WC Observation #2

In this session, the tutor and tutee were female undergraduate students. The tutor’s name for blog purposes is Michelle, and the tutee’s name will be Andrea. It was Andrea’s first WRA class, and she had questions regarding paragraph organization and transitions in her first paper. Andrea was hesitant to read the paper out loud at first, but after the tutor explained how beneficial it was to the writing and editing process, she began to read aloud.

Andrea read her paper without stopping to correct any errors. She changed what she was saying out loud, but never stopped to make comments or notes on the page.

Michelle definitely focused on HOCs the entire session, which was good because that is specifically what Andrea asked for. She was an authoritative tutor, and I feel like this session could have had a better outcome with a minimalist approach. Michelle did a lot of brainstorming and suggesting new ideas for Andrea. Sometimes Andrea just sat there while Michelle talked, and looked extremely bored. She would fidget or look at the clock, and Michelle just kept spewing out seemingly unnecessary ideas.

The tutor used a really good strategy for clarifying and separating paragraphs. She classified three different ideas in the same paragraph using the numbers one, two, and three as indications of the main idea of each sentence. At the end of the paragraph, Michelle and Andrea decided how to separate the paragraph together, with mostly Andrea’s input on the matter. I thought it was a great idea because it showed Andrea a new way to organize her great ideas and separate her own paragraphs.

There was one more thing I took away from the session: models work really well for explaining things. Michelle illustrated and explained the keyhole format, right on the paper. Andrea picked up the main ideas quickly, and formatted her conclusion accordingly.