How To Tutor Writing Slide 1 Stephanie Carter TutorLingo

How To Tutor Writing
Stephanie Carter
Slide 1
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Slide 2
Hi, my name is Stephanie Carter; and I work at a writing center with peer tutors who help
students with their writing assignments. Today I'd like to talk to you a little bit about writing
tutorials and give you some tips on how you can best help students when they come to your
writing or tutoring center. Tutoring writing is a little bit different from tutoring in other subject
areas, and there are some key strategies and techniques that you might find helpful when you
work with students.
In today's session, we'll cover a few key areas of a writing tutorial. We'll talk about the basic
elements of a writing tutorial; we'll talk about working with students' varying levels of preparation
when they come to your writing or tutoring center. We'll also discuss the challenge of prioritizing
the students' writing concerns and focus on what to do when a student needs help with
grammar. Finally, we'll focus on plagiarism issues and what to do when those issues pop up in a
writing tutorial.
Slide 3
There are some specific steps you should take when you're working with a student on a piece of
writing. Some of these are similar to other tutoring areas, and some are unique to tutoring in
writing. The first thing that you want to make sure you do is introduce yourself to the student
when they come in and make sure that they feel comfortable with you. Take a little time to
establish rapport. Ask them a little bit about themselves so that they feel comfortable and that
they'll be okay with sharing their writing with you.
From there, you want to find out a little bit about the writing assignment that they're working on
and make sure you understand what they need help with. Take a little time at the beginning to
establish some goals for the session with the student so that they understand what you can
accomplish during that time and you can feel as productive as possible during those sessions.
Also at that point, it makes sense to look at the assignment that the student brought in with them
and start addressing the task ­ the things that they need help with. Throughout your session but
especially toward the end of your session, you should be checking for understanding with the
student. Make sure they understand the comments that you're giving or the suggestions that
you're making so that when they continue working on their writing assignment, it will make sense
to them even if you're not with them.
Toward the end of your session, you want to make sure you can help the student establish what
their next steps might be for the writing assignment so they can successfully complete it. At the
end of your session, make sure you leave a little time to say your good­byes and also suggest
that they come back and see you again if they ever need additional help.
Slide 4
Throughout your writing session with the student, you want to make sure that they're actively
engaged at all times. There are some strategies that you can utilize that would help them feel
really involved in the session and understand that it's a collaboration rather than them just
coming in and you fixing their paper.
One of the most important things you can do is sit side­by­side with the student. Picture the
difference between sitting across the table with someone and sitting side­by­side with them. If
you're sitting across the table, it comes across like you're the expert and they're coming in for a
consultation with you and that you're going to be the person to fix their writing. If you sit
side­by­side with them, you're seen as a collaborator ­ someone who's part of the team and
helping them so that they can effectively write. It also makes it better for you to be able to see the
writing as it's beside them on the table rather than taking it away from them so you could read it
on the other side of the table.
The second thing that you want to do to keep them actively engaged is have them do the writing.
What I mean by this is if they want to make corrections or make suggestions on what should go
into the piece, then have them write it on the paper as opposed to you taking your pen and
making those corrections. The same goes for if a student brings in their paper on a laptop and
wants to add changes to their writing. Instead of you taking the laptop and typing in those
changes, have the student do it for themselves. Sometimes students are a little bit resistant to
this. They think that you're the person who can make their paper much better, and they want you
to do the writing on it. But you can push back a little bit on them and ask them to do the writing
themselves so that they can see that it's really their paper and that they own it.
Another strategy that works really well is to have a student read their paper out loud. By reading
their work out loud, you're both reading the paper at the same time so that there's no awkward
silences of you sitting there reading the paper and them waiting for you to give them the verdict
on their writing. So if you read it together, you're hearing it together. It also adds the benefit of the
student sometimes being able to recognize places where perhaps their ideas didn't come
across as clearly or perhaps they had some grammatical errors.
