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This blog will serve as a discussion and posting site for members of WRA/ENG 395, AL 891, and the Writing Center at MSU as they seek to examine the techniques of tutoring writing, as well as the various theories that under gird tutoring.
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Chapter five brings out a really good point. The writers we tutor “have varied learning styles, attitudes, backgrounds and competencies that affects their thinking and behavior.” Even though this seems so obvious, tutors forget their tutee’s backgrounds and often treat the tutee with standards that native English speakers are held to. Dianna’s first observation could be due to the tutor not completely understanding her tutee’s background. Another common problem that tutors make is that they “tend to assume that others lean in the same way we [tutors] do and are sometimes mystified when explanation approaches that makes perfect sense to us do not click with others.”
Sometimes, tutees feel that tutors are not American since we don’t know how to use grammar properly. Last week, Noah got screamed at by an international student.
In this past week, I have learned a lot about the writing center. I helped two international students and they both acted very similarly. I sat with both of the graduate students, on different days, and introduced myself. I followed the accepted protocol and asked them what they needed help with? They both said that their paper was perfect and that they only needed some help with the grammar. As the session went on, I felt that all the advice I gave was not being taken seriously and with each tutee, I had to show them how they had many points that needed to be reworded.
So, I showed grammatical errors within the points that I felt needed some rewording. I feel that by showing the writer that he/she was wrong and by being a little affirmative with my point of view actually helped someone who has being trained in an directive sort of culture all their life. And I used the directive approach to gain the tutee’s trust and then lead a more one on one discussion.
1. What kinds of cultural preferences do you think you have as a writer? Where did those preferences come from?
My cultural preference comes from the way in which I was first introduced to writing. In my Asian style of writing, I was always taught to give some sort of background before giving the main point to the reader.
5. Is it ever ok to give students quick fixes?
It depends how we define quick fixes. The student could have grammatical errors and if for example, the student does not know how to use commas, we could just go over few examples and let them fix it then. Many students will come to get a quick fix and we can always look at those little things because they too make the writing better. We can also give our opinion looking over the paper as a whole.
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