Live Tutoring Session

Today I had my first tutoring session with 2 students in Eng 99 class. Before my session I was a little nervous, I thought I was going to forget some of my class discussions that I had prior. I introduced myself to both students and informed them that I was a student just like them and I took the CATW too once before. I made myself familiar with their assignment. I used the read aloud strategy with my first tutee, he did not feel comfortable with reading so he asked if we could take turns. From reading his paper I saw that he form a well structured paper. He understood the assignment and he told me he wanted to add more. I told him to adding more is always good. I had him read his paper one more time and think of additional information he wanted to share in each paragraph that he did not include. As he did this I focused on the second tutee, this one was discouraged he spoke bad about his writing. When he presented me with his writing piece I was shocked that he was putting his writing abilities down he was only four points from passing and his professor did some cheerleading on his paper. Reading his paper with him I witnessed that he lost sight of the topic and went in a different direction. I had him read his assignment and underline the important stuff that the author discussed. I told him to brainstorm on those topics and work from there. He wanted to disregard what his professor said, I reassured him to keep it because it worked in his favor just try to include his new information into his paper. I felt that the most positive part was the look of both tutees when I gave them honest feedback and when i told them that I took the CATW before. I think that when I shared that information with them they was intrigued and wanted to know what the graders look at while grading their test. I gave each student a task to force on and checked up on both. I did not feel that I focused on one student more than the other. After a while I did feel a little overwhelmed because I felt like I was saying the same thing over to both of them but they told me after the session that I did a great job and thanked them for allowing me to tutor them. I told them that if they need more assistance that they should not be afraid to seek help in the writing center.

Observation #3

On April 5th, I went to the writing lab at LAGCC to do my one hour observation for my English 220 class. This session was different from my first two observations, I sit in on two students in a English 99 class that was practicing for the CATW. These two students were different from the other students that I accounted while observing, they had a strong language barrier. The tutor started the session by giving the students a session reprt to give back to their professors. The tutor proceeded to give the male tutee an assignment to read and he gave the tutee detailed directions. Then he adressed the female tutee, from their discussion it was noted that the tutor worked with her the day before. As the tutor was working with her he focused on some LOC's due to the fact there was a language barrier. The tutor was very patient when working with her, he explained more in detail the article she read and reviewed questions and directions. The article seemed hard for the tutee, the tutor spoke in a calm manner reassuring her that the CATW will not be as difficult as  the assignment she was working on. Some words were hard for the tutee to understand the tutor had to stop occasionally to help her with her vocabulary. Cheerleading took place on the tutors part as well as my when the tutee got a better understanding. As the tutee began to write yet again the tutor focused on Low Order Concerns because of the tutees grammar needed some corrections yet she got her thoughts across. Across the table the other tutee was having the same problem with writing a summary on what he had just read. The tutor allowed me to help the tutee and it was my 1st ten minutes of working in the writing center. The tutor and I helped the tutee breakdown his assignment by paragraphs by pointing out important points. The tutee was informed to take notes as I read assignment along with him. Questions was asked constantly to the student to open his mind up for some of his thoughts on the topic of the assignment. I enjoyed working with this tutor whose name was Lawrence i would recommend him to any LAGCC student who has a language barrier.