So I only managed to get in two writing center appointments since our last blog paper. I'm disappointed in the fact of how many students don't bother to cancel their appointments and let their consultants know they aren't coming. But any experience is good experience I guess.
Anyways my 2nd writing center appointment was with a student who had great example from their book they had to read but not knowing how to correlate it into the topics given to them by their professor. I wasn't familiar with the book but thank goodness my consultant had read it in high school once.
The student had good examples from the book but as my consultant and I discussed them further with the student we decided that there was just too many of them. Sometimes students just over use examples from their texts, and this was the case for this student. We decided less was better than more, so we had the student pick out the examples that he thought really played a key part to the book and to work off those. After eliminating about two thirds of the examples I think the student was finally able to grasp how he was going to go about his paper. We brainstormed for the rest of the appointment, letting him take the lead in the discussion so he could find out for himself he really did know all along what he wanted to write about.
I had the same problem! I only actually managed to shadow 3 sessions for the whole semester because there were so many no shows! It's very inconsiderate to the consultants.
ReplyDeleteI have had the same problem. Why do so many people cancel their appointments? Is there something that we as writing consultants can do to encourage students to keep their appointments? Some sort of incentive. I prefer an incentive rather than a punishment.
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