Sarah Cooper

Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1101- 101
November 30, 2014
An Extra Helping Hand
This paper was a little bit difficult because when you do attend these discourse
communities at first you did not think of them as that, but now you kind of have to think
in a different perspective. You have to be a little more observant and notice all the little
things you thought were just the norm before. I have collected more notes by going to
a few more sessions and obtaining more observations about things I did not notice
before, also adding more detail.
Everyone needs a little motivation when it comes to being at a university and the
work that comes along with it. Sometimes it feels like you mostly have to teach yourself
the knowledge supposed to be taught in classes or that youre going to bomb the next
upcoming exam. That is why it is nice to have a little extra help when it comes to these
things. Concepts also come easier to people once they hear it in simpler terms and when
they are retaught something they didnt understand before. Biology is not the easiest
class and I started going to tutor sessions to help me when it comes to this class and it
has been such a huge beneficial decision that I am glad I decided to start going to.
Scholar and researcher John Swales has coined the term discourse community as
being a community group that make up the six characteristics of a common goal,
intercommunication, participatory mechanisms, one or more genres, lexis, and old-

timers vs. newbies. The discourse community I will be exploring is the Learning and
Education Assistance Program (LEAP) tutor sessions for biology.
I go to the LEAP tutor sessions once a week on Tuesdays with the session leader
Victoria Knight who is a senior and an education major. It is fifty minutes in length and
it is held in the Woodward building here at UNC Charlotte. Usually in a regular biology
lecture there are around eighty people but in this tutor session there are only about ten.
Less people makes it easier to get one-on-one attention and help in the specific regions
of the course that are particularly challenging. LEAP is a spectacular opportunity for
you to get extra help in the course throughout the semester. A LEAP leader, Victoria
Knight, is a student that has taken the course and completed it with an extremely high
average holds the sessions. They have special training in leading the sessions. It is also
a great way to not only receive help but to meet other students in the class because the
same people usually are there. We have all fit that particular day and time in our
schedules and we all have a basic need to want to do well in biology or the others, like
myself, may be majoring in biology. I think myself and the others say it is a very
helpful resource. The hour you spend each week in LEAP is as good as spending
several hours or so studying on your own. At least ten others and I show up and use
worksheets, Jeopardy games, and PowerPoint slides to help understand the concepts we
have learned in class. We are able to ask questions and better understand anything we
may have struggled with. It really helps having the leader of the sessions be a student
like us that has taken the class and done well in it to explain the concepts to us because
she knows what she may have struggled with while taking the class and makes it easier
to grasp. While professors of science may use more intellectual vocabulary and funny

words like mitochondria and eukaryotic, Victoria Knight better breaks down the
words and makes it seem so much simpler. Such as mitochondria is also more
commonly referred to as the power house of the cell and eukaryotic is simply known
as a classic cell. Everyone attending has the common goal of succeeding in biology.
While there may be conflicts such as everyone not being able to meet up on certain
days its still nice to know that there are at least 12 sessions a week so if you may not be
able to attend your regular day you can attend a different one for that week. To find out
about the other days there are bulletins in the biology classroom and our professor also
emails us with available days for the tutor sessions that week. There is also a link to the
schedule on the biology classs Moodle page. Another benefit of going to the tutor
sessions is that if you go to ten sessions by the end of the course you can get an extra
point on your course average which would be the deciding factor between an A or a
B or a C and a D in the class. That one extra point could go a long way. Any
extra bit of point you can get is beneficial in the end and by going to the tutor sessions
you are helping and bettering yourself because you are gaining the knowledge needed
for the final exam. Students who attended LEAP about once a week over the past
semester had an average final course grade that was nearly two letter grades higher than
people who didnt use this option.
Victoria Knight also is a teacher assistant for our biology class so she sits in and
sees what we are discussing and going over. She makes worksheets based on what we
may need extra assistance on. I got to meet up with her after class one day and interview
her. Since she is an education major her desired occupation is to be a teacher. She wants
to in the near future be a middle school teacher. That was part of her reasoning for being

a teacher assistant and tutoring in her free time she said, It will definitely help with my
future profession. Victoria Knight took the intro to biology class when she was also a
freshman and this is her second time being a teachers assistant. The class was little
tough when I took it so it is great they have this resource now, said Knight because
LEAP is actually a new resource starting this year. She is the one that actually makes
some of the worksheets for LEAP we do so that will be huge practice. They have things
such as multiple-choice questions that relate to the topic we discussed in class that day
and then maybe a diagram or short answer question that also goes in depth with the
topic. She gets to practice speaking to a group and speaking in a language that is easy for
people to understand. I am very appreciative of this resource and Im glad its so easily
available. I was hesitant to attend at first but it has helped with my test grades very
much. The language between the classroom professor vs. the language and the way
things are explained while at the tutor session is very apparent. That is what makes the
tutor sessions so successful because as you may find it difficult to comprehend what the
professor is saying because of the vocabulary barrier, but having someone explaining
things that is a student like yourself makes terms and the knowledge come much easier.

Works Cited
Knight, Victoria. Personal Interview. 13 Nov. 2014
Swales, John. The concept of a Discourse Community. Genre Analysis: English in
Academic and Workplace Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-32. Print.