Writing Anxiety
This Blog is in response to Dr. Rogers' prompt to write on a tutoring session that I felt went poorly. I would respond to his latest prompt, but writing the responses on Bartholomae and Ong that we had to hand in was hard enough for me; I do not want to go through the agony of pretending like I understood the essays again. I lack the vocabulary and scholarship to do so, and I do not think I would be very good at faking my knowledge and expertise on the topic.
Bad tutoring sessions, however, are something I am becoming quite expert in. Until the other day the majority of my bad writing sessions were with ESL students; most of them would come in and request that I correct all the grammatical errors on a paper of no less than three pages. Needless to say, but I will say it, not being able to catch all the errors and not being able to explain why the ones I caught were errors was not and still is not something I look forward to when I see an ESL student walking through the doors of the Writing Center. So I was relieved when, finally, someone who was not ESL came to me for help on a paper. However, it took approximately 5.3 seconds for that relief to turn to regret that she was not ESL.
This particular tutee was a little older, maybe in her upper thirties. The very first thing she said to me was that she always gets writing anxiety and that she was especially worried about this paper because it was the last paper for her last class that she need to be able to graduate. The paper was due 'tomorrow' and she said she felt like throwing it away and starting over. You can imagine how I felt. Until this point of my tutoring career my experience in tutoring was limited to helping about 5 ESL students and 1 1010 student. Yikes! I contemplated telling her that I was not qualified to help her and to wait until Dawson, who is an amazing tutor, was available to help her. I'm not a quitter, but I guess I do like to fail so I kept my mouth shut and asked her to read her paper aloud for me. When she finished, it was obvious that the paper needed some help; although, she actually had done a pretty good job on it. After taking about ten minutes convincing her that the paper was worth keeping and that she should not chuck it, I got stuck. Like I said, it was obvious she needed some help, but I had no idea how to help her. So I just asked her a bunch of open ended questions and let her come to her own conclusions.
The entire session took over an hour. One problem we had was that she had done tons and tons and tons of research for this paper; she literally had an entire 1' notebook full of 3X5 cards, articles, and quotes related to her paper. It was quite impressive. It was not a bad thing that she had done so much research, but it was bad that she was so worried about finding places in her paper to put all the information she had not yet used. It came to a point where I finally told her, in nicer words, to knock it off. I do not think not having enough information in her paper was the problem. After I convinced her to just worry about what she already had, we just reorganized a few things and I sent her on her way. I know there was more things wrong with her paper, I just wish I knew what they were so I could have helped her with them. I sure hope she at leasts gets a passing grade so she can finally graduate!
Bad tutoring sessions, however, are something I am becoming quite expert in. Until the other day the majority of my bad writing sessions were with ESL students; most of them would come in and request that I correct all the grammatical errors on a paper of no less than three pages. Needless to say, but I will say it, not being able to catch all the errors and not being able to explain why the ones I caught were errors was not and still is not something I look forward to when I see an ESL student walking through the doors of the Writing Center. So I was relieved when, finally, someone who was not ESL came to me for help on a paper. However, it took approximately 5.3 seconds for that relief to turn to regret that she was not ESL.
This particular tutee was a little older, maybe in her upper thirties. The very first thing she said to me was that she always gets writing anxiety and that she was especially worried about this paper because it was the last paper for her last class that she need to be able to graduate. The paper was due 'tomorrow' and she said she felt like throwing it away and starting over. You can imagine how I felt. Until this point of my tutoring career my experience in tutoring was limited to helping about 5 ESL students and 1 1010 student. Yikes! I contemplated telling her that I was not qualified to help her and to wait until Dawson, who is an amazing tutor, was available to help her. I'm not a quitter, but I guess I do like to fail so I kept my mouth shut and asked her to read her paper aloud for me. When she finished, it was obvious that the paper needed some help; although, she actually had done a pretty good job on it. After taking about ten minutes convincing her that the paper was worth keeping and that she should not chuck it, I got stuck. Like I said, it was obvious she needed some help, but I had no idea how to help her. So I just asked her a bunch of open ended questions and let her come to her own conclusions.
The entire session took over an hour. One problem we had was that she had done tons and tons and tons of research for this paper; she literally had an entire 1' notebook full of 3X5 cards, articles, and quotes related to her paper. It was quite impressive. It was not a bad thing that she had done so much research, but it was bad that she was so worried about finding places in her paper to put all the information she had not yet used. It came to a point where I finally told her, in nicer words, to knock it off. I do not think not having enough information in her paper was the problem. After I convinced her to just worry about what she already had, we just reorganized a few things and I sent her on her way. I know there was more things wrong with her paper, I just wish I knew what they were so I could have helped her with them. I sure hope she at leasts gets a passing grade so she can finally graduate!
posted by Anonymous at 9:27 PM
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