JJ Post 1

As I was observing the tutors this past week I was impressed at how well they communicated with their students. When a student brought up a concern/question I formulated in my mind how I would have responded and almost always the tutor responded with something completely different (and better) than I had in mind. I realized that my responses were too much of the 'here's the right answer' variety while the tutors were able to guide the student toward an insight without being too heavy handed. I would be curious as to how other members in the group approach straddling the line between being too vague/potentially unhelpful and not just giving the easy answer.

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 28, 2019 at 7:19 PM

    I worry about this as well. The book gives some good instruction on how to help without over-editing. I think--from the reading as well as my time observing other tutors--that the best guideline is to try and ask questions rather than providing solutions. It's important for them to learn both how to answer the questions and how to pose the questions to themselves. Additionally, with international students, it seems to be helpful to point out a grammatical irregularity and then have them find more examples of the same problem before correcting them. I guess I would try to ask myself how I arrived to the insight that I have and ask them the same questions I asked myself in order to discover the insight--this just requires close attention to your own thought patterns.

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