Top 10 Bits of Advice on Being a Good Tutor

1. Questioning: Ask the student to discuss the prompt or assignment or his/her ideas, to check if student has learned what you taught, to gain their attention, to provide variation in teaching, to direct attention to a problem, etc.
   
2. Discover student’s writing perspective: Discuss their best writing assignments, what they are good at/bad at in writing, the rules they think should never be broken in an academic paper, why they think you gave an assignment, etc.
   
3. Affective issues: Be patient.  Get your student involved in the paper. Be supportive. Use positive body language. Be perceptive about the student’s body language. Give correction that helps motivate students.
   
4. Be  sensitive to gender issues, socio-cultural issues, learning disabilities and learning styles.  Act as a role model in an academic context. Work with all students equally, even if you like or dislike them.
   
5. Budget time. Set the agenda and goals for the session (after discussing the student’s needs).
   
6. Let the student do the work.  Guide with questions, facilitate brainstorming, let the student find their own process.  Give a model and let the student apply it.
   
7. Focus on global issues first (content, support, organization, etc), local issues last (grammar, vocabulary).
   
8. Limit each session to one or two skills rather than trying to produce a perfect paper.
   
9. At the end of the session: ask student to summarize what they learned, positively assess what the student has done, give resources for students to continue work independently.
   
10. Don’t: edit or fix papers; rewrite sentences, impose your personal writing style; predict grades or discuss the grade an instructor gave; provide essay topics, specific ideas for a topic, or organizational strategies.