Finally, you want to find ways to encourage the student to talk in a session. I tell my tutors that
they should follow a 75% / 25% rule, meaning that the student is talking for about 75% of the time
and the tutor is talking for about 25% of the time.
Slide 5
So how do we encourage students to talk in writing tutorials? Take a minute or two to brainstorm
some ideas you can use with a student when you want them to be actively talking and engage
them in session.
Slide 6
Here are some ideas that I like to use when I'm trying to encourage a student to talk in a session.
First of all, I really want them to feel comfortable through the whole session. So those couple of
minutes at the beginning of a session where we talk a little bit about ourselves I feel goes a long
way in making a student more actively engaged.
Second is, I ask many open­ended questions of the student, which encourages them to share
their own ideas and thoughts. I also make sure that I never interrupt a student when they're
talking. Sometimes a student could be on the verge of a great idea; and if we interrupt them with
one of our own ideas, then it shuts them down a little bit. So being very conscious of not
interrupting is a great strategy to encourage students to talk more.
I also make sure that I never try to play the role of the expert, that I know everything about the
writing and that they are the ones who need help. I feel like thinking of it as a collaboration where
we're both working together on a piece of writing encourages the student to share their ideas
because they feel like their ideas are valued.
Finally, I really try to stay comfortable with silence. By this I mean that if I can be silent after
asking a question, it is more encouraging to the student that they can come up with the answer
themselves. So even though sometimes it feels a little bit awkward to not fill that empty space of
silence with our own talking, I think it goes a long way with encouraging the student to say their
own ideas and feel like they're in a safe space to share those.
Slide 7
How many strategies do you see the tutor using in this scenario?
Slide 8
As you know, students come into the writing center or the tutoring center at all different stages of
the writing process. Sometimes they'll come in and they will not have started their papers yet
and they would like some support with that. Take a minute now to brainstorm some ideas of how
you could help a student who hasn't yet started writing their paper.
Slide 9
First, make sure that the student understands exactly what the professor is asking them to write
about. If the student has a prompt or an assignment sheet that you can take a look at, it's really
helpful to read through that with the student; and it may stimulate some ideas that they could
then use to put into their papers.
A student often comes to the writing center feeling like they're experiencing a little bit of writer's
block. So if you can help the student with some brainstorming strategies, that could be really
helpful as well. If you have a whiteboard in your tutoring center or some scrap paper or the
student has their laptop, do some writing exercises that will get some of their ideas down on
paper.
Use those questioning strategies that you have to ask open­ended questions and to encourage
the students to think deeply about the subject that they're writing about. From there, it could be
really helpful to help the student with an outline, helping them think about what they want to write
about and organizing it into a concrete set of plans that they can work with when they go back to
their residence hall or their room and they want to continue with the writing process.
Here we want to show you a couple of examples of these strategies in action.
Slide 10
Another really common scenario in the writing or tutoring center is for a student to come in with a
partial draft. They may have written a piece of what they wanted to include in their final draft, but
they're not sure if they're on the right track or if they're addressing the question the professor has
asked. So take a minute here to brainstorm some ideas of how you could help a student with a
partial draft.
Slide 11
Here are some ideas for working with a student with a partial draft. When we were talking about
a student coming in with no writing at all yet, we discussed using their prompt or their
assignment sheet as a guide for the session. The same works really well here with a partial
draft. It's important to help the student understand what the professor is asking of them and
make sure that they're on the right track with the partial draft that they're working on.
A second strategy that you would want to use with a student with a partial draft is to ask them
what they're concerned about with this draft. Often students will comment that they are
concerned with their thesis statement or they want to make sure that they've organized their
ideas effectively to the point that they've gotten to. So use the students' concerns as a guide for
what you can give them feedback on in this session.
