How can a writing tutor help?

You may have heard of tutoring for Calculus or Chemistry, but have you heard of a writing tutor? No, not an editor or proofreader--a writing tutor.

Writing is an incredibly complex process. It's not just writing a 10-page paper the night before it's due, and then just turning it in (though that may be a common practice among college students). Whether you know it or not, it involves analyzing and interpreting a prompt, brainstorming ideas, developing research questions, planning, dividing, and structuring an argument, re-reading for greater ideas, looking carefully for typos or errors, and so much more.

It's easy to get stuck at any one of these stages. You might feel like your prompt was written in a foreign language, and you have absolutely no idea what your instructor wants you to write. You might have written six of the 10 pages needed for your assignment, and you can't imagine how you could write four more pages of this. Maybe you wrote all 10 pages, but you feel that there's something you've done wrong or could've done better. Maybe you're frustrated that your professor keeps docking points for formatting, and you have no clue what they're talking about. This is where a writing tutor can help!

Writing tutors are familiar with specific terms used in writing prompts. "Analyze," "Research," "Reflect," "Summarize," and other terms, all have certain implications about how information should be conveyed in writing. There are resources writing tutors can provide to help students understand the differences between these terms and how they can be implemented within the parameters of page and resource requirements. Additionally, depending on your field of study or major, there are certain genres in writing that have somewhat of a standard format, such as lab reports, literary analyses, or case studies.

An experienced writing tutor can analyze the sections and structure of your writing assignment to see where it may need more or less elaboration. In order to foster your critical thinking and respect your academic integrity, your tutor can ask pertinent questions about your subject and structure to help give you ideas about where to expand your essay. Additionally, a writing tutor can look for patterns of error both on the paragraph level and the sentence level. Sometimes simply looking at topic sentences can help make clarify the organization of a paper. Other times, it could be fixing run on sentences that makes all the difference.

There is so much that a writing tutor can help with, even teach you things you never knew to ask. There are sources we can point you to, important people we can introduce you to (like research librarians), and goals we can help you achieve. Want to see how a writing tutor can help you? Schedule an appointment or send me a message today!

Happy Writing!