First Consultation Shadowing

Yesterday was my first time shadowing a writing consultation. The student had a writing assignment in which she had to write 3 short essays about various subjects. I thought it would be difficult to address all 3 essays in such a short time, but the consultant did it with ease. He read over each essay and then discussed them individually. Through my observations, his main focus was to explore her ideas and make sure that her essay was clear. Because of the restriction of length of each essay (500-750 words), he also wanted to make sure that her sentences were to the point and not "wordy." He quickly worked on the structure of the essay as well because there were sentences in the essays that would have better belonged in other parts of the essay. I was also able to give my input because I was able to read the essays and generally noticed the same changes that I would have made to the essays. In addition, we talked to her about what she meant in her essay. For example, the assignment asked that one of her essays define a word that was difficult to describe. She chose the word "freedom," and she began by writing a riddle to try to best define the word. Her essay was strong, but we were curious to see if she was actually writing what she believed the word to be. She articulated what she thought about her definition and was able to clarify her ideas. it was interesting to see the writing process in a non-biased way, and I am excited to learn about how to better edit my own essays in the future.