Shadowing Experience #2

When shadowing this week, I thought that I was not going to have anything to observe since my writing fellow Brittany did not have an appointment. However, one of the other male writing fellows did not show up for his appointment, so Brittany ended up taking his tutorial. Although I was agitated that the student was stood up by the writing fellow (which usually is supposed to be the other way around- if it happens at all), I was happy that I now had something to observe and I was eager to see another tutorial session. Although Brittany was not prepared for this appointment, she handled the situation very gracefully, and was friendly and welcoming to the male student, who seemed slightly confused about the mix up.

Before delving into his paper, Brittany asked the student the standard introductory questions, such as the student’s name, his professor’s name and his professor’s department. The student then explained to Brittany his assignment, which required him to compare, identify and discuss two books that he had read in his core class. He then told Brittany that his main purpose for coming into the writing center was to have someone check his intro to see if it was aligned with the paper’s prompt, and to also go over “basic editing.” Since the student didn’t have a hard copy of his paper, Brittany had to read through the paper on his computer just like my last shadowing session. However, differing from my last shadowing experience, the prompt for his essay was not as confusing and complex as the other student I watched last week. Because there was no confusing prompt, Brittany was able to look for more grammatical errors and content-related issues.

Even though the student had asked for help with “basic editing” and aligning his paper with the prompt, Brittany helped him more with the clarity, specificity and sentence structure within his paper. In many instances, I found Brittany requesting that he rethink many of the statements in his paper by asking himself the question “how?” So for example, the student typed, “Women were a domineering figure in both books.” But Brittany wanted him to go further with this statement. How were women a domineering figure? By asking him to be more specific, she also recommended that the student use more textual support and examples, in order to explain points rather than just stating them. It was clear that specificity was what this writer needed to focus on the most when revising his paper. He also had a few grammatical mistakes that most likely could have been fixed if he had gone over his paper and read it out loud to himself before coming to the writing center.

Although I found this shadowing experience engaging and different from my last experience, I felt as though the student could have used this tutorial more productively if he had read over his paper first. This was Brittany could worry less about the little (sometimes grammatical) mistakes in his paper, and in stead, focus on bigger concepts and ideas. There were also multiple interruptions during his tutorial, which also took away from the focus and time spent on the student’s paper. Although this tutorial could have been more efficient without these interruptions and setbacks, I felt that it was more productive than my last shadowing experience because more focus could be put on the content of the paper instead of the prompt. In my opinions this should always be the case for all writers in college. A prompt should not be something foreign or confusing, instead it should be a guide for your paper that helps you gain direction and focus.

Overall, I found this tutorial to be more efficient than the last session I attended, because this student had a first draft typed out (not just an outline), and he also had a clear understanding of his prompt. I think that the specificity problems present in his paper are difficult for many students because it requires a deep understanding of the text and your thesis. Although it takes more effort and brainpower to really get deep analysis in a paper, the more a student practices being this specific, the easier it will come to them in the future.