Have You Been to the Writing Center Before?

As some of you know, I was a tutor in the Writing Center at the college I attend. This free service assists college students with English composition, was quite a promising as well as an intimidating challenge! It was one of those tasks that you simply must plunge right into. Forget the dipping your toe in to feel the temp! There was a certain weight of responsibility with so much inexperience! I recall one occasion when a fellow student thanked me for helping him. he ended his remark with, " so how long have you been working here?" Gulp! How could I tell them that I had only been working for three days!

I truly loved this job of encouraging students with their writing. An added bonus was that my own love of the writing process was exercised and strengthened. As part of my training, I wrote journals reflecting on the various sessions that I tutored. Here is a a small taste of one of those journals. This was the seventh, written about half way through the semester. (Disclaimer: this journal has not been edited since it was written. Not surprisingly it has some boo-boos. No, I regret to say that writing tutors are not perfect!)

This week was such an encouraging week of tutoring! This is primarily because of how I have been able to apply the grammar principles that we have discussed with Mrs. Portman. With the knowledge I gained in class, I have addressed errors such as comma splices and run on sentences in almost every ESL paper I looked over. At last, I have been able to give tutees tools that they can “take home.” Now that I have a little more confidence (and capability) in this particular area of grammar, I am bolder in my attempts to explain grammar in general. For example, one ESL student, Adam, had some difficulty properly using of the articles “a” and “the.” I had never before explained the difference between the two so I took several moments to think about a good approach. I didn’t want to just tell Adam the answer. I wanted him to discover it so he would be able to self-correct later. So I asked him, “what is the difference between the sentence ‘I want to look at a dog’ and the sentence ‘I want to look at the dog?’” Adam processed my question out loud. “I guess when you say ‘I want to look at a dog’ you are talking about any dog. When you say ‘I want to see the dog you are talking about a specific dog!” It was an extremely simple exercise but Adam totally experienced the “light bulb effect! ”

I am definitely going to look for more opportunities to show a student how grammar or an idea works by using an example instead of just telling them.