A Tutor's Guide: Helping Writers One to One

by Ben Rafoth (Editor)

If you're a writing tutor, here's a way to take everyday events in your tutoring sessions and connect them to good theory and practice.

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing, Read For School, Reference

186 pages, Paperback

First published March 9, 2000

Reviews

[Kristin Boldon]

A useful, informative guide to being an effective writing tutor. The material.can be dry, but it's short and pertinent.

[Chris]

A very good guide for any English or writing tutor. This book was used as a requirement for my writing tutor internship and we spent a majority of our class discussions talking about passages from this book. It helps you determine what your own style of tutoring is by reading how others address situations. It's also still very helpful even after a first read. As you continue to develop your tutoring techniques, this book seems to change with you, reminding you of alternatives and keeps you thinking about the best way to be the best tutor you can.

[Emily Krueger]

I like the formatting of this text, and I found many of its chapters pertinent to my training.

[Elizabeth]

There are some great selections in this volume and it overall does a nice job of covering many different aspects of tutoring. Especially good are the chapters dealing with how to help writers with big picture elements of writing (structure, organization, etc) -- chapters 9, 11, & 12. I also found a lot to like in thee of the chapters dedicated to working with writers whose expertise differs from one's own (chapters 8, 10, & 13). Most of the other chapters were good as well, though covered much of the same terrain that any basic tutoring guide would. The most disappointing chapter, particularly for me, was on working with graduate student writing. Though I admired the prose stylings of its author, I felt she tried too much to paint an evocative picture than make any type of pragmatic or empirical case for peer tutoring at the graduate level.

[Elias James]

This book is a compilation of essays about English tutoring. It is a great, portable resource explaining a good number of the more important topics tutors need to know. We went over most of this book and The Bedford Guide during our class; this is the one of the two I liked the most (opinion based mostly on variation of voice in the text). Pick up a copy; it's a good deal for both writers and educators.

[Nate Markham]

I really liked this book on writing center tutoring. It provides hypothetical scenarios and gives advice to the tutor. It provides a number of roles a tutor can expect to take on like, teacher, counselor, friend, tutor. The book lays out limits and the proper way to approach wearing these hats as a writing center tutor so as not to overstep your role.

[Jaron]

Good advice and techniques are plentiful in this book. The collection remains humble and emphasizes that there is no perfect tutoring method, but many approaches that can prove beneficial.