tutors

Tutors are available for appointments Monday-Friday, 9:00-4:00, in the Spanish office, Humanities 223. Please stop by our office to set up an appointment.

Tutoring Guidelines

General

These guidelines are to be considered general guidelines and broad in scope. All participating students should understand that especially in writing-intensive courses professors might establish their own procedures that may be more specific, more general, more or less rigorous, etc. than the following guidelines. In the absence of course specific guidelines, however, the following procedures are to be followed.

Guidelines for Students

1. Always have a specific goal in mind for each tutoring session.

2. Prepare specific questions and exercises to discuss with your tutor.

3. Set aside adequate time to be present for the entire session, and prepare to be challenged to perform to the best of your ability.

4. It is not appropriate to bring obvious rough-drafts to tutors for proofreading; written work should be as well prepared as one is able to do. Tutors will not correct your writing, but rather will point out errors, and help you comprehend areas where you’re encountering difficulty.

5. Understand that proofreading does not guarantee a particular grade on the assignment.

6. Please have the courtesy to honor all appointments. If an appointment must be cancelled, please try to do so with a day's notice if possible.

7. Students with appointments always take precedence over those who drop in.

Guidelines for Tutors

1. Request that students come to tutoring sessions with specific goals in mind.

2. Papers. You may assist students with their papers, but their papers must remain entirely their own. To help students with their writing requires great judgment. Students and tutors must understand that the review process is meaningless if it is not fundamentally a learning process. All parties involved must also understand that to misrepresent authorship is to engage in plagiarism. Therefore, students must be present and actively involved in the session. (It is never appropriate, for instance, for students to drop off work for correction and later pick-up.) Typically, it is appropriate to circle grammar and usage errors for discussion and/or later attention. Students should also be encouraged to check spelling and vocabulary with their textbook, a dictionary, or a foreign language-enabled word processor, such as those available in the HRC.

3. Workbooks. Tutorial sessions are not designed to work on the activities assigned as after class practice. Students can be guided if grammatical and/or vocabulary questions arise but completing the activities in the workbook is ultimately the student’s own responsibility.

4. Be patient. Learning a second language can be frustrating and intimidating.

5. Please have the courtesy to honor all appointments. If an appointment must be cancelled, please try to do so with a day's notice if possible.

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