Live Tutoring Session #1

My live tutoring session went very well. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the student and felt a great deal of satisfaction with the work we did during our time constraint session (20 mins). Firstly, the student displayed a great attitude throughout and welcomed all my advice regarding the revision of his paper. Additionally, I felt he was very motivated to improve the paper as he asked me several questions regarding specific details he could/should work on. In regards to the paper, I personally felt it was well constructed, but had fundamental mistakes throughout. The student had written about the "Positives of Gentrification" and had a clearly stated thesis, but his mistakes came with having too many direct quotes; which were not paraphrased and analyzed, as well as a lack of critical thinking. Additionally, there were minor mistakes with the MLA formatting as well as a few grammatical errors. However though, the paper had great ideas throughout, many of which I felt were simply misplaced and needed restructuring.

When I asked the student about his usage of so many direct quotes, he responded by saying, 'he thought that's what makes a great paper - having many direct citations'. I told him not necessarily, especially with the specifications of the assignment. However though, being that it was the first paper assigned to the class, I felt that the professor may have used the assignment to gauge the writing abilities of his students, so I understood the fundamental mistakes. Nevertheless, I left the student a goals-list as a reference to use when revising his paper. Some of the details included:

1.  Direct quotes - introduce, cite, paraphrase, and analyze them. Add critical thinking where necessary. *Refrain from using too many (ideally 1 per paragraph) 
2. Topic sentences - sentence that introduces the focal point of the paragraph 
3. MLA formatting - seek assistance from MLA guidebook (online or text)
4. Paragraph structuring - do not overload information into one large paragraph - divide thoughts and ideas evenly throughout
5. Reflect - look over paper when complete or as you write along to avoid spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors