Wednesday, September 30, 2009

9/28 Chapter 12 in Longman

What were your reactions to this reading? How might these ideas help you as a tutor? How might these ideas help you as a writer?

3 comments:

  1. Fortunately for me, I have a somewhat wide background to work with when it comes to tutoring. I'm a communications major, but I also have experience in English, Science, History and Psychology. This background has served me well with tutoring.

    For instance, a student came to me with a 12 page lab report for an advanced chemistry project he was doing. Because of my intensive high school chemistry classes, I was able to not only comprehend the scope of the project, but I was also able to enhance his presentation of it.

    I honestly believe that interdisciplinary studies are invaluable for tutoring. If it weren't for my array of skills, I would feel very one-dimensional in my abilities to help students.

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  2. The idea expressed on Page 163, "Focus on three areas of concern in the writer's paper or three specific suggestions for revision. More than that won't necessarily be productive" highlighted a discomfort I have with the working model at the CTL. My previous training engrained the idea that tutor/instructor needed to be very careful not to overwhelm the tutee/student. Thus, as indicated in Longman, I naturally want to stop after about three substantive comments. However, when a student sends in a paper in advance, I am generally able to cover the three main areas of concern in about a half hour. After this point, I always ask students if they need a break to absorb what I have said or if they want to go on. All students have told me that they want to continue, so I do. They seem to get additional benefit so I guess I will just continue to trust that they can judge what they can handle.

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  3. It can be overwhelming to think that a student is coming in with a paper from an unfamilar dicipline. However, in my experience I have still been able to have substantive conversations with the writer. I try to make some notes regarding any questions I may have about a particular unfamilar term or topic and ask the writer about them if it seems appropriate in terms of the general clarity or organization of his or her paper. As always, I assure the writer that they are the "expert" of their paper, and in this case even more so. I have found that my perspective as an outside the disapline reader can still be valuable and help the writer be able to be more explicit and reach a broader audience. And as is suggested in Chapter 12, I always refer the student back to there professor or to seek the advice of a classmate if something specific is beyond my expertise.

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