So, you have decided you need some help with a writing project and you have booked an appointment with the Advanced Writing Centre. Well done! What can you expect at that meeting with your writing tutor?
All tutoring sessions are different because all writers have different needs. However, a typical tutoring session at the AWC might go something like the following:
1. You arrive at the Advanced Writing Centre on time and prepared for your appointment. You meet your tutor and talk casually about how things are going with your program, your classes, the weather or any topic - all in an effort to get to know one another.
2. If this is your first visit to the AWC, your tutor will ask you to fill out a short form to register with the AWC.
3. Next, your tutor might ask about your current assignment or how they can help you specifically.
4. After reviewing the assignment you’ve been given, they will read what you’ve completed to date. This is where the tutor “diagnoses” your writing. They are looking for both strengths and weaknesses and will tell you about both.
5. Sometimes your tutor may even ask you to read your writing aloud. This is an excellent practice because it often helps a student find their own mistakes. Many EFL students have a strong “ear” for the language and can “hear” a mistake before they can “see” a written mistake on a page.
6. The tutor will share with you what they feel is the most important part of your writing that needs attention. For example, perhaps your thesis is weak and needs development or clarification or maybe your ideas need more supporting details. If grammar (subject-verb agreement or parallelism, for example) needs work, they will tell you. At this point they want to talk to you about what they feel is the most significant weakness in your writing and help you deal with that problem.
7. As an example of what might happen, let’s assume your tutor has noticed your paragraphs in the recommendation report are very short and do not have much supporting detail. Your tutor might then talk to you about different methods of paragraph development, such as using examples, statistics, comparisons and contrasts or employing cause and effect reasoning. These discussions will help you with ideas to make your paragraphs more persuasive and thorough.
8. Next, you may spend some time re-working those paragraphs by using the ideas you discussed with your tutor. After you’ve done some work on that, the tutor will have a second look at your work to see if things are improving.
9. By this time, your session is close to ending. You make an appointment to see your tutor again in the near future so they can check on the progress of your work.
Of course, this is only a possible example of how a session can go. Sometimes students don’t have anything written and they simply want to know how to begin or would like an explanation of what the assignment requires. The important thing to remember is that the Advanced Writing Centre is there to help you whether you are in the (1) pre-writing (2) writing or (3) editing stage of the writing process.