It has been nearly a month since my last brief analysis was written and during those weeks my hours at work have been many and my opportunities with tutoring have been few. However, I did have an interesting encounter during one of my shifts in the writing center. This encounter was also consequently my first actual session with a tutee at the center. Holding high expectations of myself, I drew from all of the knowledge that I had retained during my classes and readings and hoped for the best as my first student writer walked through the door. It soon became prevalently clear, though, that this session would be a challenge for me. As soon as she approached my table, it was apparent that she was at the writing center with reluctance.
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Luckily she had the prompt at hand and I was able to get some pretense of what was expected in the assignment. From I could gather, the assignment was a basic report-style essay in which she was expected to cover colony expansion and how the different super powers of the Mediterranean were able to seize control of lands in Africa and dominate the slave trade early on. With this basic layout, it was also expected that the writer went in depth as to explaining why these events took place and how they were significant. With these specifics in mind, I trudged through the paper alone while she was …show more content…
Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors. More specifically, the Jeff Brook’s article, “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work” was present in my mind during our exchange in the session. The first step I took was to, “sit beside the student, not across a desk… This first signal is important for showing the student that you are not the person ‘in charge’ of the paper” (130). I felt that following this step was crucial in my success of breaking down the tutee’s standoffish attitude from the start. Even though she wouldn’t sit down beside me at first, this first action showed that it was not going to be a solo endeavor for me to sit there and ‘fix’ the
Luckily she had the prompt at hand and I was able to get some pretense of what was expected in the assignment. From I could gather, the assignment was a basic report-style essay in which she was expected to cover colony expansion and how the different super powers of the Mediterranean were able to seize control of lands in Africa and dominate the slave trade early on. With this basic layout, it was also expected that the writer went in depth as to explaining why these events took place and how they were significant. With these specifics in mind, I trudged through the paper alone while she was …show more content…
Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors. More specifically, the Jeff Brook’s article, “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work” was present in my mind during our exchange in the session. The first step I took was to, “sit beside the student, not across a desk… This first signal is important for showing the student that you are not the person ‘in charge’ of the paper” (130). I felt that following this step was crucial in my success of breaking down the tutee’s standoffish attitude from the start. Even though she wouldn’t sit down beside me at first, this first action showed that it was not going to be a solo endeavor for me to sit there and ‘fix’ the