Giving the student control of the pen or keyboard

The student ought to be the person controlling changes to his or her draft. As tutors, we sometimes have to reinforce lessons about comma rules or sentence syntax; we may even suggest options for improvement if the student is at a complete loss. But if we take over the pen or keyboard, we take over the revision process and we damage the student's ownership of the work. I strongly believe that the pen and keyboard should be in the student's hands. If the tutor is explaining a comma rule and indicating an error in the student's work, the student should be the one to insert the comma. The same is true for changes in word choice or complete overhaul of a sentence or paragraph structure. This demands that a tutor have patience because the student will not see the mistakes or the possibilities as quickly as the experienced tutor. We must resist any temptation to take over and start fixing the paper; if we do this, we take away the student's responsibility for the work and we communicate to the student that he or she is incapable of learning.

Very rarely, we may face a situation that calls for assisting a student with the pen or the keyboard. I have only taken over the pen or keyboard for two students when tutoring: one suffered a degenerative nerve disorder and the other dealt with the most severe dyslexia I have encountered, where every other word came out scrambled. In these cases, I did not write the papers for the students; I merely typed what they dictated to me, and only after I typed their words did we discuss content and grammar issues.