First Experience Tutoring ENG101 Students
Hello everyone today me and my classmates went to a classroom where a ENG101 class was in session. We offer them help as tutors. Our whole class was divided to help those ENG101 students, every classmate was selected to tutor two of these students. Their assignment was to write a paper about the culture strange and weakness or the struggles that a college students suffer for being an immigrant based on the language.On my tutor session I get to tutor two females that were excellent. One was born here but her parents were Colombian-Puerto Rican and she speaks English-Spanish or how she described it "broken English". The other girl was born here as well but her first language was bangladesh since that was her parents decision based on their culture.
When I was assigned to work with these two ladies I was nervous and scared but I made myself strong and with a smile on my face I went close to them. I presented myself and I asked for their names with I prefer to reserve for me. I friendly asked what was the assignment about, student number one who was the Colombian-Puerto Rican descendent explained to me more clearly them the student number two. But it is good to mention that student number two even though she has more problems with the language barriers and learned English as she was seven years old (only practice English at school) had more ideas about the paper that student number one and I think it's because her personal experience give her more details to apply in the paper. Does not mean that student number one does not have personal experience that can help her with the paper because that was what I was trying to make her think of but she was more shy and I seen that student number two used to speak over her a lot.
What I had found that the students where struggle with was trying to find sources. Girls number two had some notion of how to look up for sources online on LaGuardia library but needed to get push a little bit. Girl number one was just starting with the paper, she didn't know what to do or how to begin but as number two girl was talking to me about what was interesting to her girl number one started alone to look up for sources and quickly found something that may help her with the paper. What I noticed about these two girls was that none of them wanted to write about their experience, for example, girl number one for the personal experience that she has was more likely to write about a college student with difficulties on the language but she chooses to work on culture . Girl number two was more likely supported by her arguments to work on culture and chooses to work on College and the language barriers that also apply on her personal life but she does not have that much argument about it then what she has for her cultural experiences.
My experience was great and beside I get to have the experience of tutoring two students at the same time I get to know two different type of personalities that will help me in the future because there will always be a shy and a open student in a classroom daily bases. I am looking forward to see these two students again and see how they go with the paper since I left them with great ideas on their minds.
I think some of the cultural differences were shining through today during your session in regards to how one presents themselves among authoritative figures. I do like how you mention that despite student number one being shy it did not mean that she was lacking in personal experience towards the piece. I also like the guidance you provided for the tutees to look up credible sources. I do want to say that though the two did not want to write about their personal experiences that was not a problem because the task asked them not to provide too much of their own personal experience, as it was a research paper and not a persuasive argument. Glad to hear you had a good experience and are excited for the next.
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