This post is about the tutoring I've been doing for English 101 through the API program at LaGuardia. The way API works, a tutor gets assigned to a class (I've been assigned to ENG 101). Then they take a survey of the time the students in the class are available and set up regular tutoring sessions during the week for the students from that class to attend. It's interesting from my perspective because I want to be a high school English teacher, so in addition to tutoring, I get the opportunity to watch a professor teach a class.
As an aside, watching a professor teach a class is very different from taking a class from that professor. Since I'm not so focused on the content of the class I get to notice different things that I might not focus on if I was taking notes for a test I had to take that week. But that's not what this post is about. It's about the tutoring sessions I've had so far.
So at first I was worried no one was going to come to my tutoring sessions. I had been told by the directors of the API program that they usually set up tutors for math or science classes because in their experience, not many people come to tutoring for English. This warning seemed to be bearing out because for the first week, no one came at all.
But on the second week people started to show up. On the first day I only had one tutee, an older Chinese woman. What she had written was good for the most part, but she didn't have a copy of the assignment and the professor had not copied me on the email she sent to her students so I didn't have it either. Since I couldn't make sure she was following the essay prompt I asked her if she had any concerns about her own writing and what she'd like to work on.
She told me the professor had told her she had a problem with subject verb agreement and a couple other things, mostly low order concerns. I discussed those with her, showed her a couple places I noticed some of the types of errors she was talking about and explained how to correct the mistakes so that the paper looked more like her professor wanted.
Even though her English wasn't great, all in all her paper was very good. In some ways it seemed that she was able to write in English better than she was able to speak it, which is not at all what I expected. Her paper was about her life in Taiwan in the 1970s. I thought it was really interesting. We talked about her paper, what she had written, how she had structured it, and discussed things she could do to make it a stronger paper.
I told her that the professor she was working with was big on classical rhetoric, and talked about ethos, logos and pathos, and ways to try to make sure she hit those notes in the papers she wrote for this professor. We also discussed the importance of a strong thesis statement. Since neither of us had a copy of the assignment I couldn't help her shape the thesis. But I confirmed that she planned to come to the next session and told her that's what we would focus on next time.
Sean, it sounds like you know what you're doing and I have no doubt from reading your posts that you'd be a great tutor. Also, in reference towards your previous post, I know what you mean about not knowing what you had said in order to offend your classmate. I think it has more to do with how you said it as opposed to what was really said. This is something I've struggled with all my life. In my mind, I told you that your paper is well written but in reality it sounds like I said it's crap. I don't know. Anywho, this comment isn't constructive in any real sense, just sharing some thoughts.
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