Tutoring Philosophy
"Developing a reflective awareness of the choices available to you enables you to negotiate discourse conventions in a way that will allow your identity to guide the writing you produce, thereby making more authentic and meaningful writing, writing that represents you."
Read my full Tutoring Philosophy below!
Some Notes on Academic Discourse Conventions
Students learning to write in an academic context are taught to adhere to a certain set of expectations that situate their work within the community; these vary from one project to the next and can include:
actions you are asked to perform outlined in assignment rubrics like the PAR (such as analyzing, comparing or contrasting aspects of a text, evaluating claims or citing sources that support your claims)
using the vocabulary of the discipline in which you are writing
certain organizational requirements (ie. introductory paragraph containing a thesis statement, using subtitles, including an abstract)
using academic or professional (rather than colloquial) language (avoiding the first person, avoiding slang)
Depending on the purpose of a given piece, some of these tools are more appropriate than others. My goal is to help students recognize when and where certain conventions are useful or (in)appropriate. It is important to recognize that some of the 'rules' we have been taught to standardize our writing do not always serve us and our purpose.
