Drawing Circles

Like many kids, I had so many wild dreams in my childhood. One of them
was to be a painter. Whenever I had spare time, I would take out a scratch paper and
try to draw a perfect circle. Im a bad drawer actually, from childhood till now. I did
not know why I was so crazy with those boring closed curves. I could draw and revise
those circles for hours. I lost my interest in drawing circles when I learned that there
was a tool called compasses, which could draw a perfect circle in no time. As I was
getting older, I picked up drawing circles again. I started to understand the beauty of
hand-drawing circles: they are not perfect, but they are unique in every aspect. I
enjoyed the constant revising process as I squint at them, dragging my pencil with
great care. Sometimes I drew a bad one; sometimes I drew a nearly perfect one. I was
always anxious and excited when I started my new work.
I didnt make it to become a painter but a tutor now. To some extent, I think
the two are quite similar. As I m tutoring, I take the same fanatic effort in reasoning
and revising my tutees work. I could just give them compasses, but I admire the
beauty that resides in the hand drawing. I prefer to make my tutee think by
themselves. When we start a new essay, we are starting a new process of drawing
circle. Drawing a perfect circle last time doesnt guarantee a perfect circle this time,
and every essay, like the circles I drew, is the only one of its kind.
I realized that I had really grown from a novice tutor when I attended the dropin tutoring. It was hard to notice my own progress with the tutees that I met on a
regular basis. I think its like the case that a friend you havent seen for a long time
would say you changed a lot while your parents who live with you cant discern the
slightest change in you at all. In tutoring Peter, a drop-in tutee, I felt like I was an old
customer going to my favorite restaurant. I knew what to expect from the tutees. I felt

much comfortable doing my tutoring session, because I was familiar with everything.
I knew I would introduce myself first (I forgot to introduce myself when I started my
first tutoring session with Alice, I was too nervous at that time!). I knew I would not
start right away to read whatever my tutee gave me, but asked what his/her essay was
about and what he/she wanted to focus on for this session. I learned to let my tutee
explain their ideas in each paragraph first rather than for me to read their ideas in
their essays. I think in making my tutees retell their ideas not only saved my time but
also made they rethink of their arguments as they were trying to sell their arguments
to me. I even found myself gaining some tutoring intuitions when I was tutoring
Peter: he wrote the reflection paper in a totally narrative way of what he saw in the
lecture. But I didnt say he was wrong right away. Rather, I remembered the journal
Tutor as teachers. He might do this because it was the norm to write a reflection
paper in a narrative way in his L1. Even though it turned out that the real reason was
that Peter had never written a reflection paper, I was glad I considered the influence of
L1 in my tutees writing and I think it was a quite important one.
I rediscovered the process of brainstorming. Before taking the tutoring class,
I seldom did brainstorm. To me, it was only a word that has a meaning (every word
has a meaning!) rather than a deed that produce tons of meanings. When I first did
brainstorm with Alice, I was actually challenging myself. I was not hoping to get any
brilliant ideas at all. But this first brainstorming really changed my attitude.
Because Alice didnt want to delete one of the two seemingly distinct parts in one of
her argument, we had to brainstorm about the connections between the two. This
process really pushed my limits, because I kept saying to myself: if your tutee can
come up with great ideas, why cant you? With this motivation in mind, we were
actually exchanging ideas back and forth. More and more, I got used to brainstorm.

We might not always get brilliant idea, but it made I and my tutees think critically.
One problem that emerged during my first few brainstorms was that I was easily
redirected to the irrelevant topics raised by my tutees. Though we were still thinking
critically, we need to think critically and exclusively on one topic. As I did more
brainstorms with my tutees, I got more organized and experienced with the process
and procedure of brainstorms. In brainstorming for Alices in-class debate, we were
not only brainstorming our own arguments but also considering the against teams
counter arguments. At some point, we were actually debating with each other. There
were many new arguments and new counter arguments coming out. We really made
impossible become possible. Now looking back, I think I made a good decision in this
session. The Bill Gates and Steve Jobs not graduating from University made a great
counter argument against Alices side and at first thought, there seemed to be no way
to refute it. So I suggested setting it aside and building upon our own arguments first.
There were two reasons for me to do so: first, we can built up confidence in
brainstorming the slightly easier arguments; second, its hard and intimidating to
come up with a powerful argument right away and sometimes new ideas would strike
us when we are not even thinking about them. I think saving the hard
question/problem for later is very useful in my tutoring sessions, especially when
considering the limited time in each session.
I think my tutee, Betty, was a real challenge to me. She spoke perfectly and
sounds like a native. But when it came to writing, she was like, as her instructor put, a
translator. I later found out she wrote as she talked and she just chose randomly what
came to her mind first. I tried to make her proofreading her own essay when she
finished her writing, but she said when she read she didnt see anything that was
ungrammatical. Anyway, I made her read her essays every time before handing them

