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