My First Tutoring Experience

During my first tutoring session, I must admit I was a little nervous.  The student I tutored somehow wasn’t there and got lost.  But luckily I was able to help another student, her name is Hannae.  I’m not really sure where she’s from but do know she’s Arabic. The first thing we did was look over the article she had to read.  I asked her to read it out loud to me.  After she was done we went over her revised essay.   As I looked over her paper I realized she had some organization problems.  I started asking her to give me a summary of the reading.  We broke up each part into pieces.  She jotted down ideas.  I told her the format that would help her was the one we used in class: first always to summarize, state one of the author’s main point of view, giver her opinion, and conclusion.  She started jotted down her ideas to organize her thoughts.  I could tell she had some organization problems and some minor grammatical problems as well.  But overall she had an idea of how and where to start on a paper. 

Respond to CATW Essay

The essay written in respond to the article, I believe is a passing essay. it has all the requirements that are suppose to be there, except grammar.  There are some grammatical errors, some words are misused.  At the beginning of the essay the student provides the reader with a summary of the article and relates it to her life. The student relates his or her life to the article by saying that ad's push people to think they always have to have the latest things out.  In the body paragraph the student gives examples of why and how ads are brainwashing people. In the conclusion of the paper the student once again gives the articles opinion and she relates it to her idea.  She agrees with the whole article and backed it up well.  There were some grammatical errors but overall I think the student knew what she was talking about and wrote the paper out well.
Maybe organization could have been better, but overall I think student had strong examples to relate to article, Some words were misused in sentences but I think but these subjects fall under LOC's.  Besides that they had everything an essay needs for it to be a good essay,

Sondra Pearl opinion

What is important to you, confusing?  What’s your favorite/worst useful of the 3 aspects of the process

I believe that all these aspects can help people with their papers.  There is nothing that confuses me about any of the aspects.  They are all pretty straight forward.  All the aspects make up how a paper should and will be written.  It shows how a paper should be thought out. The whole felt sense idea is important to me because it helps you get to where you want to get in your paper.  It helps you first think things out before you write your paper.  It makes you question yourself on where you want to go with your paper and if that is what you actually want to say in your paper.  This is the most important part of your paper because you do this even way before you write out your paper and how you start with your paper is how your whole paper is going to be.  Once you mess up your ideas, you can easily fall off topic.  That means you could mess up your entire paper. That's why I believe felt sense aspect is one of the most important ones. I don't disagree with any of them because I believe each one plays it's own part in forming a paper. With out these 3 aspects your essay probably wouldn't be organized. All these aspects have you organize yourself in a different way but will help you reach your goal, a successful paper.

Tutoring Do's and Don'ts

Do's

1. Tutor should always pay attention to what student needs help in.
2. Be interested in what student needs help in.
3. Make student feel comfortable and confident.
4. Give advice on how student can be better, but not overdo it.
5. Always listen to the student.
6. Always try to be avaiable for the student.
7. Let the student know whenever they need help they could contact you.
8. Always be on time.
9. Don't cheerlead.
10. Respect the writers ideas and thoughts.
11. Give honest feedback
12. Praise by paying attention to the writer.
13. Prasie by acknowledging writers who try something new.
14. Sit in the right posture.
15. Encourage the writer to revist a piece.

 Don'ts

1. Act all busy.
2. Tutor shouldn't brag about oneself.
3. Tutor shouldn't act too comfortable, meaning slouch when sitting.
4. Tutor shouldn't have things on table besides pen and paper.
5. Don't do students work.
6. Don't write on students paper.
7. Don't ignore the student about what he/she needs help in.
8. Don't promise top grades.
9. Don't be late.
10. Tutor shouldn't become the writers counselor or therapist,
11. Ignore studen'ts comments or ideas.
12. Do not cancel the invitation to write.
13. Don't spend too much time pointing out students mistakes because than the writer will feel unwilling to improve their writings,
14. Don't become overly involved with the students subject matter.
15. Don't pretend to be in a writing conference.

