Satellite Observation #1 - Library

The consultant I observed today had five years of consulting experience, and was by far the best consultant I've shadowed. The session was with an ESL student who wanted to go over an annotated bibliography for grammar and to make sure his sentences made sense. However, this was the first time I've heard a tutor actually say, "Normally what we do is focus on content," and that grammar would be a secondary concern.

The real thing that made this session the most productive one I've seen was the level of the client's involvement in it. The consultant constantly asked him questions and made sure he understood before moving on to something else, and he employed a wide variety of techniques to help the student clarify his own writing. For example, when a sentence was too confusing, the consultant had the client say, out loud, just what he was trying to describe on paper. The consultant actually covered up the paper as the client spoke and told him, "Don't look at the paper, look at me." He then had the client write down what he had just said on another piece of paper. The student even remarked how helpful this technique was.

Another thing this consultant did was ask questions that allowed the client to figure things out on his own. For example, there were some verb tense issues in the paper, and the consultant would point out specific words and ask, "What tense is this?" to draw the client's attention to it. Actually involving the student in identifying grammatical errors seemed much more productive than the usual method of simply the consultant simply pointing out the problems, fixing them, and moving on.

A final thing that made this session unique was the consultant's recognition of the fact that there was more than one way to go about solving some of the problems within the paper. More than once he explained two different ways to correct the same error, and told the student it was up to him. I've haven't yet seen a consultant use so much patience or employ so many techniques when working with an ESL student. Obviously it takes time to acquire sure a repertoire since this consultant has been doing it for five years, but I hope I remember to be as varied and open-minded when I start co-consulting next week.