The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

Tutoring for the Grade: Finding the Middle Ground
131
Matt Kronzer
Spring 2011
Many of my student writers this semester came in with one expressed goal: to improve their
grades on papers. They discussed with me how they had been receiving mostly B range grades—a
perfectly acceptable score denoting “above average” work. Nevertheless, they weren’t satisfied. They
wanted to receive grades within the A range, and told me that they were willing to put in whatever work
was necessary to do so. Several of them even came in twice a week to brainstorm, outline, draft and revise
their papers, all before turning in the first draft! I admired their commitment to improvement, their
willingness to put in extra time on each writing assignment. And, to our mutual credit, many of them
reported that their grades were improving as a result of our sessions. I don’t hesitate to say I was quite
pleased with the results; I believed my tutoring style, overall, was working effectively.
However, toward the latter half of the semester, I began to note that my student writers were
repeatedly making similar mistakes to those we dealt with in the beginning of the semester. For example,
one of my student writers could speak over five different languages; consequently, he understandably had
trouble differentiating between the grammar rules for each language. In particular, he struggled with
plural versus singular nouns and article usage. We spent most of our time together examining where he
needed to add an article to denote a singular noun or where he needed to add an S for a plural noun.
Although he seemed to be gaining a firmer grasp on this topic with each additional session, his papers
continually had a minimum of four errors per page which I needed to point out to him. However, I was
somewhat blinded to this point by the student’s overall satisfaction: he told me he was receiving A’s on
many of his papers, and was perfectly content with our progress.
Similarly, another student writer struggled with specificity in her papers. With each paper prompt,
she had so many different ideas and initial thoughts that she struggled with narrowing her focus into a
unified thesis. She often received teacher feedback that suggested she had “gone off track,” or that her
paragraphs didn’t seem to relate to one another. Thus, we spent a significant amount of time looking at
the structuring of her papers, including her use of transitions, evidence, support, and overall commentary.
Like the student before, this student writer reported that her grades were drastically improving within her
course; she went from receiving a B- on the first draft, to an A- on the final draft! Her success and
improvement, in turn, made me feel successful as a tutor.
Certainly, these two students have shown improvement in their writing. During our sessions, they
are now able to note the areas where revision is necessary, without much prompting from me. I do not
wish to disparage this fact; however, the amount of prompting I have to provide is somewhat
discouraging. Looking back on all we have covered this semester, I cannot help but wonder: was I too
focused on assisting them in improving their grades?
This question comes with many pitfalls and traps. Granted, the improvement in received paper
grades was the professed goal of my student writers. Who am I to challenge this goal? In striving for the
improvement of their grades, was I perhaps supplying them with too many editorial points? Should I have
left them to search out every repeating concern? Or would this have ultimately been a disservice to my
student writers?
In Stephen North’s article “The Idea of a Writing Center,” he suggests that tutors “are not the
teacher. We did not assign the writing, and we will not grade it” (North 42). North argues that tutoring at
a writing center is an empowering position, as tutors don’t have to worry about assigning a grade to
student papers, or even applying some kind of value judgment to them. Instead, the tutor functions as a
middle ground position, a space where student writers can explore and experiment. North seems to
promote the idea of a space free from expectation; there is only the student’s work and their interests.
From North’s prospective, it would be in the best interests of the student writers to ignore the product of a