My First Tutoring Experience

            My first tutoring experience for my writing seminar class went more smoothly than I expected, but it was definitely nerve-racking. My tutee had many issues in her writing. We sat down in a cubicle in the writing center and I asked her what her assignment was. She didn’t say anything and just took out the CATW reading. I made small conversation by asking her what she thinks of the test and she responded to me that this is her third time taking this exam. I expressed empathy to her and listened as she explained that she has received better grades on the essays she has written in class, but she can’t pass the test. I reassured her that I will work with her on whatever she feels she needs help with, and that we will go through the work slowly. Looking timid, she pulled out her notebook and showed me an only outline she wrote in class pertaining to the reading as well as informing me that her professor wants the class to have a thesis in their essay.

I then asked her what did she have trouble with in the essay. She told me that she did not understand it or how to make a summary. Seeing that my tutee had no draft, I told her that we were going to read through the essay, one paragraph at a time, and choose one sentence that is the main idea of that paragraph. I made her read each paragraph aloud to me, and we underlined words she did not know. I asked her to underline one sentence that captures the main idea in each paragraph and asked her why after she chose one. If she answered thoroughly, I made sure she wrote her explanation down and then generate a new sentence that put that main idea into her own words and if not, I prompted her with questions to help her realize why her choice was incorrect. The last paragraph of the essay was the most difficult because it contained long, multi parted sentences with many ideas in each. For that paragraph, I went through sentence by sentence and discussed what it meant. I understood at this point that this tutee was not going to take initiative to speak up so I had to do most of the talking. I noticed that her English was struggling. During her oral explanations to me, I could tell she was nervous by how she tripped over her words. I reassured her that this was good practice for her and that she knows more than she thinks. I reverberated her explanations she told me back to her to make sure I heard her correctly. She looked as if she wanted to crawl in a hole and die at times.

After we went through the entire essay, picking out sentences, and she generated her own sentences, we moved on to the summary portion. At this point her comprehension of the material was better than what it was when we started. I explained to her what a summary was and then informed her that the sentences she generated were so important because it was like doing two things at once to lead into the summary. The summary was already there for her because she had pulled out the main idea from each paragraph; now it was just about piecing it together. I let her take a few minutes to read through the sentences and choose how she wanted them to be sequenced.

After piecing together a summary, we moved on to a connection. I told the tutee to not worry about what the essay says or what she needed to write, but to just talk about it with me. Since the essay was about the ambiguity of child-rearing, I asked her if she has/likes children. She told me that she loved children, but didn’t have any of her own. So I then asked her if she knows anyone who does that she can write about or if she had any initial reactions to the details of the essay. She informed me that her professor wanted her class to agree or disagree with the argument in the essay, which she then told me she agreed. When I asked her why she agreed, she told me orally that her dad has a hard time supporting her school tuition with the other bills and rent to pay, so it’s still hard supporting a family even when the children are grown. I said that it was a great connection she could write in her response. So I then asked her how could she connect her experience with the CATW, but our session happened to run out of time.

Overall, I thought it was an effective first meeting since we did get through the part she was having most difficulty with, the summary. The tutee also expressed that the one sentence technique was helpful and that she liked it. This tutee had HOC and LOC issues, but her spelling and grammar did not get in the way of her writing being understandable. I focused on the HOCs because her writing needs to definitely be comprehended on the actual CATW exam. I left our session on a positive note saying that we will work on thesis and body paragraph structure for the following week.