Currently, I do some part time tutoring with the Japanese international students at Willamette and work on grammar, sentence structure and just teach about the American style of writing to them.
Some of the objectives surround giving main ideas and explaining them in their own words and expressing their opinions to give the reader a clear thought. What I have observed in the past is that it is difficult for many of these students to understand the American style because they grew up in a system that was not as regulated and copyrighted like the U.S. likes to do.
So, what my role as a tutor is to find the students' weak areas in their writings and help them make adjustments and brush up on their clarity in their writing. What seems to help with these students is to simply just talk about what they wanted to say in their paper because many times, their writing doesn't fully express clearly what they want to say. I ask them lots of probing questions to get a more clear verbal answer and then help them with creating proper English sentences.
Checking for understanding:
I check for understanding with these students by reading/scanning over their assignments and evaluate their writing and critique it quickly and give them immediate feedback while making adjustments to their "mistakes" and create teaching moments with repeated mistakes.
