9/9 Response

Point of departure was one of the terms that stuck the strongest in my head from class. I had always thought that the tutor would consider the tutee’s former writing experience but it had not occurred to me to extend this thought to the tutee. It makes sense that the tutor should make the point of departure obvious so that the student is taking the whole process in as it happens in front of them.

Revision was used interestingly by Yancey to reference restructuring the essay’s main points to better serve the purpose of the essay. It seems very important to make this distinction between revision and editing clear for the student. The Longman suggests that your average student will come in expecting the tutor to edit the paper for them and that will greatly improve the essay. This can be a problem as most students will be using well enough grammar to pass but may require some foundational restructuring to make a better paper. The connection needs to be made to the idea of rereading the work to discern if all aspects are working toward the goal of the paper.

Reverse Outline ties directly with revision but can also be used in a theoretical sense to immediately improve writing. If it can be explained to the student that if they examine the writing and then paraphrase the work back, they can examine the main points of each section and restructure them in the most logical way. This can be done as a literal outline on paper or simply by walking through the essay with the student and analyzing each section individually then giving the analysis to the student to organize.

Reflection seems most important as it makes students “agents of their own learning” by including them in the entire revision process of the essay. This goes back to the idea of teaching students in real time with their own work. Using established knowledge to build a better writer.