9/09

Audience: I feel as if audience is an important term in regards to peer tutoring because it helps you to determine exactly what to write and how to write it to cater to the needs of your audience. If a student is writing an essay that is meant to be read solely by a professor, for example, the diction of the piece is going to be significantly different than if they were writing a speech to be read out loud to their classmates. By understanding audience you can help a student determine what needs to be incorporated into a work and what doesn’t. Audience plays a huge part in the overall feel of a piece of writing and it’s a very important element to consider when peer tutoring.

Constructive Reflection: Constructive reflection in my opinion is also very important because it;s just that, constructive. It’s defined as the process of developing a cumulative, multi-selved, multi-voiced identity which basically translates into the process of helping the writer find his or her own personal voice. Constructive reflection is important in regards to peer tutoring because it gives you the opportunity to not only examine the individual being tutored, but also yourself.

Exigence: Within the world of Rhetoric, exigence is defined as an issue, problem, or situation that prompts someone to write or speak. It is essentially the call to action that causes the writer or speaker to physically begin composing. Bitzer talks a lot about exigence and I think it’s an important concept to learn about when planning to peer tutor because it will help me to determine if the student is writing simply to write or if they have developed a true need for the subject matter that they are creating. Without exigence there is no valuable content. 

Remix: I really love this term because I feel as if everything is a remix of some sort. Kirby Ferguson’s blog entitled, Everything Is A Remix helps drive home the point that remixes surround us and play an important role on our rhetorical world. Remixing an essay is simply changing it around to create something new with new ideas and fresh details while retaining the same message. A remix is a mixture of new and old so to speak and I feel like peer tutoring builds of this in the way it incorporates prior knowledge and combines it with new rules and stylistic elements. 

Revision: Revision is also a critical key term because I don’t think that a lot f students know the difference between revision and editing. Revision is going back over a text and re-arranging some of the structural errors while editing is changing grammar and punctual errors. Revision is a very important key term in regards to tutoring because most of the time this is what we will be doing. I feel like its important to understand the concept of editing before we dive into this peer tutoring.