Good Paper
For my journal entry, I would like to talk about a recent experience I had while tutoring.
A girl came in tonight looking for help on a paper she had just revised. (She got help from an amazing tutor yesterday. I don't know who he was, but he did an awesome job.) She read the assignment objectives to me and proceeded to read her essay. I thought it was awesome, but she obviously was stressing out and thought it needed some more help. I felt obligated to find something she could fix, but really I couldn't. So, for ten minutes or so I asked her questions hoping she would find something wrong, but she didn't. In the end I made two little suggestions. They might make the paper a little longer, but I don't think they will necessarily make it better. So what do we do when the paper is at the point where we can't think of anything that will make it better. Like I said, I feel like we are obligated to do or teach something that will make the writer better, but if we can't, can we just say 'Good paper. Please come again?"
A girl came in tonight looking for help on a paper she had just revised. (She got help from an amazing tutor yesterday. I don't know who he was, but he did an awesome job.) She read the assignment objectives to me and proceeded to read her essay. I thought it was awesome, but she obviously was stressing out and thought it needed some more help. I felt obligated to find something she could fix, but really I couldn't. So, for ten minutes or so I asked her questions hoping she would find something wrong, but she didn't. In the end I made two little suggestions. They might make the paper a little longer, but I don't think they will necessarily make it better. So what do we do when the paper is at the point where we can't think of anything that will make it better. Like I said, I feel like we are obligated to do or teach something that will make the writer better, but if we can't, can we just say 'Good paper. Please come again?"
posted by Anonymous at 8:17 PM
1 Comments:
That is a bit of a dilemma. Cause the other day I had this one guy come in and I said, "Are you here for help on a paper." And he said, "Eh, just reassurance." Because sure enough his paper was pretty dang good and there wasn't much I could really correct on it. I guess this situation was different since he wasn't stressing about it. Luckily I did find just a couple of things that probably needed to be changed. Next time Mark, maybe you should just tell that person to start all over or something.
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