Siamese twins: Helping writers cope with the elusive concept of audience

https://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v30/30.10.pdf

When writing a paper at any level it is important to not only know who your audience is, but to keep them in mind and be aware of them throughout the entire writing process. The audience is the basis for any paper, that is why we write, to reach out to an audience. This article discusses how to handle a paper that is brought in by a student that has strayed from the audience. Possibly lost track of who the paper is being written for. This article helps describe such an instance and how to get the writer refocused on their audience.

Reflectivity: Find gold in the crevices of tutorials

https://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v20/20-10.pdf

This article discusses how key points to help a student advance in with their writing can be hid within their personal problems that they struggle with everyday. Theses could be a number of distractions that pull the students attention away from what is needing to be written for a class and for a grade. This article gives an example of a student with that is dealing with day to day life and it is clogging up her mind, it shows how the tutor was able to help her through it and turn the negative into positive and put her focus back on the academic paper.

Helping writers get hold their self with mediational questions

https://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v17/17-7.pdf

This article discusses how to move a session along and how to get the most out of a session through asking the right questions. I personally all to often catch myself telling and teaching/preaching to the student instead of asking questions to get their mind working. This is a great resource for getting the student to do the work and be more involved and hands on with their own paper. It also changes their persona of the writing center from the assumption that writing centers "fix" papers to the the idea that the writing center helps me help my own paper.

Developing an effective tutoring style

https://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v15/15-3.pdf

As a writing center tutor my goal is to develop an effective tutoring style. Although it has only been one semester of tutoring for me, I think I have begun to develop that style. I still have a lot to work on, and this article pointed out some of the things I can do to improve my style that much more. It talks about communication, observation and a few other important helpful items.

Invasion of the gremlins

https://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v12/12-3.pdf

I have been dealing with helping students with grammar all semester. It does not matter their age or degree, grammar seems to jam everyone up. There are so many rules that have to be followed, and as a student we just down right do not know them all, or else we remembered it incorrectly. It is a never ending problem for many people. This article talks about the haunting ideas of grammar and how to help student and/approach grammar in general.

Preparing for emotional sessions

https://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v35/35.5-6.pdf

Some sessions can be emotional because of the tutors state of mind, or the students state of mind. Emotions can also run high if the paper a student brought in in ver personal, on a touchy subject, or very graphic. This article depicts an emotional situation and discusses how they can be dealt with. I personal have not had a session where I have had to deal with any emotions besides happiness, but there are still a few weeks left in the semester.

Journal reflection #2

I dealt a lot with citations. Which is great because it gave me the opportunity to familiarize myself that much more with the available resources. Besides the ongoing citation problems, it seems as though students continually struggle with run on sentences. They just do not know how, where, or when to use commas and other punctuation. Most often the student can fix it on their own after it is brought to their attention. That's exciting because that means they know they just need help realizing and learning how to catch them on their own.