to me. Because first, she might not paying enough attention when she was reading(it
was probably the case, I found out she was not paying attention to the class
sometimes), and second it would eventually help her grow some intuitions such as a
sense of time frames if she kept proofreading her own essay. One time, I read out her
essay, and she self-corrected some grammar errors as I was reading. I found this
method was useful for Betty. As I read, she was not only listening but also thinking of
the overall fluency in her sentences. Since this method worked well with Betty, I tried
it on Alice, too. Though Alice didnt have as many grammar mistakes as Betty had,
she would always try to revise the sentence when I intentionally read it for several
times. This strategy not only tell my tutees that the sentence probably was not proper
(without saying directly that the sentence is wrong), but also every time I read, it
gives my tutee more time to think about the structure of his/her sentences. ( I would
slow down for the second and third time reading). I would definitely use this strategy
in the future if my tutees/students have the same problem.
Thinking in the emergency also helped me grow a lot. I remember the
session that Betty spilled coffee over her Mac and had nothing for me to look at.
Before this session, I actually had already gone through the Plan B activities for
multiple times. But they never stayed in my head, or I had never thought deep enough
on the applications of those activities. All in my mind at that time was: they are there;
they are good and Ill cross the bridge when I come to it. But this day came too fast
and I had to make quick decisions as which activities I should use. I was so
overwhelmed by the emergency that at the moment I couldnt even think of most of
the activities in Plan B. Though I finally chose to use summarizing news articles for
that session and we were lucky to find another news that had clear topic sentences that
we can look at, it involved much more than I had thought of. First, I had to analyze

Bettys need: she was quite familiar with citation format, she already wrote
appropriate emails, and vocabulary building would be too boring for her (She was
already not paying attention to the ESL 015 class sometimes). Even when I had
decided to use news articles, I found out not all the news were suitable for our
purpose: topic sentences, thesis statement and arguments. The Plan B activities are
much more complicated than I thought and I learned a hard lesson that preparation
doesnt mean just to look at the materials but think of when and how to use the
materials.
One concern I constantly faced was whether or not to give out the answers to
my tutees. I always tried to withhold my answers and gave more time for my tutees to
think. But more often than not, I found myself spitting out the answers, the easier
way. Later on in my tutoring session, I adopted a questioned based approach to lead
my tutees to the correct answers. It required me to think of the whole picture: to think
of each step (question) I need to guide my tutees to the destination. From the very
beginning, I was using only one or two direct questions that lead to the answers. Then
I tried to use comparison (in Kas C/C paper, we compared argumentative and
comparison essay to determine whether his topic sentence are appropriate for a C/C
paper) and make analogy (in Peters reflection paper, between war and sports). I really
like Stephen Norths idea mentioned in Perspectives on the Directive/Non-Directive
Continuum in the Writing Center. (Clark, 2001) that tutoring is about improving the
writer, not the writing. I can always provide compasses to my tutees, but its just
good for one-time use. In the meantime, I dont agree with Stephen Norths pure nondirective approach. Even though asking questions is actually directing our tutees in
one direction or other, they gained a lot of insights in the process of answering those
questions. Moreover, with repeated practice of answering directed questions, tutees

might probably also ask those questions to themselves when they were reasoning for
their independent research papers. Finally, as suggested by Deryn, I agree that it might
also be a good idea to give a sample answer so that our tutees know what they are
expected to do.
One last thought is that I need to learn more about writing techniques myself. I
was really caught up in the traditional method of teaching how to write a topic
sentence. For example, If I knew the visual organizer-outline (thanks for the
suggestion, when I was writing this reflection, I found the replies very very helpful
and full of wisdon) beforehand, I would definitely try this.

Reference
Clark, Irene. "Perspectives on the Directive/Non-Directive Continuum in the Writing
Center." 22.1. (2001): 33-58.