Grammar

The goal of the writing center has never been focused on editing skills, but rather on establishing a relationship with the writer in order for them to become better writers. However, I think that editing skills are really important because that is what makes a paper flow smoothly. When writers come to the writing center, most of the time they want a tutor to correct their grammar. Many of my sessions were focused on grammaticality, but I was able to incorporate dialogue that involved content as well. At first, I wasn’t sure how to tell writers that my goal was not to check their grammar, but to rather help them think through their paper more thoroughly. After reading several of the articles that we had for homework, I was able to gather and analyze how I could make my tutoring sessions more effective. For the grammatical aspect, I had many writers read and listen to their sentences over and had them tell me if they thought it was unusual. I didn’t want to automatically tell a writer that their sentences were wrong because that could have either frustrated them or they could have just asked me to correct it and move on. Every time there was a chance I could explain why a verb needed to be changed or why a sentence was a run-on, I did. I wanted them to take these skills and use them in the future.