Writing Center Observation #1

Friday, March 21, 2014
1:00PM

Today I observed my first tutoring session in the writing center. The tutor I observed assisted two Chinese-American students who came in together for help with the same assignment: a 750-word essay describing how they learned English.

At first I thought the session was a little quiet, there were some awkward silences. But the tutor I observed worked well with her students and they both left acting as if they appreciated her help. It certainly seemed to me as if they were back on track with the assignment.


She started by asking them about the assignment and taking look at the printed assignment which they had brought with them. I thought she might ask some questions about what they were working on but instead she started by reading the essay that one of the girls had brought with her. Even before she had finished reading it she checked it's length (it was about a page and a half), and told her that she would need to write more, "probably two more decent sized paragraphs." After finishing the essay she gave the girl feedback on what she had written.

She told her the intro was good, and that she loved the first body paragraph which she said, "told a sad story, but was also very funny." It seemed to me like the kind of feedback a writer would appreciate and it appeared to have been received well. Then she gave her the bad news.

In addition to not being long enough, she hadn't really followed the assignment. The essay she had written was about how she had come to America and learned English. But the assignment called for an argumentative essay with a strong thesis. What she had written was just a narrative. The tutor agreed that she had started to express an opinion in the conclusion, but told her it wasn't worded strongly enough, and that she should have brought it out earlier. She pointed out a few other issues and let her get started then turned to help her friend.

The tutor also read her essay before starting in with her. After some of our classroom discussions I thought writing center tutors might ask their tutees to read their own essays out loud, but this tutor didn't do that. The girl who wrote the second essay also hadn't followed the assignment, but in a different way. She had written an essay with a good thesis and it was long enough, but it didn't really address the proper topic. She had written about the general difficulties faced by a student moving to America. This was not really what the assignment called for, but the tutor did a good job of helping her find ways to adapt what she had written for the topic of the essay.

In both cases the tutor asked a lot of questions, was encouraging, gave good constructive feedback, kept the students talking about their work, and focused on higher order concerns over lower order concerns. In fact she pointed out that the instructions for the essay from their professor explicitly stated that for this assignment, grammar and spelling were not considered for the grade.

I don't really have any concerns. I thought the tutor did a good job. I can't think of anything she did wrong.