Building an Appropriate Rapport

"Getting to know You...Building Relationships as a Tutor" by Karen Castellucci

I read this article to learn a few tips on how to make a student comfortable in sessions but what I discovered through Castellucci's article is that an appropriate tutor-student relationship rarely happens in one session.
Tutor-student relationships are more developed and more personal than teacher-student relationships, yet tutor's can't be "buddies" with the tutee, so the rapport has to be in a middle ground. Most students don't realize that the tutor-student relationship is has a collaborative objective.
In Castellucci's primary example, it took her an entire semester for one student to become comfortable with her and to trust her. She accomplished this by probing questions about her writing and by asking personal questions about the student's life. She tried to show that she cared about the student's success. But in the end, the student learned to trust Castellucci through the process of collaboration - that they were both students learning from one another.

https://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v16/16-1.pdf

Plagiarism and The End of The Semester

https://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v21/21-6.pdf

As the semester has progressed, the amount of citations within papers has decreased. I'm sure this is due to the time constraints and pressure put on students; at least I hope it is. Whatever the case, a couple of things I've noticed that always seem to raise a red flag for me:

1. The student can't speak about their paper without reading it.

When I notice a student is relying on their paper during brainstorming sessions, I'll ask them to tell me what they want to say without looking at their piece. A couple times this semester, the students knowledge of the subject has seemed to vanish, they don't know anything about the research, and they become frustrated. This is either a sign that they haven't crafted a proper thesis, or perhaps plagerism.

2. The paper contains flashes of incredible writing surrounded by mediocrity.

This one is a bit more tough, but I've seen it twice in the last week. Now, I'm not saying that people can't write this way, but when I see a complex sentence using grammar rules I barely understand in one paragraph, and then the inability to use a comma in the rest of the paper, somethings up.

In both these cases, i never came right out and said what I thought, I instead spoke about citation rules in regards to paraphrasing. In all cases this semester, when I use the word paraphrase instead of plagiarize  the student has been more receptive to properly citing and even admitting that they borrowed from somewhere else. I'm there to help, not accuse them; that's the professors job.

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.