Third Day: Writing Center Observation

My third time observing the writing lab wasn't what I expected at all. I observed another tutor and she wasn't very interesting to observe and needed more direction as a tutor. There were a lot of reasons why I didn't really enjoy observing this session. For one, the tutor had two students that she had to tutor and I believed that she couldn't handle tutoring both students at once. Another thing that I didn't like about this tutor's session was that she wasn't asking the students questions about their work.

One student handed her their paper and she read it silently, After the tutor read her paper silently three times. She had already went wrong from there. As I said before, I believe that a tutor should introduce herself, this will make the tutee feel more comfortable about you as their tutor. Also, as a tutor, you should ask the tutee questions about what their work is about just to have a sense of direction as to where the paper is going, which this tutor did none of the above. I believe if she had asked the tutee questions about her paper, she wouldn't have had to read it three times to herself. After this the tutor failed to focus on the HOC (high order concerns) of the paper which consist of what the main idea, topic and thesis. She (the tutor) went straight into correcting the grammar in the paper. After doing so, the tutee asked if she could focus more on their thesis because she (the tutee) wasn't confident with their own thesis. The fact that the tutee had to point that out to the tutor without the tutor even considering that the first time around was surprising to me. Considering the fact that I read the text "Tutoring Writing" I discovered that a session won't be successful if you only focus on the LOCs (low order concerns). I believed that since she spent so much time with one student, she only had 15 minutes left for the other student and was rushing that session with him.

Overall, If I were a student who needed to be a tutored in the writing center, I wouldn't go to her. I didn't agree with her techniques as a tutor. I felt that she needed more guidance on tutoring two people at once. She could not handle two students at once therefore I will assume that one of the tutees didn't receive much feedback on their work like they should have. And if I could, I would advise that this tutor should read "Tutoring Writing" to gain more ideas and ways on how to tutor!