Writer's Workshop #2: Exercises From a Live Tutoring Session

By Amber Cook, Senior Writing Specialist and Faculty Liaison

Many of Walden’s writing tutors—myself included—used to work in brick-and-mortar writing centers. We sat next to students at actual desks, looking at documents on printed sheets of paper. The online tutoring we do here at Walden allows us many options that were unavailable to us in that setting: We can instantly pull up useful links, review larger areas of text, and provide students with advice in print that they can study on their own schedule. There are some helpful exercises used in live sessions, however, that online students can replicate on their own. Take a look!

Read your work aloud. This is often the first step in live tutoring sessions. Reading your work aloud can help you identify issues like redundancy, grammar errors, or rough transitions. Most people write more slowly than they speak, so they might not notice those issues during the writing process. Your ear will catch many problems that your eye (or your grammar checker) missed. When reading aloud in consultations at Walden residencies, most writers stop themselves after the first few sentences to say “Wait! That part sounded weird” or “Oh! I see the problem!” Find a quiet room and give it a try!

Give your elevator speech. A common technique in thesis development is to verbalize the point of your paper to someone else. Some tutors call this the “elevator speech,” referring to that brief time you have to talk to someone on an elevator ride before the doors open. If someone asks what your paper is about, and you can articulate the basic argument in a few sentences, you’re in good shape. If you find that you can’t narrow it down, or you don’t know where to start, you might need to revisit your thesis.

Check for alignment with your assignment. Most students in my live tutoring sessions arrived with their assignment in hand, and we would briefly look it over to make sure the student had appropriately addressed each required element. This is an easy step to miss; many writers are passionate about some aspect of the paper and will wander from the assignment’s original goals. Take a moment to look back over your assignment to see if you’ve gone astray.

Explain what you meant. A common problem in research writing is lack of clarity. Students often create this problem by trying to make their sentences “sound scholarly,” using a thesaurus tool to add syllables and fancier-sounding words to a previously clear idea. When I read one of these difficult sentences in a live session, I’ll often turn to the writer and say “Can you explain what you meant here?” The writer’s response is almost always clearer than the sentence on the page. If you have trouble getting your ideas clearly onto paper, consider recording yourself as you describe them. You might just say something you can use!

Have you found self-tutoring techniques that work? Let us know what helps you!