I joined WyzAnt about a week ago. Thus far I’ve had two appointments with students. The lessons went well, but they made me realize something important.

I need to write out an FAQ to give students basic information about my sessions and how they are run. (I used to tutor at my university’s Writing Center; the Writing Center always took care of this part for me.)

Knowing what to expect is important. Before committing, a student may want to evaluate my methods to decide whether I’m the right tutor. A newly committed student may want to know how to prepare for lessons. I will update this FAQ as often as necessary, to provide answers to whatever common questions I find cropping up — except payment-related or general WyzAnt-related questions. Please feel free to call WyzAnt’s customer service number for those (or to look elsewhere on the website).

If you have a question that I don’t answer here, please don’t hesitate to ask it! I’ll do my best to respond clearly to any prospective students. I understand that each student and assignment is different.

1. WILL YOU TUTOR MY 6TH/7TH/8TH GRADER OR MY YOUNG CHILD IN ENGLISH?

In most cases I will not. My tutoring experience and training revolves around college students and/or graduate students. I will consider working with high school students (mainly Juniors and Seniors), but any student younger than that, I may turn down.

In some cases, I will be able to recommend another tutor who is specifically trained to teach high school aged students. In all other cases, I will simply apologize.

2. WHAT SHOULD I BRING TO MY TUTORING SESSION?

Please bring whatever materials you have that relate to the assignment or the subject we will be working on. For example, if I will be helping you with an essay, it is not enough to bring me the essay. I will always want the essay directions, the assignment sheet that tells you what you are supposed to write about, etc. That way I can make sure that you are correctly interpreting and fully responding to all parts of your assignment.

Depending on the essay, I may also want you to bring the source(s) you cited from (i.e. if you wrote a thesis-driven paper that analyzes three short stories from an anthology, I may ask you to bring the anthology). Please bring at least a couple sheets of paper and a writing utensil with you as well!

3. CAN I BRING MY WORK TO YOU ON MY LAPTOP?

While there may be rare exceptions, my general response to this is no. In order for you to get the most out of my tutoring session(s), both of us need to be able to highlight, scribble, and note-take in the margins as we please. Please bring hard copies of whatever you want to work with or on. While you may be savvy in the ways of digital scribbling across a screen, I work better if we can team up and scrawl across your work in pen or pencil. I also believe that physically writing corrections down better impresses them into memory, and thus a student is more likely to learn if we handwrite rather than type. Computers can be distracting; it benefits the student more if such distractions are not present to begin with.

4. HOW MUCH CAN WE GET DONE IN ONE HOUR?

That depends on a number of factors, the most notable factors being any or all of the following: the amount of work you bring to the session, the amount of corrections I find I need to help you through, the pace at which you are comfortable learning, and/or how much in-depth help you want from me in any specific area. For example, if you bring multiple essays to a one-hour session, I cannot guarantee that we will get through every essay; I can only guarantee that I will work efficiently on whatever it is you want help with. If I work with you more than once, I may eventually be able to estimate how long certain assignments will take (I will learn what to expect from you), but that is always subject to change, since each assignment is unique.

If you are concerned about time or price, you have a few choices. A) We work as steadily, as naturally, and as thoroughly as possible, but stop after one hour no matter what. Wherever we get, we get, and you do the rest on your own based on what we’ve managed to accomplish during that hour. B) You give me a few specific or general areas to focus on, and we work only on those areas; we skip any other areas for improvement I might find and streamline the session so that you get as much of what you want as is possible within a single hour. C) We extend the session beyond an hour, or we schedule an additional session at a different time. I recommend either A or C. If we do B, we risk bypassing a chance to go the extra mile in improving your work if there is one.

5. HOW FAR WILL YOU TRAVEL TO MEET ME?

I don’t want to go outside of the radius I’ve specified on my profile. Gas is expensive. Of course many of my students are in the same boat, and so there are often exceptions. Also, if you know early in the game that you will want more than two or three sessions from me, I will be more likely to go out of my way to get to you. However, I usually prefer that we arrange to meet in a place that is equally accessible to both of us, so I don’t feel like either of us is inconvenienced. I’m not afraid to bat around ideas for meeting places until both of us are happy.

6. WHAT MATERIALS WILL YOU BRING TO USE AT OUR SESSION?

A notebook to record our session’s start time and end time. Strunk & White’s Elements of Style if you need grammar help. Diana Hacker’s Pocket Style Manual if you need help with citation and/or parenthetical documentation. I have a number of other resources — books on writing, test prep books, etc. — that I will bring if I think they will come in handy during our lesson(s). I’m well prepared and I want to help, but please remember that first and foremost it is up to you to provide us with the materials you think will be useful regarding the assignment, subject, goal or challenge you want me to help you with.

7. DO YOU ASSIGN HOMEWORK?

Only if you want me to. This is about what will benefit you.

Writing Tutor: Essays, Fiction/Non-fiction, and more.