This past Monday a client came in and wanted help with grammar. She was an ESL student that had concerns pretty much only with grammar. And she asked me to proofread and edit what she had. I suggested we go over her paper as a whole first, and she was reluctant but obliged. She expressed serious concern that I would not edti her paper. I told I would after if we had time. After we went over her paper and I felt she had addressed the questions posed, she asked me to edit for her. I began looking over her paper for grammatical mistakes, and when I found one I pointed it out to her and asked her what she thought she could do to change it. She paused and looked off into the distance, but made no suggestions. She asked me why I wouldn’t do it for her and I told her my job does not involve writing her paper. She replied that other tutors in the past had rewritten parts of her paper for her. I informed her that people have different styles, and that was not my style. I encouraged her to rewrite her sentences, pointing out things that she could not do and giving her a lot of freedom. I felt frustrated because she kept telling me she didn’t know what to do. I told her She had other sentences that were fine and I knew she could-it went back and forth for a few minutes. I noticed she had used a part of an article and had not cited it as well. It was its own sentence, and I suggested she paraphrase to avoid plagarism. She rewrote part of the sentence, but left a big enough chunk of it for it to still be considered plagarism. All in all, progress was made, but I would like to know if there is anything I can do about people who are persistent about tutors writing their papers for them.