Sondra Pearls Felt Sense

Sondra Pearls Felt Sense 

Sometimes wondering and thinking about where and how to start an essay can be extremely frustrating. There are ways and steps that can make ones life easier. One way and format we can use are, Sondra Pearls “Felt Sense: Writing with the body.” It discusses how felt sense connects the mind with the body, knowledge with feeling and discovering with knowing. Sondra Pearl is an English professor at Lehman College. She has written six books. Her six books are based on writing. She has been leading writing workshops on college campuses for over 20 years.

The term “felt sense”, is a term that Sondra Pearl borrows from the psychologist Eugene Gendlin. The terms itself is meant to describe a feeling that a writer has when an idea or image is there but they aren’t able to find what to put onto the paper itself. It clearly makes sense on why she would choose this term to describe a format that would help these kind of people that had problems on choosing what to write on their paper. According to Eric Kaufamn the felt sense is a “technique of acknowledging the importance of the body and the self of the writer.” The felt sense theory is extremely useful to writers because it can help improve the writers writing and make them more comfortable while writing the paper. Kaufamn says, “We respond to certain topics in certain ways, and learning to accept and embrace this unique felt sense is crucial to the composing process.” Kaufamn is saying that us writers shouldn’t ignore the felt sense and that all writers should learn to accept this concept in order for writers to become better at what they do.

Felt sense is a writers guide into their body and mind. The felt sense guides through the steps and process they have to take while writing. According to Sondra Pearl the felt sense is, “internal criterion writers seem to use to guide them when they are planning, drafting, and revising”(Pearl 31). When a writer understand’s there felt sense they will be able to feel it in their mind and body, and of course have a reaction. When the writer is at this stage of actually feeling the felt sense, it will allow them to work better and move on forward with their writing. The writer than will get through the concept and ideas they have in front of them, meaning they will easily get to what they need to write without overwhelming themselves. The felt sense is important to writing because as a writer one shouldn’t put there feelings aside. Those feelings one has should be useful to one’s paper. When thinking about the topic, the mind and body are working together, to think everything out. The mind and body become separate when the paper is written. Felt sense can help the writer understand more about what they are writing.

Pearl Sondra has came up with a process that In order for writers to learn how and when to call on the felt sense. “The crucial operation in the Pearl process is when you pause and attend to the felt sense”(39). In this process you need to pause and ask yourself specific questions to help get out what you really want to say. One of the questions that are on the Pearl process is what’s my feeling for what I’m getting at? Then one must ask themselves a follow up question, have I’ve said it to make sure that you’ve said what you wanted to say.

Following the process before, the other important part of the Perl process is when you answer no to the questions you asked yourself. This actually tends to help the writer the writer move close to what they actually want to write. When saying no to ones questions, “you tend to experience a click or shift that moves you closer to knowing...In short, pausing, checking, and saying “No” usually lead you to better words”(Perl 39). When doing this part of the Perl process, it helps the writer process in their writing, making it easier to eliminate the words that aren’t needed.

In trying to improve one’s writing one must clearly think first what they are being asked during the process. Felt sense can help in time while one is confused on what they actually want to write. The felt sense deals with your mind and body. Felt sense can help a writer work on what they actually want to say and helps the writer be able to put their feelings. It is able to take out what the writer actually wants to say.












Works Cited










Kaufman, Eric. “On Felt Sense: Sondra Perl’s Composing Guidelines.” Web. 8 Dec. 2008. http://languageandthinking.bard.edu/2010/12/on-felt-sense-sondra-perl%E2%80%99s-composing-guidelines/




Perl, Sondra. “Understanding Composing.” College Composition and Communication, Vol. 31, No. 4. (Dec., 1980), pp. 363-369.




Perl, Sondra. “Composing Guidelines.” Web.1987.