The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

Initially, sessions were slow to get started, but with the awareness of Brittany’s difficulties with
reading and writing, I quickly learned to adapt to different techniques to help this student writer. When
working with most student writers, I ask them to read their papers aloud to me. With Brittany, however, I
quickly learned that in order for her to benefit from our sessions, I would need to read aloud to her. With
dyslexic students, the errors in their writing do not come from lazy proofreading or hasty typing. The
errors do not appear as errors to these students. It takes an outsider to read the words exactly as they
appear on the page for these unique students to recognize and remedy those errors. Most of the time, she
notices and corrects the errors without my help. With Brittany, just sitting at the table with her and
reading aloud is all she needs to succeed in her lab reports.
Student 2:
The second week I started tutoring at the writing center I met a tutee, Lisa, that told me how hard
her life has been so far, right off the bat. She told me that she had leukemia and the chemotherapy had
hindered her speech and the speed at which she thinks. Lisa explained that her writing has suffered the
most because she cannot form sentences the way she used to and her clarity is almost nonexistent. I knew
this would be a difficult session, but I was optimistic that it would help her and that we could find a way
to help her edit and revise a bit more quickly than usual. Just from looking at her first paper I could tell
she was not exaggerating about anything she told me. Clarity and organization were the High Order
Concerns in her paper, but grammar was following behind very closely. We started off with papers just
from her women’s studies class, but now work on papers from all her classes as they are assigned.
Lisa explained to me that due to everything she has been through she developed dyslexia from the
chemotherapy as well. I appreciated her telling me from the start and it honestly helped me help her write
her papers. I started off by asking her what I ask of all my tutees, “[w]ould you like to read your paper
aloud, or would you be more comfortable if I read it?” I was told that she preferred that I read her paper
since her speech was also hindered by her treatment and it would take much longer if she read it to me.
Since I was reading it I asked her to hold a pen in her hand and to jot down any notes to herself or to
make corrections on the paper as I read. With the paper in my hands and the pen in hers, I began to read.
It seems to be much more effective for her when I read the paper aloud because I purposely do not make
corrections as I read. Instead, I read the paper exactly as it is typed which she found much more useful. I
agree that it is more useful to her if I read the paper since she has difficulties with her thought process and
may not register the fact that I am making corrections as I read if that was how I decided to go through
her paper. There were a couple times where I had to actually stop reading so that we could just go
through full sentences based on the fact that letters and especially vowels were missing. One sentence
read, “G.Q. is a magazine that hs alt of ads wit wite men in them and alcoha; it sems to be targeted towads
rich population.” As I was reading that sentence she was shaking her head and saying “oh my gosh” and
laughing at how she was unable to see those mistakes even when she had read over this draft twice before
showing it to me.
This was when I took the liberty to talk to her a little bit about how to revise a paper. I explained
to her exactly how I revise papers and hoped that maybe the same method would help her. I told her that
“I generally write my paper in one go without making any corrections to it whatsoever. Then I take a
break by eating something or reading my book just anything else other than looking at that paper; after
taking that small break or even an hour one, I go over my paper making spelling corrections and grammar
corrections as I see fit. Then I print the paper out and look at my clarity in sentences and organization.
After I do all of that, I make my corrections and leave the paper alone, again, for a day or a few hours this
time before going back to it and making more adjustments.” Lisa told me that loved the idea of going
back to a paper because she, just like many of my other tutees, tries to get the whole paper done in one
sitting including the writing process and revising and editing. She was excited to start using this method
with her future papers and she even said she would most likely ask her husband to read them aloud to her
so that they could make adjustments together before she brought the paper to me. This method works
well with people who have dyslexia because they are able to make corrections to their papers without
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