very long explanation for her English 101 class, that didn’t contain a thesis, the thesis was more of a paragraph explaining her thoughts and ideas. The tutor explained to her that the thesis is one sentence, and that it comes at the bottom or the middle of the paragraph. She also explained that the thesis is the answer to the question that your professor asked for your paper. The tutor started asking her questions like: “What is the most memorable part of this poem? “How does it make you feel?” “Why do you think the author wrote this?” By asking these questions, the writer was able to form her own thesis.

The tutor was very alert and showed interest in what the students were saying. She didn’t put their ideas down, but she helped them create a better, more concise paper out of them. The one thing I liked about her session is that, while asking questions she never gave them the answer. She let them come to the answer themselves, and if it wasn’t correct then she would address it. This was a very effective session, the students left feeling very satisfied, and one even said she was going to come back the next day for help with another class.