Graff and Birkenstein's Strategies for Peer Tutors

I believe that Graff and Birkenstein’s strategies are very successful and could definitely be beneficial when used in peer tutoring. The suggested templates are a great tool for tutors, who can easily explain these basic ideas to tutees. As beginning writers, tutees will be relieved to discover that the templates are simple, concise, and easy to utilize. Sometimes starting a paper is an extremely difficult task, even for the most experienced writer. By using templates, tutees can avoid trivial difficulty and make a smooth transition into composing more sophisticated works. I will definitely advise my tutee to make good use of templates because I feel that she could benefit from becoming familiar with the structure of good conversational writing.

At first, I was hesitant to embrace the concept of templates. I felt using templates would make students lazy and uncreative. However, I see that this is not the case. Templates can work wonders for those who are having trouble with almost any aspect of writing. They can help jumpstart the writing process, organize ideas, or make the writing more conversational. Furthermore, templates are anything but uncreative. In fact, using templates will actually lead to creativity. This is because templates allow writers the opportunity to organize their information. After the information is formatted, the author will have more of an opportunity to add his/her own personal touch.

I think that some of Graff and Birkenstein's 'moves' are necessary for making peer tutoring conferences effective. For example, I feel the relationship between a tutor and a tutee must be reciprocal. Each person must be willing to reach out and address the needs of the other. This is very similar to what Kenneth Bruffee believed. Furthermore, I think that this relationship between tutor/tutee needs to be built on mutual respect. The tutor can not have a superiority complex. Unless the tutor acts like the tutee’s peer, the conference will become less successful and innovative and more like a traditional classroom environment- which will ultimately fail.