Key Concepts

Two main concepts that I have found to be extremely helpful in my tutoring thus far are the idea of reading aloud and writing as a conversation. It was surprising to me that the majority of  students that I worked with had never read their papers out loud to themselves or someone else. A practice that seemed so commonplace in my writing experience is in reality, not so common. So many students come in the RWC looking for "grammar help" and "line editing" although that is not the primary purpose of a Reading and Writing Center, by just reading the paper aloud, many of the grammatical errors that students seemed so overwhelmingly concerned with are easily solved.

The second concept that I find to be recurring in my sessions is the idea of conversation and writing as a social aspect. In the beginning of my tutoring sessions I try to ask the student what their understanding of the prompt is and then compare that to my understanding as well as what content they have already written. Often times just transferring the information the student has written on paper into a conversation where they put into words their ideas clarifies their thesis as well as the rest of their paper. In this way it also helps to check if their spoken ideas match what they have written down. I find these two practices to be extremely helpful in the tutoring process so that students better understand how to approach their own writing and also learn concepts they can use on their own to review and revise their work.