10/2 Observation

This week my observations were far more interesting and less traditional than last week’s. The first session I observed was via video using a Google video program and Google docs. Erica is the graduate student that Christina has been working with for a couple of weeks. She is working on her dissertation from South Florida. Erica is an international student from Brazil. I think this was important to know before starting the session because it really changes the way a tutor views the paper. It also allows a tutor to know what things to look at like grammar differences between two uncommon languages. As in every other session, Christina began by reading out loud. As she continued reading, Christina and Erica both noticed some errors in clarity and organization that could be fixed. The interesting thing about this session was that Christina could immediately see the changes being made by the writer on the google docs page. I also noticed that Christina would not make any changes on the paper itself but would discuss the issues with the writer and would allow her to do it herself. The only times Christina typed on the document was through a comments feature that does not directly change anything on the paper but rather creates a side note. 

The second session I observed was a traditional face to face session. Two students came in to review a paper that was to be done with three group members. There were many problems that occurred during this session. For starters, not all the group members were present. One of the girls was out of town and could not make it to the session. Out of the two girls that did show up, one showed up about fifteen minutes late. Another issue, that Christina explained to the two present writers, was that each session could only take place with one student at a time. They resolved this by deciding that one student would work with Christina in the first 30 minutes and the other would use the last 30 minutes. These were not the only issues; the students were extremely unprepared and had not looked over the writing portion of the member that was not present. Immediately upon reading the first paragraph, they both agreed that it did not meet the rubric or their own standards. Christina then asked if they would prefer to focus on their own writing rather than someone’s writing who was not present. The girls both replied by stating that they had not begun their own portions. 

Overall, I found that this weeks sessions to be interesting and I gained a new insight on tutoring. I learned how a video session worked and I learned that not every session can go as planned.