THE NEW NORMAL: TESOL TUTORING ONLINE

When we left for Spring Break, it seemed like business as usual and we expected to return to school a week later picking up where we left off. As the writing center coordinator at St. Cloud Technical Community College, I took a few days off to rest, relax, and recharge for the remainder of the semester. When I returned to work, Spring Break had been extended for two weeks and instructors were informed they would deliver courses online for the remainder of the semester. For those of us working at tutoring center the Center for Academic Success , it meant finding ways to continue to offer our services to students, but from a distance.

With these changes came new guidelines for students coming to the TESOL for help, and also my staff as well. Not only are my TESOL tutors dealing with the challenge of taking all of their classes online, but now must learn a new manner for tutoring. No more will they have the opportunity for physical contact with a student’s paper, or have the chance to sit across from the student having a conversation on assignment expectations.

Their interactions will be with computer screens through Zoom chats or responding to student drafts by typing comments. As a TESOL tutor who overall believes in minimalist tutoring, I fear that tutors may begin acting as editors rather than tutors. Instead of giving explanations for why a change should be made, they may make the change for the student returning a paper improved from a writing perspective. While the student may appreciate this, the encounter has hurt the tutor’s standing with the student and has stultified the student’s writing journey. While I am concerned with the possibility of this happening to any of the students, it raises particular concern for our TESOL students. If they become reliant upon tutors making corrections to papers, these students will be placed in a precarious position moving forward both at other academic institutions.

My Greatest Concern

A reason for my concern is finding the balance between instructor/student expectations and what it means to be a good tutor. Often TESOL students come in with assignment sheets that read “for every grammatical or spelling error, one point will be deducted from this paper” or similar expectations. As a result, many students want to focus on sentence level issues like spelling or subject/verb agreement. An experienced tutor will notice these errors in the paper, but usually there will be bigger issues such as organization or lack of a coherent thesis statement (or the complete lack thereof). While these problems are not exclusive to TESOL students, they occur with more frequency. Balancing the student’s desire for grammar and spelling help against higher order concerns like assignment expectations and learning about the process of writing is just one of the many challenges a tutor faces.

TESOL A Resource to Help

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In the tenth chapter, Rafoth discusses how he helped his writing tutors provide constructive feedback to TESOL students who had emailed papers to the writing center. Rafoth gave many useful tips, but in particular offers four guidelines for his student tutors to follow when responding to online submissions.

Less is more when it comes to writing comments

Focus and consistency is paramount

Direct but polite feedback is regarded as most helpful

How tutors read a writer’s paper affects the responses

Each of these tips builds upon the previous one making it a practical progression for the ESL tutor to follow when responding to student drafts. While Rafoth is primarily concerned with his tutors responding to TESOL students (as am I), his suggestions are ones that would be applicable for any tutor responding to online papers.

Less is more when it comes to writing comments

The first issue delves into is giving too much feedback. Often in an effort to be thorough, student tutors comment on every problem in a paper. They do not necessarily ‘edit’ the paper, but they comment on every missed comma, additional space, and misspelled word along with higher order concerns as well. While thoroughness is admirable, it creates situations where the student is overwhelmed by the number of comments and suggested corrections. If a tutor has more comments than the student has text, the tutor has made too many comments.

admits that the conscientious nature of the comments comes from the right place, but it lacks the direction that some TESOL students require. If students see too many comments, they may think starting over would be easier. I have seen this tendency with some of my own student tutors and feel the need to fight this habit in myself occasionally.

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