We also had to ask ourselves what role we played as individual tutors in relation to classroom instruction. Unlike classroom instruction, tutoring, by its own definition, is personal, private, and individual. In order to give additional or special instruction, a tutor must be trained in all the theories, methods, and strategies available. What works well for one student might not work for another. People who are visually oriented tend to find clustering or webbing most useful in trying to focus on a particular idea or subject.
Clustering helps organize ideas into visual categories of priority or relevance to the topic.
Certain tools become rusty due to lack of use, some get temporarily set aside, and some get put away altogether. Each one brings a very individual, unique, personal, and valuable view of the writing process. Intuition plays a big part in this, and most of the Writing Assistants, when asked to contribute to this article, were hard pressed to describe their individual processes to me. Kathy also believes that eye contact is an important tool in helping her establish a working rapport quickly and is helpful in building trust between tutor and client. Last semester, Kathy found that eye contact was particularly essential when she worked with a deaf ASL student who brought her own interpreter to the tutoring sessions.