Tuesday, November 5th , 2013 was a special event in my educational life.  I was assigned to perform the task of a tutor for the first time.  I assisted Caroline, a student from ENG099.  At the beginning, I felt little bit nervous, but after shaking hands and a brief introduction with the tutee I relaxed.
      The session started as I asked Caroline about her assignment.  She gave me the article she was supposed to write about and told me that she could not write the draft because she didn't understand what was the article about.  I told her don't worry, we will go over it together.  I read the article silently to have an idea about it, then I told Caroline to read it out loud.  After that, I told her to read the first paragraph and  paraphrase it in her own words.  Caroline was a little bit anxious, and could not express her thought.  I decided then to give her a hint to help her relax and understand that part of the article, then I  told her to explain it to me in her way.  After she explained it to me, I told her to summarize it in one sentence and she did. Then we basically did the same strategy to explain each paragraph of the article. The more we moved from one paragraph to the other one, Caroline looked more relaxed as she started to understand better the article and was able to do what I asked her for.
     [The article was about parenthood, it included five paragraphs in total. In the first paragraph the author explained what people think about parenthood, in the second one he stated his own belief about parenthood, in the third paragraph he included his position that did not agree with what other people think about parenthood, in the fourth paragraph he gave evidence that explained why he took this position, and in the last paragraph he explained why being parents was not an easy task to many adults].
     After we finished explaining the article, I told Caroline to gather all the sentences so that she  forms a summary [that will later on serve as an introduction to her writing draft].  Once again Caroline seemed confused and did not understand what to do.  I told her that we basically got five sentences out of each paragraph of the article, so what we should do next, was to make a small paragraph out of those sentences.  This paragraph will be the introduction of her assigned essay.  Caroline then felt happy, and told me "Oh! now I understand the whole article" Before she started writing her summary I told Caroline, now that you understood the article could you tell me what was your thesis.  She said yes, then she wrote to me a thesis which was away longer than it supposed to be. After, I explained to Caroline that the thesis should be no longer than one sentence, she was able to define her thesis correctly.
      She wrote her summary, and we went over it. The summary was good, but it had the last part of the article in which the author claimed that the society did not prepare adults for parenthood, it also had some grammar mistakes such as subject/verb agreement and word choice. I started to explain some of these mistakes but it was almost the end of the session and we could not complete all of them.
   When we heard our professor telling us that the session was up, Caroline and I packed our belongings.  I told Caroline it was nice to meet her, she told me the same thing. We shook hands and I wished her good luck.
    

James Moffett asserts that the inner speech is basically sourced out of different experiences people witness throughout their lives.  Either these experiences are personal or impersonal, written or expressed vocally, Moffett believes they would be valuable as a basis from where we could choose variant ideas and develop them to a writing piece.
Based on this principle, Moffett in his article "Group One Revising Inner Speech" presents guidelines teachers could use as methods to help their students improve their writing skills easily.  For instance, when Moffett says "For fifteen minutes write down, pell-mell, everything that comes into your head, using the first words that occur to you and without concerning yourself about grammar...the purpose of this assignment, best done at first in class, is manifold: 1) To limber up the student and make his writing fluent and natural; 2) To show him that there is plenty to write about if he just becomes aware of what is going on in and around him... To provide a sampling of his own verbalization which he may subsequently examine to learn about the putting of things in words" (Moffett 29) he explains, as a first guideline teachers would assign a 15 minutes writing therapy of whatever comes out of mind in an impulsive way.  This method makes student indirectly notice important subjects they were not aware of.  Therefore, once they write them down, they realize they are plenty of topics they can write about easily.
Moffett also believes that observing is another therapy that is based on what people see, and sense by themselves. It is a good method that would help writers explore different topics from the notes they impulsively took while they were observing things closely.

