Yesterday I had my first shadowing session with my tutor and a student from the Business school. When the student arrived the tutor and I both introduced ourselves, and small talked some with the student to make him feel more comfortable. The tutor first asked what the gist of the paper was supposed to be about, and to break up the formality of the appointment talked some about how school was going.
When everyone was good and comfortable the tutor asked if she could first read the paper aloud and was there any specific problems the student would like to concentrate on during the session. The student mentioned how his teacher was a stickler for grammar (he takes off 3pts for every 10 grammatical errors, or something like that) and how he was concerned if his argument was ok.
What really surprised me during the session (I have never been to the Writing Center before so I did not know what to expect) was how reading the paper aloud just highlighted any flaws in the paper, including grammatical errors, sentence structure errors, wording problems, and if the paragraphs flowed well with one another. While the tutor read the paper she stopped every now an again to ask the student "did that sound right?" "is that what you meant to say?" and made suggestions to the student how she might improve that portion of the paper, but ultimately letting him make the decisions on the corrections and correcting it himself.
Just a simple strategy of reading the paper aloud was such a efficient way of reviewing the paper. Not only did she not have to read it once to herself and then go over it with her student, but as she was reading it the student was also catching errors by himself. I think this technique is definitely something I would implore while checking my own papers and anyone who asks me for advise.
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