The Beginning to the End ! ( Observation 4)

During my last and final observation hour during this tutoring session I watched how the tutor reviewed the students paper and prepared himself for the questions he knew he was going to ask. The student did wait patiently as he did this but, it was a awkward and long wait in which I appreciated as I sat there waiting in silence. This tutor was different from the ones that I was given the opportunity to sit and observe with, but instead of me feeling like he was just a tutor talking to a student at this particular time it was like he became just another person engaging in pure conversation and reflected off the response he was given by the writer. 

He didn't focus much on grammatical errors he focused mostly on structure and the organization of the students paper. One thing he did bring to her attention was the use of a colon and in his words he said to her " Don't use the semi colon stay away from it because it will mess you up when writing, it is not your friend so if you are not aware of the use of a colon don't use it because it changes the impression of something you are writing even when you don't intend to". Not only did I feel that this was great, but I learned something here too and perhaps I have done the same in my very own writing and was not made aware of it. 

The student and the tutor sat chatting "off the paper talk and on the paper" the entire session developing more ideas and coming up with strategies to make her paper better. She did struggle a bit with a few past and present tenses which made him read her entire paper out loud for her to hear the way it read. By him doing this she was able to pick up on how she sounded and was quickly able to make all the necessary changes and corrections of the errors she needed on her paper.I felt that this was one of the best tutoring approaches presented while observing at the writing center.

Furthermore, given that he did read her paper out loud and she was able to pick up on her mistakes almost entirely on her own. The differences between language during this session was no a barrier at all between the tutor and the student they just seemed like two people simply having a conversation and if a person had went passed the table they would have not known they were in a tutoring session. I took in a great appreciation for the tutor when he read all the work aloud to the student and the correct use of the semi colon . So as a motto from the tutor "Semi Colons are not your friend if not used right so your best bet is to stay away from them and don't use them at all if you don't know how."