The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

Struggling or Stuck? Tutoring Graduate Students
50
Melissa Diaz
Fall 2008
I felt confident as I walked to Rina’s table and sat down. I introduced myself and asked
her what we were working on that morning; however, when she pulled out an 80 page thesis, my
confidence went out the window. Her cultural studies topic was something I had no knowledge
of whatsoever. As I read, I thought, “How am I going to help her with this? It looks perfect.” She
reassured me that any suggestions for improvement would be a big help since she couldn’t take it
back to her first thesis reader until more revisions were made, but it was as if all my tutoring
knowledge left me. What could I help her with? Where do I look? I could barely follow her
topic! Inside, I had just about given up.
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Although it is rare for students to walk into the Writing Center with a thesis, graduate students regularly
come in with advanced writing assignments. This article is intended to help those of you who might face a
similar situation to mine, and provide some advice on how to handle these types of graduate tutoring
sessions.
To clarify, the graduate students I am referring to are typically native English speakers. While much time
and research has gone into L2 graduate tutoring, few studies have focused on the native speakers who
seek help in the writing center and what to do in those situations (Garbus 1).
Julie Garbus, professor of English and coordinator of the University of Northern Colorado’s Writing
Center, states that graduate students’ writing levels are expected to be advanced. When students enter or
return to graduate school they often find themselves struggling with the conventions of their discipline, or
the high expectations of their professors, In her article
“Tutoring Graduate Students in the Writing Center,” Garbus explains that, “Whether or not they
are in a field requiring extensive writing, graduate students must take writing seriously, not just
to make themselves understood but because writing in a discipline is intimately linked with
thinking, reasoning, and persuading effectively in it” (1). The “serious” nature of the writing at
this level leads graduate students to visit the writing center despite the fact that graduate students
are often embarrassed about needing a tutor and can initially be resistant to tutoring, as John
Farrell points out in his article “Some Challenges to Writing Centers Posed by Graduate
Students” (4).
In “Peer Tutoring,” Gregory Waters states, “because students often emerge with a variety of needs, the
system of instruction should be flexible enough to accommodate itself to the needs
of the individuals served. Some students require hours of instruction to improve their scribal
fluency; others are already masters of their personal style” (749). Graduate tutees often fall in the
latter category, having a greater sense of control over, variety, and sophistication in their writing.
Waters’ suggestion that you have to realize that the needs of writers you will work with will vary
holds true: ironically, however, graduate tutees require help on issues such as higher order concerns just
as much as less experienced writers do. Difficulty arises for the tutor because their
issues might not be as apparent as those of less experienced writers, making it challenging to
locate them. The results of a nationwide survey performed by Judith Nelson and Jane Powers
revealed that graduate students who are native speakers most often asked for help with organization, style,
and content not like the less experienced writers or L2 writers after all (p #).
Knowing that your advanced writers struggle with similar problems as other writers should aid in
lessening your anxiety about working with them and make handling their papers less
overwhelming.