Effective catch-up/support/remedial classes?

[apl68]

We had great success at tutoring in both writing centers I worked at.  We had none of the problems that K16 mentions, at least not on any large scale.  We asked for syllabi from professors and asked students to bring in assignment sheets.  No tutoring session was perfect, of course, and we could not correct all problems with every student's work, but overall things went very well for students and tutors.

Same here.  A tutor doesn't have to be a subject expert to help a struggling student with things like - when is this due? How many pages? What is your topic? Do they need to cite sources & if so, what style? Is this meant to be a compare/contrast, choose & support, etc?

Just helping define the parameters of what they are supposed to be doing helps a lot

One would suppose so.  Although it's sad that so many students get into college without apparently ever having been taught such basics.  Glad to hear that these efforts at salvaging students' education do often help.

[kaysixteen]

Awright, that was not what I was thinking of, in terms of what a 'tutor' is being asked to do.  Sure, any competent upperclassman can help a struggling freshman learn how to read syllabi, make a study/ scaffolding plan, and teach basic college paper sourcing skills and expectations (and it is nonetheless sadly true that these sorts of things are just not used or done in most American hss today.

What I had been thinking of was what I had done in the past as a gig contract worker for a couple of private tutoring services, which are hired by parents (usually of hs students), to help them with their work in class X.  The  tutor should be, though may not always actually be, a degreed professional in subject X, and what he is being asked to do in this sort of tutoring situation is essentially to reteach subject content and drill the kid in it.