Letter to Bert Assignment

Assignment: Letter to Bert Eisenstadt Evaluating Tutoring at the Writing Center
Peer Review:
Due:

Assignment Goal: To create an argumentative memo explaining what effective and ineffective strategies you saw in your Writing Center observations, using our course texts to support your claims and for context.

Assignment Description: For this assignment, you will turn the problem-posing assignment into a formal letter that you may send to the Manager of the LaGuardia Writing Center. The Manager, Mr. Bert Eisenstadt, knows about this assignment and is looking forward to reading what you have to say.

The letter should be two full single-spaced pages, and should address the three steps from the problem-posing exercise you worked with to produce your group presentation. While what you presented in groups was excerpts from the observations of particular individuals in your group, the primary evidence in your letter should be based on your own personal observations.

As in your problem-posing exercise, name strategies, cite sources for strategies named, and describe observations in detail. It is especially important that whenever you identify a strategy or diagnose a problem, you provide support for your ideas by quoting from the course reading materials, citing all sources, and providing a works cited page at the end of the letter. You will want to take certain moments and link them your overall teaching philosophy.

Mr. Eisenstadt will be much more likely to follow your advice if you seem like you’re basing your assessments on up-to-date tutoring theory. He may also want to read for himself certain sections of a text to which you refer.

In establishing the voice you will use in this letter, try to use the tutoring skills you have learned this semester. Remember that while it is often important and useful to be critical, it is also important that you be constructive. Remember that tutors can have bad days just like anyone else; don’t make your criticisms personal, but instead try phrasing things as problems that may need for the overall improvement of the center. Think of the Writing Center, like an essay draft, as a work in progress. Imagine your audience, Mr. Eisenstadt, as someone who will continue with his practice of managing the center long after you give him this feedback. There is a future for the Writing Center, and by writing this letter you can become a part of it.