Observation 2

July 7, 2013
Observation Session
1 Hour


SESSION 2

In this session, I observed a tutor that was working with a student for the first time. He gave a positive and welcoming introduction to me and the student. I could tell she felt welcomed right away and she was also not a native speaker but her issues were with writing. She was able to communicate vey well and told us she had just moved from Brazil a few months ago. Also, she was taking her first college course ever, ENG101. She handed the tutor two blue packets and they were based on two different writing assignments. The tutor first read the comments the professor left and began by saying that the professor thought she had great ideas but needed help with development. He shared his own story with her starting that he came from Peru as a teenager without knowing any English. He encouraged her and said she will master English and not to worry. He advised her to read as much as possible, especially newspapers and magazines. He then read the assignment and asked her what she thought the main idea of the article was and what the author's message was. He told her to start looking for that whenever she had this type of assignment. Then he told her that the next step was to form her argument based on her opinion of the main idea in the article. He emphasized how important it is to show evidence to back up her argument and that she did not need to spend so much time summarizing the articles. He said they were not going to focus on grammar because he was able to read her work and that she should focus on expending on her arguments and ideas instead. The session lasted the whole hour and the last few minutes he gave her a lesson on dependent and independent phrases and how to avoid comma splices since her papers contained many of them. Through out the whole session he gave a lot of advice and gave her many examples to help her understand. The student was very happy and asked what his name was and his schedule so she can have more sessions with him. In my opinion, this was perhaps a perfect tutoring session and the student learned a lot. She was happy and very comfortable with him because she could relate to him. I wish to one day be a great tutor and help a student the way he did.