My 2nd Satellite Observation - the BCC

This was my first session in the BCC's Writing Center, aka "The Place".

It was Writing Center heaven... The environment was just peaceful. The green paint on the walls and the wooden panels, the big screen television, and the comfortable, yet modern furniture was so inviting. I observed people literally sleeping on the couches next to me. I'd never seen anything like it. It was more reminiscent of homesick, lost college students than hobos finding a place to sleep for the day. Students were doing homework, having sessions and/or intelligent conversations, and more. So I loved the atmosphere. It really resonated with me as a comfortable and modern place for college students to relax and yet be intelligent, responsible adults. So before I ask who the interior decorator was, the client enters.

Or does she? One of the bad aspects of this environment is that you can't really tell when or where a session is going on. The check-in person could be any one of four or five people lounging on the couches with their laptops. And there's this sleeping boy, literally sleeping on the armchair next to mine, with his feet on the table in front of me. I try to concentrate on the news: Laura Bush is giving Michelle Obama the tour of the White House!

And then the client comes in. The tutor makes a copy, and the three of us settle into a side-table. The tutor is reading the assignment sheet, asking questions, verifying the teacher's guidelines, etc. The paper is a rhetorical movie analysis.
"What would you like to focus on?" The tutor asks kindly. The student asks for grammar help the most, but also for clarity and organizational help. She then adds an extra plea for grammar help.

The ESL student begins reading the assignment aloud. (And you thought I'd never see an ESL session, didn't you!) I can barely understand what she's saying, but after awhile I become used to her accent and it gets easier after the first page. The tutor keeps jotting down little notes in the margins. It doesn't seem like she is really following along as the student reads. Although the student stumbles over areas in her paper, and although she has a pen in hand, she does not make any corrections to the paper. The instructor did not tell her that she should do so, so I do not think it crossed her mind. It appears that she does not notice the mistakes she makes. This may be because she is so caught up in trying to pronounce the words correctly that her intonation and inflection are practically non-existent.

The student finishes reading her paper, and the tutor begins by complimenting her on various aspects. And then the tutor explains her confusion throughout the paper because she did not have any prior knowledge of the film. She suggests adding a good, short summary to the introduction. The student has no idea what she's talking about. So the tutor explains a "summary" like this: Pretend like a friend asks you if you went to see a movie. She's never seen it before, and wants to know what the movie was about. What do you tell her? That's your summary.

The tutor explained many topics this way. Another great example of how good this tutor was occurred when discussing the paragraph setup. The client had excellent flow, but the organizational structure needed improvement. Together, they paired appeals with strategies, and did one pair for each paragraph. Although this part of the session felt almost like a lecture, the client obviously learned a lot from it. The student kept repeating words that the tutor said and pulls out her class notes on the 5 A's (strategies).

The session was cut short because the hour flew by, but even so, the client seemed happy, and the tutor had to move on to the next client.