Finally, one other strategy to use with students with a partial draft is to help them develop the
steps and the things they need to do to finish the draft, to get it to the final stage of the writing
process. This could include helping them make an outline for the rest of what they need to write
about or to create a to do list, which might include things like visiting your professor's office
hours or going back to the library to get a little bit more research. If a student walks out with a
great set of plans that they can utilize with the rest of their paper, they'll feel like they're on the
right track with that. Here are a couple of examples of these strategies in action.
Slide 12
Video: Practical Strategies
Slide 13
One challenge that writing tutors sometimes have is knowing what to focus on when a student
comes in with a partial or a final draft. There could be many different problems or issues with the
paper, and it's sometimes hard to know where to start. Sometimes it's helpful to think about the
different concerns with a piece of writing in terms of higher order concerns and lower order
concerns.
Higher order concerns are things like thesis statement, idea development, organization of ideas
and the strength of a student's argument. These are also sometimes known as first or early
order concerns.
Lower order concerns are things like grammar, punctuation, mechanics and word choice. These
are sometimes referred to as later order concerns.
Slide 14
I recommend that writing tutors focus on higher order concerns when working with a student.
Why is that the better way to start? First off, it's often where the professor wants the student to
be focusing on when they're doing writing. A professor's grading is often most connected to the
thesis statement, the argument, the evidence that's being used and the organization of the ideas.
So if you give the student feedback on those areas, that's going to make the biggest impact with
the writing that the student is doing.
Second is that often a student is doing multiple drafts of a piece of writing. With those drafts,
they may be adding things, cutting things, totally reorganizing their sentences. If we're focused
on these grammatical issues or these lower order concerns related to punctuation and
mechanics, sometimes those sentences aren't making it to the final draft anyway. So it's better
to focus on the higher­order concerns and worry about the lower­order concerns with final drafts
when everything else is pretty strong.
Slide 15
Sometimes students do come in and ask for specific help with lower order concerns. If a student
comes in and says that they do need help with proofreading or editing, to us that often does
indicate lower order concerns. Here are some strategies you can use in that scenario.
First off, ask the student what they mean by proofreading or editing. Sometimes that's the
vocabulary they use, and they basically are trying to communicate that they want feedback on
their paper whatever it may be. So while proofreading and editing ­ those terms mean something
specific to those of us in writing or tutoring centers ­ it doesn't always mean the same thing to
students. Make sure that you understand exactly what they're asking.
If they do want to focus on those lower order concerns, you can ask them if there are certain
areas of their grammar or punctuation another mechanics that they've struggled with in the past,
and you can help them identify those in the writing that they're working with at that point.
Using reading aloud as a strategy is something I mentioned a little bit earlier as a way to keep a
student actively engaged in a session. It also works focusing on these lower order concerns.
Often if you hear a piece of writing out loud, you'll identify things that don't sound quite right or
word choices that perhaps aren't getting the idea across well. So reading aloud is a great
strategy when you're working with these lower order concerns.
Also help the student identify patterns of errors. If you notice that a student is frequently
struggling with something like their use of commas, you might be able to point that out to them in
a very nice way and help them identify that as an area of focus as they continue with their writing
process.
Finally, you don't have to feel like you're an expert on every grammatical question there is. Teach
the student how to refer to helpful handbooks or online guides that could give them support with
writing and with the mechanics of writing so that when they're back in their room and they have a
question like this, they'll know where to go themselves to look something up. So you can show
them that even people who like to write and who tutor writing themselves don't have the answer
to every grammatical question.
Slide 16
One challenging area for writing tutors is the concern of plagiarism when it comes to the writing
of the students coming into the writing center. What is plagiarism? According to Diana Hacker,
when you use another author's intellectual property ­ language, visuals or ideas ­ in your own
writing without give proper credit, you commit a kind of academic theft called plagiarism.
Slide 17
There are some specific things that you'll want to know when you're working with a student on a
piece of writing that may involve sources. First is that any time a student uses a source ­
whether they're quoting, paraphrasing or summarizing ­ they need to make sure they're citing
that source appropriately.
