Blog Post 10/28

This week I tutored three people. The first guy was an Indonesian graduate student—English was his second language. He wasn’t confident in his grammar and usage. We read through his paper out loud together and cleaned up some sentences. I had a hard time pointing out some of his mistakes—for example, I would read out a sentence that was obviously very messed up expecting him to stop me. But most of the time he didn’t. So I struggled because I wanted to stay in the passenger seat. There were patterns in his errors, too, and I hope I did a good job of teaching him the correct way while remaining polite. I also hope I wasn’t too polite, because I think I tend to be too nice and wind up sounding unsure. Anyways. We went over a one-page paper and some excerpts from his CV. He asked me to write my name down so that he could see me next week as well, which made me smile.

               After that, a girl came in and needed some help proofreading a blog post she had to submit to her teacher (kinda like this). She said she was required to come to the RWC and that her visit was to fulfill the class requirement. So I could tell she didn’t take the tutoring session very seriously. We mostly talked about what she wrote about—she had an interesting experience while giving out sack lunches to homeless people in Tallahassee. She wrote about an emotional encounter between herself and a homeless woman. I told her that, although this assignment was just for her teacher and not something serious, she could always explore the topic further. I told her it could potentially be a great personal essay. (I think she was flattered :) ).

               The last session was interesting. A girl came in with her syllabus and said she had absolutely no idea what her teacher wants from an assignment or how to even begin writing. She asked me what a critical analysis was. At first, I was caught off guard. Did she want me to tell her how to begin outlining an essay? Did she want an example of a thesis statement? How do I tell her this off the top of my head? I wound up doing just that. I told her step by step what I would do in her situation. Read the prompt and identify a subject to write about. Collect support from class lectures and readings. Think of a position on the topic. Brainstorm possible thesis statements. Make an outline. I think I helped her. She said she would do those things and then come back to the RWC to work on a rough draft. Yay! I feel like I learned something from that tutoring session too.