My first co-consultation!

I feel so far behind everyone else in the class because I chose to start working at the Writing Center next semester. I just had my first co-consultation, and it was a lot of fun! It made me look forward to working in the spring semester and doing more consulting in general.

After we all sat down and introduced ourselves, the consultant asked the student if she would like to read her paper out loud or if she would prefer he do it. She had been there before, and would have read it but she thought she was coming down with a sore throat. She then pulled out 5-6 papers that she had received grades of less than she had expected because she had come to the Writing Center for assistance on all of them. She was not mad, but rather wondered why the Writing Center had not helped. We promised her we would do our best.

She told us she was an ESL student, which I would never have guessed - she spoke English like it was her native tongue. Anyway, so she knew what her problem was - grammar. The consultant and I were willing to help her improve her grammar and, as it turned out, sentence structure as well.

The consultant ran through her paper. While he read, she made quick fixes on the page, asking him if she was correcting the problem or making it worse. The worst problem I could see from my end was her comma splices/run on sentences. To help her see this problem as well, the consultant read the whole sentence aloud without pausing or breathing, for that matter. She laughed and knew that she had to change the sentence. We explained comma splices to her, and showed her how to fix them (i.e. period, semi-colon, etc.) The next one we ran across she still did not quite catch, so he went back and read it through without pausing/breathing again. This time she got it, and chose the form of punctuation she wanted to insert.

I also bounced my verb tense ideas off of the consultant, and we advised the student together on how to best fix her paper. He focused a lot more on the content, which is something I need to work on focusing on. LOCs are just second nature to me, but I think with a little more practice that can definitely be fixed. It was a very productive session. The consultant and I worked very well together - I wish we could do co-consultations all the time! It seems like if you have a great person to collaborate with, then you will end up having a great session altogether. All in all, my first co-consultation was a really fun experience and I can't wait for my next one.