Response 10/9

I really enjoyed this week’s session mainly because I was able to take more of an initiative as a peer tutor. I really became comfortable in working with students, particularly international students.  Our first session this week was a 30-minute session with an international graduate student who is from Taiwan. I had not been given the opportunity to work with an international student thus far; I was very excited to see if there would be any differences compared to working with a student who’s primary language is English. This student came into the session asking for help with grammar. We were able to fine tune some of the paper by adding articles such as the and a.  As the session continued, we found ourselves helping to reconstruct multiple sentences throughout the paper. Even she noticed this and was surprised that we were able to help better her paper so greatly. 

The second student was also an international student. He too came with the idea that grammar was the most important part of the editing process and was less concerned about the overall structure of his essay. His essay did not need such extensive editing as he thought. He was also asking many broad questions about grammar usage like when to use or not to use words (such as might or could) in an academic paper. Such questions Christina and I could not really answer except by saying that it weakens the paper’s credibility by making the writer seem unsure of his work. The questions this student was asking made it clear that he was interested in further improving his English. 

Mentoring with Christina the past three weeks have taught me so much. She really taught me what I needed to know about being a tutor to all sorts of students that come to the writing center and the steps I should take to be as helpful as possible for them. I am excited to begin mentoring on my own and I am interested to see what situations or types of papers and people I will encounter. By being a tutor, I hope to help not only other students in their writing but also focus on improving my writing as well.