"That's a weird sentence"

I'm constantly judging people when they write things. I can't help it. I try to be nice about it but to establish a rapport with people I find that my humor wins them over faster than me putting up pretenses and being fake. So really, when you think about it, I may be here to help people but I will first mildly insult your paper. It's cool though. That's when you know I like you. Don't worry about it. So are we here to court the student into thinking that they're awesome or do we treat them as friends and tell them how it is straight up? I've taken the sarcastic nudge route into telling my tutees what's wrong with their papers and how they could go about fixing it.

Comments

  1. I work at the ENMU-Roswell writing center and I am glad you posted this. It is really hard to give writers confidence after you've marked so many "errors" on their page. I think humor is a great way of building rapport and helping them to understand mistakes and get better. If they can laugh and joke around it makes the whole experience fun and positive.

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