Sentenceworks Blog

This one is for the tutors.

Only 24 hours in the day and only 7 days in the week, and you’re expected to tutor how many people?! One purpose of this blog is to show Writing Centre personnel how to “do more with less”. The short answer: let them teach themselves (a.k.a. “study groups”).

For half of the working day, I’m a writer. I spend a lot of time with people who voluntarily eat, sleep and breathe the English language. These people are not learning how to write but they are constantly improving the process of writing. Writers pounce on each other, asking “Why?” Why use that word instead of this word? Why use a semi-colon instead of a period? Why put this paragraph before that paragraph? We stand in awe at a brilliant combination of words and then try to work the same magic with our own words. Reading each other’s work and asking questions is how we improve our own writing. These gatherings of writers are nothing more than… study groups.

For the other half of the working day, I’m an English tutor; it goes without saying that I rarely meet a student who enjoys English. Most of my students, like yours, are inclined to math or science or business, and about half of those utterly despise the process of writing.

My students do learn from me (they must, or I wouldn’t have been a tutor for so long) but I find they also learn very well from each other. I once had three engineering students who were all taking the same required English literature class. While all three were exceptional at maths and sciences, they were mediocre when it came to analysing literature and communicating their thoughts. Working with me on an individual basis, they each raised their marks by 5 or 10 marks but I wasn’t happy with this.

I brought the three of them together and just let them do their stuff. When Student A had a question, I let Student B and Student C try to answer it; one of them would usually have a response. Each student had a particular strength and was able to use that strength to help the other two. For instance, Student A was naturally good at seeing where there was likely to be a basis for classical allusions (although he didn’t have the background, so I would be the one to make reading suggestions), Student B found punctuation and sentence structure to be entirely rational, and Student C had an outstanding memory and could recall tidbits their teacher had given them. Eventually, the three of them were learning from each other, and I was left to step in only when they got completely stuck or to have a final look at something.

Classes have just started; this is the best time to help your students find other people who think and learn the way they do. Suggest they get three or four people in each study group, and that they try to discover each other’s forte (if you already know these students you can arrange the groups accordingly). If things work out, you can have a couple of groups working at once, while you go back and forth between them. While it doesn’t add any more hours to the day, it will make the mere 24 a little easier.