The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

What is one thing you wish you had been told when you started tutoring?
• “You may be asked to help a master’s student with their thesis. If so, try not to panic (I say that a
lot, don’t I?) Sometimes the “dumb reader” stance is helpful in this situation. Master’s students
are not necessarily great writers. You may not understand their points, not because you are
“dumb,” but because their writing isn’t clear. They won’t all admit that, of course. . . And then
there are those papers that only an expert in the field is qualified to review. Don’t feel bad if that
is the case. They’re master’s students. They should know better than to expect a WRC tutor to
provide scholarly, field-specific feedback!” (Kincaid).
• “I wish I had been better prepared for the responsibility of helping tutees with their Masters
theses. Revising a five page essay is one thing, but a research project that's been semesters in the
making? Well, it's hard to know where to begin!” (Louie).
• “No matter how much you want to help a tutee, mostly how much the tutee learns depends on
how much they want to help themselves” (Perkins).
The best advice we can give you is to not be afraid to ask questions; of your classmates, your fellow
tutors in the writing center, Professor Melzer, etc. We hope that this survey has helped to answer a few
questions that you may not have asked, or may not have needed to ask at this point in the semester. We
would like to thank our classmates for collaborating on this article; without their input, this would not
have been possible.
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