What happens in a tutoring session?
In a General Topics session, the tutor will help you improve all aspects of your ability to speak and understand English as you both go over the selected topics. In the iBT and IELTS sessions, you will practice questions from the speaking sections of those tests with a tutor who will grade your responses and give you feedback.
Basically, that’s up to you. You can ask questions you have or ask tutors to suggest things to work on at any stage of the writing process, from brainstorming to final draft. Tutors can help you think through your ideas before you start writing, develop a topic, get started writing, continue writing if you get stuck, help you decide on revisions, and learn how to proofread and edit your own paper. Tutors can also help you cite sources and avoid plagiarism.
At the beginning of the session you will show the tutor your work or assignment, and you and your tutor will talk a little about your concerns. Together, you will make a plan for the session. Your tutor might say something like, “Let’s go over some examples of the problems you are having trouble with, and we’ll talk about the different steps. Then you can try some problems, and we’ll go over them together. Okay?” Then you will start following your plan, changing it if you need to as you go along. Tutors don’t do your work for you; instead, they work with you, showing you examples and strategies and asking you questions to help you find out what you want to say in your paper or what you know about quadratic equations. Your tutor’s goal is to help you learn skills that make you a better student; his or her job is to tutor you so well that you will not need a tutor anymore.
• A typical session starts on the hour and lasts fifty minutes. A student can set the focus of the session, such as working on sentence variety, or he or she and the consultant can discuss the assignment and collaborate to improve the assignment and develop individual writing strengths. • Because the goal is to help a student grow as a writer rather than just to improve a specific text, the consultant does not edit or proofread the paper but does show the student how to edit and proofread the assignment.