Tutoring Do's and Don'ts

Tutoring Do's

 Tutors Do's (These notes are based on what I observed in the tutoring center)

•  Tutor introduces himself to the tutee
•  Tutor asks tutee how can I help you today?
•  Tutor tells the tutee show me your piece of writing and guide me through it
•   Tutor notices what is strong or weak about the tutee's draft and discusses the issue with the tutee. First he wants to  understand what causes that part to be weak, then together with the tutee  he guides her/him in order to improve the weak part.
•  Tutor notices that there was  missing information and  asks the tutee to go back to the article to read it, and find out what was missing.
• Tutor asks the tutee questions about the article to help her comprehend the text, so that she notices what was missing
• Tutor notices that the  thesis statement was missing, he then asks the tutee what she is writing about? is the author taking a position- is he in favor, against or neutral about what happened in the article? he asks these questions to help the tutee build her thesis.
• Tutor notices that the piece of writing is not well structured, he then asks the tutee to give him two ideas that she wants to talk about, he also asks her how she would like to  develop her ideas (in one or two paragraphs)?
• Tutor notices that the tutee instead of including her own experience, she uses a story from another article and she includes it in her draft. The tutor said it is good to talk about others' experiences, but what would give your writing more value is when you talk about your own experience

Tutors Don'ts (These notes are based on what I watched on the video)

•   Tutors don't take it seriously sometimes, especially when they start an open-ended discussion with the tutee and forget what should come as priority (is it to help the tutee improve his writing or adopt the cloak of therapist while talking about life's issues).
•  Tutors take the leadership from the tutees and instead of showing them and guide them to improve their writing, they prefer to do the job for them thinking that this would help the tutees improve their writing skills
• some tutors spend more time talking about grammatical mistakes, and don't leave much time for the high order concern.  So they start to detect issues about punctuations and word choice, etc., and forget that what count more is to talk with the tutee, is to check whether what tutees wrote is connected to the given topic, check whether the thesis is there, and so on.

Tutees Do's (These notes are based on what I observed in the tutoring center)

• Tutees read the article and write a draft to respond to the given topic
• Tutees write questions about their writing concerns and bring them to tutoring
• Tutees focuse about what the tutors say to learn how to improve their writing skills
• Tutees don't count on the tutors to do their jobs
• Tutees know their weaknesses and strengths, they discuss the issue with tutors and asks for guidelines that help them solve their writing issues

Tutees Don'ts (These notes are based on what I watched on the video)

•  Tutees don't care about what the tutors say.  While tutors talk about their draft's issues, instead of  listening they stare at something else
• Tutees want the tutors to do job for them, they come to tutoring center unprepared (either don't have a written draft, don't have questions for the tutors about their writing, and so on)
• Tutees let the tutors taking the leadership away from them. They welcome that the tutors dictate to them what to do, and don't bather to ask the tutors to give them chance to learn how to improve their writing

            
   

            The aspect of Sondra Perl's thinking that seems most important for me is the one that quotes "Writers consistently return to their notion of the topic throughout the process of writing.  Particularly when they are stuck, writers seem to use the topic or a key word in it as a way to get again.  Thus many times it is possible to see writers "Going back" rereading the topic they were given, changing it to suit what they have been writing or changing what they have written to suit their notion of the topic (Sondra, 364).
               Sondra Perl brings to the scene  alive picture of how writing process takes action in a manner that comes along in accordance with both the writer's notion and the given topic.  She states when the writer starts his piece he pauses from time to time to return back to what he wrote or to the article.  This backward move happens consecutively when the writer anticipates whether what he wrote harmonizes with what he wanted to say, or happens when the writer blocks.  In this case he returns to the topic to look for a key word that will allow him to keep going on his writing.
               Sondra' statement reminds me of those moments where I had/have been  exactly doing  what she says whenever I had/have to write about a specific topic.   I write and often go back to what I wrote, or to a portion of it, to read and reread it and make sure whether it sounds similar to my opinions that I related to the given topic, or to check whether I lost the truck or not.  Many times I go back and forth to the article and reread, this helps me develop new thoughts about what I am writing, and gives me that hint that I needed to keep going on my writing. 
                 This is the model I use  in my writing process, it is similar to the method Sondra describes in her article.  I prefer this way because it keeps me focused, takes away the barriers that often block my thinking,  and more important it makes  my writing sound .