1st tutoring session.

Having the opportunity to tutor people was great.! I was able to work with two students at a time and both of them were working and two different assignments. The first student was confused and a little nervous because she had not read the article she was supposed to write about. She didn't know what to do, what to write and did not like the topic she was given. I helped her read the passage because she had some trouble understanding it and gave her some advice so she wouldnt't get stuck on the reading thinking that it was an uninteresting topic. She did not want to finish reading and wanted to start writing but I suggested that it was better if she finished the reading so she would know exactly what to talk about on the assignment.Since she felt nervous because she kept thinking that I was stuck with her and that her slowness (as she called it)was keeping me from helping someone else I told her I would give her some time to read and she did. After she felt comfortable I told her to keep reading by herself so she won't feel nervous by my presence and went to help the other student. This other student had already wrote her assignment and just needed me to check it. Unfortunately she had many grammatical issues and had to work on the clarity of her sentences. I also noticed that she didn't introduce the topic or even summarized it before talking about it,therefore I suggested she should give some more feedback on the topic before going straight to mentioning it.When I first walked into the room I felt a little nervous because I wasn't sure if it was going to work but after I started I felt pretty confident because I reminded myself that they need help and I was not going to be able to give it to them if they could see that I was nervous. I learned how to split my attention equally between two students and something I would try to avoid is to focus on the student's grammar so they won't feel like everything they are writing is wrong. I only did it because the grammar issues did not let me understand what this person was trying to say in any of their sentences. It was actually easy to focus on their assignments and give them both the same amount of attention. When it comes to techniques I used a student centered approach because I feel like it is more important to listen to them first and interact so they could feel confident. It wasn't only giving them my attention but making sure they knew they had all my attention. Something positive about the experience is that the first student ended up writing a very nice first paragraph for her essay and that the other student was able to check on some issues her essay had. I just simply loved it and I really hope I was able to help them.

In my second visit to the writing center as an observer I was able to notice the difference in techniques that might be used by every tutor. This time the tutor was also helping two students at a time but was able to give both of them enough atention. This tutor was highly concerned with the grammar in the student's paper most of the session which is usually a low order concern but since there were so many errors in their grammar I sort of understand his position. Something I noticed different with this tutor was that he concentrated on both students from beginning to end while the other one kept trying to involve me in the process by explaining the things he would say or do. Even though they had different methods of tutoring I believe they both reached the goal which is help the student write a better paper. He conducted a teacher centered tutoring session since he was the one directing the session instead of interacting more with them and allowing them to share their opinion a little more.