Last week, in class, our assignment was to read a student's paper online, and treat it as if we were in a tutoring session. Beforehand, I didn't know what to think about online-tutoring, but after I worked on the paper, I decided that online-tutoring is not for me.
The paper I read, as I remember correctly, was about blue jeans. Well, what about blue jeans? I kept saying that to myself, the entire time I read the paper. Blue jeans were in some form or another, disastrous to our society. He went on to write about how shoppers should just go "second-hand shopping", whatever that means, but for what reason?
The author behind the paper desperately wanted to provide an argument against a certain kind of blue jean company, but they never said. At the end of this paper, I was left with way too many questions. Why are blue jeans hazardous? What negative effect do they have on society? There was kind of an introduction, but it went nowhere. A thesis statement was nowhere to be found. A title for the essay was also missing. As usual, a majority of commas that should have been used in the paper were missing as well.
At the end, where I wrote my opinion of the paper, I wrote that after you are done writing a paper, always read it aloud at least five times. In the writing lab, whenever I read a student's paper aloud, sometimes, they will stop me, because they feel embarrassed by what they wrote. This usually happens, within maybe three or four sentences into the paper. When we read our papers aloud, we not only find mistakes, but we also find places in our paper where we should have incorporated an idea that might have been left out.
I wanted to actually learn more about this person's problem with blue jeans, but they wouldn't let me, and they stopped themselves from persuading the readers into staying away from buying blue jeans.
I struggled with helping this person with their mistakes online. It's just so different for me. My mind went blank. Anytime, that I am online, and I speak to a person through aim or a message board, I never fully get to say what I intend to say, because our communication is so limited. I would recommend any student(if they can) to always make an appointment with a tutor at the writing center, and not online. I realize that we all don't have the same opportunities, and from what I read from the chapter in our textbooks on online-tutoring, there are some people, who can only communicate with tutors over the internet. I also understand that there are probably hundreds of tutors out there who enjoy working with students online.
Usually, at the very end of a session with a students, I will give them a piece of paper with my times in the lab that I am most present, and also my email. I give them my email, because they might go home, and perhaps need help with other papers. As long as the student recieved the help they needed and learned something new, where does it really matter where we tutor them?
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Maybe you can use this as an opportunity to better your communication skills. You say you have trouble speaking to other people online, but we're quickly becoming an online-focused world. I mean look at us, writing in blogs! But yeah, there are a lot of companies "going green" by going paperless and communicating only through email and phones, and of course we have online tutoring... Use it as an opportunity to be more concise and clear. I would think it would transfer into other areas as well.
ReplyDeleteAlso keep in mind (you did mention it) that some students may actually like online tutoring more than tutoring in person. For example, they might have a really loaded class schedule (I'm thinking science students especially, with all those labs) and it's more convenient to email the paper and get comments that way. I know my usual school hours are around 0900-1530 solid every day except Friday, and by the time I'm through, the last thing I want to do is work on papers or other homework.