Carmen’s Reflection
Carmen Yanes
April 22, 2022
My last semester working at the Writing Centre was a heartwarming experience that will benefit my future career as a TESOL teacher. I was able to continue working with international students as an embedded tutor for WRTG 101 and ENGL 101. I have had the opportunity to help people from different countries adapt to the expectations and different writing approaches in Canada. One of my personal goals for this new semester included giving students a writing tip that can serve them in more than one assignment throughout their university career. Since I have been working with the same professor and demographic of students, I felt more confident in the suggestions and advice I gave in my sessions. I was more motivated into getting to know my embedded students because I have had positive experiences in the past. For this reason, I feel that this job has benefitted my future career because it allowed me to create interrelations with people from different backgrounds and to practice my teaching skills according to their specific needs. In this last semester of my university life, I was taking a TESOL class for teaching reading and writing and I realized that writing tutors have a similar role to writing teachers. As tutors we use our knowledge and skills to guide students throughout any step of the writing process. We are ready to share helpful resources or extra practice links to assist the students’ writing struggles. In addition, we offer constructive feedback where we try to highlight the students’ strengths in order to encourage them through their writing journey. In this class’s textbook, this type of teacher role is called assistant role. Harmer (2004) argues that it is important for teachers to act as assistants by helping their learners throughout their writing process by providing guidance, additional information and explanations, and constructive feedback (p.109). During my sessions, I tried to abide by this role without inputting my ideas into the students’ writing piece. I believe I made my sessions a safe place for student to come in and ask questions and clear their doubts. I got to know new students and share, not only writing advise, but also school and life advice in Canada. This semester was a great experience that gave me an opportunity to grow in writing and interpersonal relationships. I value my time in this job as I continue to gain experience and grow in the career.