Patrick Garrido

9/21/18

Tutor 10A

Tutor Journal Entry 1

As I have begun tutoring students over the past two weeks, I have begun to understand

the importance of how a tutor handles a session. For all intents and purposes, students look to

tutors to guide them in better understanding the elements of an assignment, or how they could

better improve their assignments. To this end, I feel that it is important to keep this in mind as I

approach each and every tutoring session. Of particular note, addressing student's questions in

regards to grammar and ensuring the organization of the tutoring session are two major areas

which I feel that I could improve upon as I continue to tutor students through the writing center.

I have found that, especially when addressing student's incorrect grammar, that I tend to

edit moreso than focusing on addressing issues which I see universally throughout a student's

paper. It can be difficult, I find, to locate and remember each grammatical error and take mental

note of which mistakes occur the most frequently in a student's paper. Additionally, I find that

when I notice a grammatical mistake, my initial reaction is to suggest an improvement or

correction rather than pressing the student to describe a possible solution. This is further

compounded by students often searching for a suggested edit. While grammar can often be an

issue in comprehension, I find it impossible to comb through every single grammatical error a

student makes in order to fix or keep mental note of every single one. To this end, I have

attempted to better educate myself on grammar, and particularly common grammatical mistakes,

to better point out and explain errors and how students can best correct them.
 Often, when students come in to the writing center, I notice that they may not entirely be

sure of what they would like addressed during the session. In addition to the potential errors I

might notice, I find it can sometimes be difficult to ascertain what particular issues might best be

addressed to improve the paper to its utmost during the thirty minute session. To some extent, it

may be entirely impossible to find how to best improve a paper, particularly well-written ones,

within only thirty minutes, but if I focused on better organizing the tutoring session, I could at

least focus on one or two elements which could be improved. To this end, perhaps discussing

what elements I feel would be best to work on for the students might be a good step towards

presenting an organized format which I could stick to.