On my fourth observation was with two students and an extremely nice tutor. At first I honestly thought she would not be a good tutor but it turned out she was very great and although she did some of the things I mentioned and had seen in other observations and done by other tutors, which are usually "Donts", the way she did it makes these "Dont's" actually acceptable (to me at least). Firstly, the tutor did not introduce herself to her students. She was very friendly but there was no formal introduction. She later explained to me that she knew one of the students (he was back for a follow-up meeting with her) but not the other student. Both students had the same assignment, which was to use two photos and write a before and after story based on those photos. The students were even in the same class together.
She started with the student she had not known previously and started by reading to herself. My first thought was "Why does every tutor do the same thing?!"then she did something I had not seen any tutor do before, she would not wait to finish reading the whole paper to then comment on it. Instead she would stop while reading whenever she found anything she needed to comment on which I thought was way better than waiting until after reading the whole paper then commenting because it avoids the awkward silence and wandering thoughts from the students while the tutor is reading their paper. The first student's paper had already had her paper checked and graded by her professor and did not need any HOC (Higher Order Corrections). After working on the comments and marks don't by the professor (minor things), this session became an example of an essay that the tutor thought to be good and could not see where the student needed much help, so the tutor asked the student where she wanted help and what parts of the paper concerned her most. The student's major concern was her conclusion. The tutor told the student that although generalizing the topics in your conclusions in essays are usually the way to go, in personal essays the generalizations are usually not as strong as something more personal would have been. Since there wasn't much to work on, the first session with the first student was very quick and straight to the point. The tutor told her she could come in again if once she made the changed and if she felt she still needed more help.
The second student had been there the week before with the same tutor and also did not need help with HOC, since that was what they were concentrating on the week before, but mostly LOCs (grammar, spelling, punctuation's, etc...). The tutor used spanish and phrases of affection commonly used in spanish to better communicate with the student. I thought this was also very effective because people tend to feel more comfortable and are able to express themselves more in their own language. She also explained reasoning behind why certain grammatical changes had to be made using correct terminology and then also explaining the terms (subordinating, conjunction, dependent clause, "no comma after although, etc...).
All in all, i believe the tutor was a great tutor who really cared about her job and her students and takes the extra mile to make them feel comfortable. She also showed me new skills I could use in future tutoring sessions, instead of reading independently or if there is no time to read out loud with the student, I could read it and stop while reading lied this tutor did. I really enjoyed observing this session and think it was a great way to end my observations.
GREAT detail.
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