The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

eceiving tutoring. But don’t let that bother you. You’re here to tutor, put everything aside for the moment
and concentrate on the person first.
It’s not a bad idea to get to know the student first. Break the ice. It’s a casual formality that puts
you, the tutor, in their place. There will be times that this isn’t possible. A good majority of the students
you’re going to encounter say that their paper is due the next day or in a couple of hours. Don’t worry,
turn it around. It’s going to sound cliché but make the negative into a positive. Make lemonade. Try to use
the most time as possible to work on the techniques they do not understand. Thirty minutes isn’t a lot of
time to get to know the student and look over the entire paper, but address the problems they don’t
understand, go through a few examples, reiterate it to them, and move on the next obstacle. Again, it’s not
going to work for every tutor, but start out with this, and if doesn’t work try another technique. Maybe it’s
something that you picked up from another class. But the most important thing to remember other than
adaptability is to learn who the student is.
Without knowing who the student is, there is no basis for an understanding or how to adapt to
them. By knowing who they are and what they expect out of the session, the tutor will able to assess how
to student writer learns and what they will expect. Don’t just base the learning style from the personality,
talk to the student and see what they understand and don’t understand about the paper. Ask how they are
able to see the information in a clearer way and go with that. If there is another way they are able to learn
such as being visual or interactive, and try that option as well.
Most of the students want editing in the writing center. But we can’t edit a student’s paper right?
If we would just do that, then the student writer wouldn’t have learned anything in the process. We would
just be a crutch, while they continue to make the same mistakes in the future. Work around it. Make the
student edit it themselves. I know this sounds easier said than done, but don’t worry. It takes time and
practice. One thought to keep in mind is that there isn’t just one technique that is going to work. So once
you have gotten to know who the student is, ask them different questions that lead into the work. Such as
if the student writer’s biggest concern is organization, finding a thesis, or they might be struggling with
grammatical errors in the essay. Write the sentence over, read it aloud to them, or find the errors in the
paper by showing them examples and letting them tell you where they are. Every technique is different.
It’s not solely dependent on just the tutor’s knowledge; it’s what the student can bring in as well.
Again, these are just a few options that could be used to tutor. But the driving point is to get to
know the person and adapt to their learning style. Every situation is different. There isn’t going to be one
method on how to attack a situation; just have an open mind and allow different methods to be developed
and used as you tutor. There are hundreds of ways to tutor, but sticking to one method is going to be the
same for every student, everybody learns at a different pace and in a different method. Finding it and
knowing which to apply is the key to a successful session, and the sessions in the future.
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