In the RWC this week I tutored an International Student from Japan for an entire hour. She wanted me to specifically look at grammar errors in her writing and odd sounding language as English was not her first language. She wasn't working on an essay, but rather a question sheet that required lengthy responses. She wanted me to work on grammar but her sentence structure needed help as well. We worked each response sentence by sentence and I tried my best not to sound condescending when correcting her sentences and paragraphs because that was an important topic we discussed in class when dealing with International Students. The tutoring session was also difficult not because she didn't speak English that well, but because the student's major was accounting which I have absolutely NO prior knowledge of. As an English major, it was hard for me to understand exactly what the student was talking about and the language barrier did not help.
However, the student had dealt with peer tutors before and was very patient with my lack of understanding of both the subject matter and her oftentimes confusing sentence structure. She worked with me to help break down some of her confusing accounting concepts and likewise I worked with her to try and make her paragraphs flow naturally instead of sounding disjointed and confusing. We used up the majority of the hour working on her responses and revising her answers. As a whole, we came away with a much cleaner and easier to understand assignment that the student was happy with.
As far as pros and cons go for this session, the cons were already mentioned. Language barrier paired with a lack of knowledge about the subject matter the student was talking about. Pros included patience and understanding on both parts, and a mutual understanding on what needed to be done with the writing. As a whole, I think this session was very successful given the harsh circumstances and I would be interested in working with International Students in the future!
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