As a writing tutor, I had to deal with the emotional baggage that students brought in with them along with their paper. I learned different ways of helping them get past their mental blocks so they could improve as a writer.
The coerced student
Some students were required by their teacher to come to the writing center. (Usually these required trips were foisted upon them before the teacher even looked at their paper.) They came in with a bad attitude, and they didn’t think they needed help. I learned to acknowledge their feeling of independence and to suggest that we look over their paper to see if we could polish it a bit. This usually got them to unbend in the session. I could see that they wanted to be validated that their paper needed no more work done to it. I was willing to give them that validation if they deserved it, but I also knew that in all probability, there would be problems.
The student with the gory paper
A few students came to the writing center because their teacher had bled red ink all over their paper and told them they needed to get help with it. They came in very depressed. It frequently helped them when we went over all the comments their teacher had written on their paper. I would do my best to explain to them what the teacher meant, since the teacher comments were usually very brief and sometimes cryptic. (It may interest you to know that sometimes the teacher’s comments were wrong, but I could see the teacher knew what the real problem was and didn’t have the time or space to write a detailed explanation.)
The insecure student
Some students came with the idea that they were terrible at writing. I could tell from their behavior during the session that they felt they needed their hand held in everything. In this situation, in addition to helping them improve their essay, it became necessary to search for their successes and validate their good instincts. It was also very important to share strategies for improvement so that they could take more control of their own writing process.
The passive student
Some students came with the expectation that the tutor should do all the work. They were reluctant to engage with their own writing or apply principles explained in the session and this made it very tempting for me as a tutor to take over and demonstrate. If demonstrating at least once didn’t seem to make a difference, the best way I found to react was to mirror the student’s behavior. If I sat back and looked expectantly at the student, the student usually realized that nothing was going to happen unless they did something.
The needy student
Some students tended to ask for more time and more help than could be given. This was always very difficult for me to deal with because usually these were cases when the student really DID have a lot of needs. This was when I had to work very hard to make sure the limits and boundaries of the writing center’s services were understood. I also had to remind them that they could make additional appointments later and make appointments for future assignments too.
The ESL student
English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students are a special tutoring case. They have not grown up immersed in the English-speaking culture, so many colloquialisms that English-speakers have absorbed are strange to them. Also, there were often times that the correct English was contrary to the general rules that they had learned. (This is what makes English frustrating to foreigners.) In these cases, I gave them answers that I would not give native speakers because they needed the exposure to the language.
It was always an adventure to be a writing tutor. I never knew what I would be dealing with next. I loved all the different students I worked with, and I never looked upon the different types as annoyances, but as needs to be met. I loved the whole process of learning about them and helping them.
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