Global or Die...Or Just Go Somewhere Else
I enjoyed reading Cynthia's blog about how making suggestions on a paper someone drops off is basically the same as doing an online tutoring session. I think she is right; though the success of a tutoring session often depends on the interaction that only can exist in a one-on one session, students can still receive help and meaningful suggestions on their writing if they are not present. If this was not true, we would have no need for the OWL.
When I first started working as a tutor and I heard that we are not a place for students to drop off their papers for a quick edit job, I agreed. I still do. From the way Cynthia described how she proceeded with her student's paper, it sounds that she handled the situation exactly how she should have. She helped his writing and focused on more of the global issues. If a student doesn't want help with these problems and only wants to know if his periods and commas are in the correct places, I think we should not help the student at all. Quick fixes and edit jobs aren't why we're here.
The other day I had an ESL student come in the lab. On her first assignment(she had a stack of at least five) of ten pages, we spent about 45 minutes focusing on mostly local issues. It was very frustrating to me, but I figured it was slow and she did need a lot of help, I should help her. After the first assignment she asked what time the writing center closed. I told her at nine. She said,"oh good, we have time to go through the rest of my assignments." I thought, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I wish I was dead!!!!!!" But I just said, "okay, let's see the next assignment." This and the rest of her assignments were not even writing assignments. She had a list of questions with her short answers on them. I helped her with the first one of these and two pages into the second I decided enough was enough. I did not want to offend her, but I knew that if I did not say something to her, she would become too dependent on the writing center to fix all her little grammatical problems in all her assignments.
So I just said, "Listen, did you know there is an ESL tutor that you should go see for these kind of assignments?" She said she didn't. Then I proceeded to explain that the writing center was not for assignments like this, that we were there to help mostly with global issues on papers that deal a little more with writing and less on short, one sentence answers, and that if she needed help she could go get an appointment with the ESL guy. After this, she said that she thought the rest of the stack of assignments was okay and she didn't need help anymore. She left and I felt kind of bad for rejecting her, but I think I was in the right. We can't help in the way she wanted; can we? Besides the fact that her assignments had very little to do with writing, she expected me to spend three hours fixing her grammar. I'm sorry but I'm not about to do that for anyone.
My point is that we can and should help students, present or not, with their writing and that we should not help students, present or not, with only their small-time grammatical problems. If that is all the help they want or will accept, they need to go somewhere else.
When I first started working as a tutor and I heard that we are not a place for students to drop off their papers for a quick edit job, I agreed. I still do. From the way Cynthia described how she proceeded with her student's paper, it sounds that she handled the situation exactly how she should have. She helped his writing and focused on more of the global issues. If a student doesn't want help with these problems and only wants to know if his periods and commas are in the correct places, I think we should not help the student at all. Quick fixes and edit jobs aren't why we're here.
The other day I had an ESL student come in the lab. On her first assignment(she had a stack of at least five) of ten pages, we spent about 45 minutes focusing on mostly local issues. It was very frustrating to me, but I figured it was slow and she did need a lot of help, I should help her. After the first assignment she asked what time the writing center closed. I told her at nine. She said,"oh good, we have time to go through the rest of my assignments." I thought, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I wish I was dead!!!!!!" But I just said, "okay, let's see the next assignment." This and the rest of her assignments were not even writing assignments. She had a list of questions with her short answers on them. I helped her with the first one of these and two pages into the second I decided enough was enough. I did not want to offend her, but I knew that if I did not say something to her, she would become too dependent on the writing center to fix all her little grammatical problems in all her assignments.
So I just said, "Listen, did you know there is an ESL tutor that you should go see for these kind of assignments?" She said she didn't. Then I proceeded to explain that the writing center was not for assignments like this, that we were there to help mostly with global issues on papers that deal a little more with writing and less on short, one sentence answers, and that if she needed help she could go get an appointment with the ESL guy. After this, she said that she thought the rest of the stack of assignments was okay and she didn't need help anymore. She left and I felt kind of bad for rejecting her, but I think I was in the right. We can't help in the way she wanted; can we? Besides the fact that her assignments had very little to do with writing, she expected me to spend three hours fixing her grammar. I'm sorry but I'm not about to do that for anyone.
My point is that we can and should help students, present or not, with their writing and that we should not help students, present or not, with only their small-time grammatical problems. If that is all the help they want or will accept, they need to go somewhere else.
posted by Anonymous at 5:30 PM
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