The Tutorial

In the British education system, a tutorial is often the main method of study.  Tutorials are one-on-one meetings, generally weekly, between an instructor and a student, who works more independently than in a traditional classroom setting. They allow students follow their own academic interests and to get regular feedback from their faculty about their ideas on the subject matter as the student and faculty member discuss these matters with the student, generally, taking the lead. British tutorials, like the ones for this course, tend to be problem-based.

This semester's experiment will be a modified version of the British tutorial system, as we are meeting twice a week, generally, on Mondays and Fridays, and having our 1/2 hr - 1 hour tutorials midweek (we will schedule them during the first class period).  Here are the guidelines:

• your interests will drive the focus on the tutorials

• rarely will you have additional reading for the tutorial; that does not mean, however, that you do not have to prepare for the tutorial.  Here are some of the ways that you may prepare:

  • choose a passage to reread and analyze it to explicate it during your tutorial

  • consider a recurring image or theme and find two or three brief passages that address the passage to discuss during the tutorial

  • find a sentence or a passage or an idea that you find difficult and spend some time thinking about how to tackle it--and then we can try to tackle it together during the tutorial

• sometimes, tutorials will be focused on particular works (the first one will be on The Masque aka Comus); other times, you will make choices (for instance, I may ask you to choose a few Milton poems to discuss).  Sometimes, your focus will develop out of our previous tutorial.

• for at least two tutorials this semester, you must read a scholarly secondary source related to a work and topic that you are interested in and come prepared to discuss it (one before Spring Break).  You must send me either a link to the source or provide me with the source at least forty eight hours in advance of your tutorial so that I have time to prepare.

• once you have chosen a time for your tutorial, you may not change it.  This is now a regularly scheduled meeting time for English 350.

   

The tutorials are an experiment which can be revised or adapted at any time;

any changes will be discussed in class.