Award-Winning English Grammar and Syntax Tutors serving Cambridge

In our first session, we focused on setting a game-plan and starting the student's Week 3 "Experience paper". As part of the assignment requires formal citation, I recognized that she was restricting herself to scholarly resources, so we discussed that a student can start their research with general online searches before moving on to academic material. While each assignment of her syllabus included a grading rubric, the essay prompts were broad, and it can be difficult to decipher or set our own limits. I encouraged her to read a bit before typing anything, and suggested "free-writing", which is an exercise in reflection in our own, everyday language. Generating words should come easier now. We have set a date for our next meeting, so that she may focus on completing her paper.

We went over her three papers she needs to revise for her portfolio, focusing on content organization and presentation and use of language, including beginning revisions to being using academic present.

This session comprised of reading and revising the student's essay about A Hero's Journey. She sent me her draft via e-mail which was approximately 6 pages in length and asked me to specifically focus on condensing information. I sent her the corrections and will follow up with her soon on a second draft before she submits the essay this upcoming Wednesday.

First, we revised the thesis, changing the focus of the research slightly. Then we took one of the topic sentences and reworked it to match the revised thesis. For both sentences, we changed the sentence structure in order to create more variety by using complex sentences rather than simple (e.g. starting with a subordinate clause starting with "While"ù or "As."ù) Once we had the first topic sentence determined, we went back to the sources and found details that supported that paragraph's argument. We talked about how a quote should be contextualized in the ideas of the paper by introducing it with a separate sentence and then explained and analyzed afterward. When discussing analysis, I showed him an example of an essay to show how a student can introduce and analyze a quote in the context of a research paper. Before the next session, he will finish the paragraph by providing another detail and analyzing it.

The student revised his conclusion and fleshed out the introduction. We then began editing through the entire report to ensure that all of the material flowed progressively toward the conclusion and spoke to the elements required by the writing prompt. The student agreed to finish the first stage of a rough draft for the 2nd Paper (flesh out the outline I prepared) by the end of the weekend. Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday at 1pm.

The student and I began this session by briefly reviewing previously covered concepts. Then we spent some time looking at homonyms, brushing up on what he had recently covered in school. We did some work on synonyms in order to help him improve the variety of his language and writing. Finally we covered indefinite pronouns, taking some notes and going through some activities on the subject. He was focused and we were able to cover a lot of material.