Paul

Certified Tutor

I am a graduate of Drew University, class of 2012. I received my Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, with a focus on creative writing and 20th Century American authors as well as a minor in Classics. In college, I worked at the Drew University Writing Center for two years tutoring undergraduate, graduate, and English Second Language (ESL) students. My senior year I was chosen to participate on the Drew University panel at the International Writing Center Association’s (IWCA) annual conference held in Orlando, Florida, where I gave a speech on the adjustments that tutors need to make when tutoring ESL students. I have also worked for the Drew University Summer College Mentor Program where I mentored four inner-city high school students one-on-one and accompanied them as they experienced what college was like for one week. Through my work at the Writing Center, I have experience helping with papers on a wide variety of subjects and have tutored anything from graduate theses papers to introductory level essays. My passion for creative writing drives my tutoring philosophy and with any paper I believe it is paramount that a writer start with the fundamentals. Once a writer knows the foundations of a good paper, then he or she can start to play with the rules and flow of the paper to make the it his or her own. It is critically important to me that the tutee feels, whatever the subject is, the paper is written in their voice. One strategy I use with every tutee is to have them read the paper aloud. This not only helps with sentence structure and syntax but also gives the tutee a chance to hear how their paper sounds. I've found that by doing this over several sessions and different papers, the tutee notices patterns in their own writing that they can choose to keep or adjust and allows them to identify with something in every paper they write, even if it’s something that may not be a creative writing assignment.