Handling Difficult Tutoring Situations: The Discouraged First-Time Freshman Writer
Most tutors and writing coaches have encountered at least one difficult tutoring situation. I know I have! A lot of difficult tutoring situations arise because students’ expectations of what the writing center visit entails do not match with the reality of the typical, student-centered tutoring session. This mismatch can create conflict and misunderstanding. Sometimes, tutoring sessions are unproductive for other reasons. There are any different kinds of difficult tutoring situations; therefore, it’s important for tutors and writing coaches to have several techniques for turning unproductive, “difficult” tutoring sessions into productive ones.
Many students have been conditioned to view tutoring as something people need because they are deficient in some way; these students feel embarrassed when their instructors require that they go to the writing center for help before turning in an essay revision. The students read the instructors’ marginal comments and see only criticism. By the time these students get to the writing center, they have basically shut down, having convinced themselves that they are terrible at writing. (Let me emphasize that all students can improve with hard work and time and that tutoring is for everyone, including the high achievers and those who have to work harder than most to achieve!) I have frequently seen this situation with freshmen who visited the writing center right after getting their first-ever college essays back from their instructors. Let’s imagine a scenario like this and how a tutor might address it.
John, a freshman in his first semester of college, walks into the writing center, sits down, pulls a crumpled paper out of his backpack, and puts his head down on the table. The tutor sits next to him and says, “Hi, I’m Anna. What’s your name? How can I help you today?” Anna notices the bright red F on John’s essay.
He mumbles, “I’m John. My professor told me I need to come here and get help, so I can fix my essay and turn it back in. I was a good writer in high school, but apparently my school was crappy, or I’m not that smart because I got an F, and I’ve never gotten an F before in English.”
Anna has a few things she can do here. She can let John know that the expectations for college writing are usually higher than those for high school writing, so lots of students are going through the same adjustment period, and she can also let him know that she can share strategies for how he can revise his essay.
Anna can then read his essay and emphasize its strengths, such as solid sentence structure and a specific thesis, and she can point out the areas that could use work, such as developing his ideas and writing focused paragraphs. Next, Anna can help him with brainstorming and can show him how to use an outline template to organize his paragraphs logically. At the end of the session, Anna and John can review what they covered and how he can apply those strategies to his next writing project. By empowering John with strategies, tools, and positive talk, Anna can help John to think of writing as a process that he can improve with effort and with time.
If students feel that their writing skills are out of their control, or that they are just naturally “bad” writers, they probably won’t want to try to improve. I have seen students become more confident and more in control of their unique writing processes over a semester’s worth of tutoring sessions. All students have the capacity to improve their writing. Empowering students is key to building their confidence as writers, which is crucial to their success.
Outside reference: A good article about dealing with students’ emotions during a tutoring session is “Preparing for Emotional Sessions” (PDF) by Gayla Mills, from The Writing Lab Newsletter, an excellent resource for writing center professionals and tutors.