Second, different classes, different subject areas, different fields have different ways of citing the
sources when research is being done. Make sure the student and you know what type of
citations they should be using in the assignment that they're working on.
Third, keep in mind that you don't have to be an expert on all different citation styles; but you do
know how to use the references at hand to be able to look up questions or concerns that a
student may have and to help a student use those sources as well. So there are handbooks you
can use; there are excellent websites; and often your university or college may have some
sources you can use as well.
Finally, keep in mind that if you are ever concerned about plagiarism related to a specific student
that you should bring that concern directly to your supervisor.
Slide 18
Let's take a few minutes to consider some common plagiarism­related issues that may come up
in your writing or tutoring center. For instance, a student uses quotes in his essay but cites no
sources at all. What do you do in this scenario? Take a few minutes to read through these
options and select the ones that you think fit best with the scenario.
Slide 19
Let's take a few minutes to read through the options here and determine which ones would work
best in this scenario.
a) Determine whether he knows the rules of citing sources ­­ This is a great strategy to use with
a student. Sometimes students have not really been taught what the citation rules are. When we
see that they haven't cited any sources at all, it's evident that they just weren't sure what they
were supposed to be doing.
b) Skip over those areas and just focus on other aspects of his paper ­ Won't work really well
because perhaps when the student turns in their final draft, their professor would be very critical
and skeptical of the sources they use. So this would be a detriment to the student if you didn't
point out those areas where they didn't cite those sources.
c) Refer to his syllabus or assignment sheet for guidance on the professor's citation expectation
­ This is another great strategy to use because it will help the student understand where to go
when they do have questions related to citations. Checking to see what the professor is
expecting will give them the information they need to succeed.
d) Tell the student to cut all quotes out of his paper ­ This isn't a great strategy to use. Often
professors are expecting to see that the student can effectively integrate quotes. So cutting all
quotes out of his paper would likely lead the student to not fulfill the requirements of the
assignment.
e) Provide the student with some resources to refer to on citing sources ­ This strategy is really
effective because it will help the student see that there are options out there for them so they can
learn to independently cite their sources over time.
Slide 20
Here's another example of a common plagiarism­related issue that may come up in your tutoring
or writing center. A student has a paper that does not seem to be her own work. What do you
do? Take a couple of minutes to read through the options below and choose the ones that you
think would work best in this situation.
Slide 21
Let's take a couple of minutes to go through these options and discuss whether or not they will
work in this scenario.
a) Tell the student you can't work with her that day and immediately report her to the Dean of
Students ­­ This isn't the best option to take in this scenario. The student may or may not have
plagiarized, so there would be no reason to report them to the Dean of Students. A better
approach is to talk to your supervisor immediately after the session so that your supervisor can
help you determine what to do.
b) Ask the student to describe her writing process ­ By asking this question, you'll get a better
idea of where the student was in terms of putting this assignment together. If the student seems
really vague about how she came up with the draft that she has and doesn't seem able to
describe her research process or her writing process, then that could be a red flag that perhaps
she has plagiarized.
Slide 22
As we're nearing the end of our training here, it's a good time to think a little bit about the best
ways to end a session when you're working with a student on their writing. Take a couple of
minutes here to jot down some ideas you might have about how to effectively end a session with
a student.
Slide 23
Here are some ideas of techniques you can use as you're ending a session with a student. First,
take a little time to make sure that they understand all of the areas that you covered in your
session with them. If they have any other questions or concerns, make sure that you try your
best to address them at that point.
Also, it's really great to help a student make a to­do list of the future steps they need to complete
so that their assignment is complete. Finally, encourage the student to come back to the tutoring
or writing center when they ever need help again with their writing assignments.
I hope you found some of these strategies helpful and can apply them well when you're next
working with a student on a writing assignment. Good luck.
Slide 24
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