Friday's CATW Tutoring

So, Friday was actually pretty cool.

The student that I sat with seemed as if he was really interested in what I had to say, and I feel like he valued my opinion. In comparison with the ENG 101 class, it was quite a difference. I spoke with some students in our class after the tutoring session and they said the same thing. The students in the ENG 099 class were much more engaged, they wanted to do well on this essay.

The student I sat with had a fully formed essay, but had received comments from Professor Alexander (?) that his thesis didn't translate to the whole essay. In fact, his thesis statement outright contradicted what he wrote in his body paragraphs. So, the majority of our time together was spent working and talking about his thesis.

He said he didn't understand his professor's critique, that he thought his body paragraphs supported his thesis. The problem was, the body of his essay stated that there should be equality in a relationship, but his thesis statement stated that men should "definitely" be the bread winners. As we started talking about the piece that the essay was supposed to be responding to, he realized where he went wrong in his thesis. I'd like to say that I thought about applying the "just talk about it" technique as stated in Tutoring Writing. But that's not really true. It was just a natural conversation that progressed nicely. I think this had to do with the students enthusiasm towards the CATW.

Anyway, after the conversation, I asked him to write a new introductory paragraph, perhaps leaving out some detail and saving it for the body paragraphs. Our whole session was spent revising and reworking this paragraph and his topic sentences in the rest of the paper. We had a good conversation, I feel like I was able to help him.

By the time we were supposed to leave, I didn't realize that everyone from our class had left already and that I was the last one there. I don't know how long I was sitting there for, but I suspect enough time had passed that I should be sufficiently embarrassed...