Minimalist Tutoring

Students receive individualized and directed assistance to develop their reading and writing skills. The primary goal of the center is to move students towards independence in these skills. The tutor will help you learn to read closely, develop critical readings, revise your drafts, and correct your errors on your own.

The tutor will not do the work for you, correct your paper, or act as a proofreader or style-checker. Rather the tutor will work with you on your own paper to help you learn how to revise, complicate, and develop your own readings of texts. The tutor will also work with you to develop the skills necessary to determine and correct your own patterns of error.

This approach to tutoring is minimalist in that it seeks to minimize your dependence upon the Writing tutor. The tutor's job is to assist you in identifying problem areas with your writing, to provide you with a concrete plan for working on those areas, to allow you the time to begin doing that work yourself, and to provide you with guidance when you get stuck.