Hi all, it's been a few weeks since I've posted anything (Tim has been a little unwell). Today's session went rather well. He had two students today that he was able to tell me about. While doing so, we touched upon the issue of confidence. By this I mean, we as tutors should give our students confidence during a session. Tim was saying that his students kept saying that they were bad writers. I feel that it is our duty as tutors to dissuade them from thinking in this manner. If we let students keep thinking in this manner, they will be hesitant to write later on. Even if they are not ideal writers, we should help them to feel like they should keep writing. After all, the only way to get better is to practice.
The other topic that we talked about was MLA formatting. He and I have had a lot of students coming in with questions about works cited pages and in-text quotations. When in doubt, both of us usually turn to the Owl website or some other publication like it. Although I'm sure that we all do this quite a bit, it is very important to keep in mind that it is okay to seek help from outside sources. I know that I am not the best at explaining every aspect of writing and that I usually refer to the Owl or other tutors around if I am unsure of something. There's nothing wrong with that. I urge everyone to tell their mentees that it is okay to look for help if they are unsure of something. After all, isn't our duty as tutors to help inform our students? How can we do this if we don't even know how to do or explain something?
Well, that's the gist of our session today. As our semester winds down, I hope that all of you are doing fine and not stressing out too much. Keep on doing the great work that I'm sure you are doing, and I'll give one final post next week.
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Hi Alex,
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you! Building confidence in our students is often a difficult task--sometimes you as a tutor will never convince them that they can write well such is the stubbornness of some students. Your comment about "ideal writers" is very pointed;everybody can and should write even if the writing is not strong and, yes, as you also mention continue to write in order to improve. Writing is crucial and so central to each student's educational experience that whatever we as tutors can do to facilitate that improvement should be done. As far as MLA and such...of course OWL is a great source, and nobody should be expected to know all of this stuff, that is why we have these sources to guide us in such matters--we shouldn't forget the resource room either.
Steve