How Tutoring Helps the Tutor

It seemed like a pretty cool job--helping students having trouble with English classes how to write in complete sentences with good grammar. The idea seems pretty basic. If someone can't do it, and I can, it ought to be fairly simple to teach them the basic skills they're lacking.

For example, if a student comes in and shows me an essay with homonyms like their, there and they're used as if they're interchangeable words, I can simply demonstrate to them the difference. I might write a sentence like: They're having their lunch over there, then point out how each word plays a definite and separate role within the sentence. Sometimes I get the point across without much trouble, other times I feel like I'm tossing a bucket of water in the ocean and watching it blend in, lost for all time among the seething waves of contradictory or half-formed ideas which inform not only their writing but their usage.

My instructions are to work on global rather than specific issues. That is, I look at the prompt, if they have it, then read the essay and see how well they are fulfilling the basic task they are expected to perform. But frequently, and I'd say it's just as likely with native speakers as with ESL students still unfamiliar with our language, the grammar is so confused and the syntax so tortured that, like the doctor in The Brothers Karamozov, I want to throw up my hands in despair and proclaim, "I can make nothing of it."

But that doesn't solve anyone's problem. It's a matter of separating the overall from the particular, and assessing how much of an impact errant usage and arbitrary punctuation is having on the student's ability to get their point, assuming they have one, across.

To be fair, I'd have to admit the ESL students typically do a far better job of at least trying to stick to a main point and elaborate upon it or defend it as the prompt instructs. So I usually find myself in the frustrating position of explaining why one separates a prepositional phrase from and independent clause with a comma, and that, just, inserting commas at random (or by chance, or perhaps a coin-toss) often has the effect of obscuring their intent. It's a great thing when someone actually gets what I'm trying to give them. We all feel good about it, they get a better grade, and the teacher for the class feels good because they get to give someone a passing grade when they were probably not going to get there on their own. That's the whole idea with having a tutoring center on campus: to help those motivated enough to seek help. Often, especially with ESL students who've been studying basic grammar terms and concepts in class, I can find a terminology that they're familiar with and, just by reminding them to revise for subject-verb agreement or sentence boundary issues, at least point them in the right direction.

When I was working as an editor at papers and magazines, I could attack such work with my pen and quickly sort out who was supposed to be doing what to whom, and turn an indecipherable garble into a coherent statement. It's easy enough if you know how. But trying to give someone else the tools to do the same thing on their own is much more difficult. It's as if I worked at a garage and, instead of installing new gadgets when old ones were broken, had to explain to every customer that walked in just how to diagnose and repair their own cars. Odds are that only a few such customers would succeed. Of course, those with the best chance wouldn't even come to the garage. They'd have fixed their own cars and already be driving them merrily through stop signs and 105 miles an hour down the freeway.