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Tutors can and should:
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Listen to your tutees’ ideas about writing assignments and help them to focus their ideas into a single workable topic.
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Ask questions to help tutees clarify and develop ideas or logic.
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Help tutees organize or reorganize their ideas into a logical order.
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Demonstrate and teach proofreading techniques so tutees learn to find and correct their own errors.
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Give honest feedback about papers -- how does the tone of the paper affect you as a reader; does the introduction arouse your interest; are you convinced by the evidence presented; does the conclusion satisfactorily close the paper, or do you still have questions or reservations?
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Limit each session to one or two skills rather than trying to produce a perfect paper.
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Help tutees develop strategies for reading more effectively and efficiently.
Tutors do not:
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Edit or fix papers.
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Rewrite sentences for your tutees.
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Impose your personal writing style on your tutee.
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Predict grades or discuss the grade an instructor assigns to a paper.
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Provide essay topics, specific ideas for those topics or organizational strategies.
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Read texts assigned to your tutee. It is neither possible, nor wise.
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Handout created by the staff
and students of the DVC Learning Center. Copyright 2002.
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