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Key takeaways:
- Online writing tutors help students develop stronger ideas, clearer arguments, and greater confidence as writers.
- Research published in The Writing Center Journal found that 97% of students who received online writing tutoring said they would schedule another online session.
- To host effective online writing classes, tutors must combine their feedback with interactive teaching tools.
- The best online writing tutors teach the skills that will ultimately guide students toward becoming stronger, more independent writers.
How do online tutors teach writing?
One of the most common misconceptions about online writing tutoring is that it’s a one-way process, during which the tutor simply reads a draft and marks mistakes. But this should never be the case.
In reality, online writing sessions need to be collaborative. For the best possible results, the tutor and the student should spend a fair amount of time working through a piece of writing together. Both need to be able to freely discuss ideas, ask questions, and gradually refine the work until it says exactly what the student intended.
This kind of approach is proving popular with learners, too. According to a 2020 study published in The Writing Center Journal, 97% of students who received online writing tutoring said they’d be willing to book another online session in the future.
This shows that, when done well, online writing tutoring can be every bit as valuable as traditional in-person tutoring, all while offering much more flexibility for both the student and the tutor.
What methods online writing tutors use
Every writing lesson looks a little different because every student has different goals. One might be polishing a university admissions essay, while another is working through the basics of sentence construction or learning how to write a persuasive argument.
Regardless of these differences, most online writing tutoring sessions tend to follow the same general process:
- The tutor reviews the student’s work alongside them
- The tutor identifies areas that need improvement
- The tutor explains why and how those changes will strengthen the writing
- The student then gets a chance to apply those lessons immediately, with the tutor guiding them as needed
During this process, tutors will often identify problem areas that persist throughout the students’ writing process. Some of the most common problems that online writing tutors spend time helping learners with include the following:
Grammar and spelling
Clear writing starts with a solid mechanical understanding of grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Tutors help students recognise recurring errors and build the confidence to correct them independently over time.
Sentence structure and organization
Strong ideas need a clear structure to retain their strength. Tutors help students improve the flow, organization, and logic of sentences and paragraphs, and in turn, students’ essays are much easier for readers to follow.
Style and voice
As students gain more confidence in their writing, tutors will shift their attention to style. They help young writers choose language that suits their audience, while still helping them hone a voice that feels true to themselves.
Essay writing techniques
Oftentimes, students’ struggles reflect the nature of an essay’s goal (e.g., persuasion, analysis, creativity, etc.). That’s why, regardless of whether the goal is an analytical essay or a short story, the tutor’s overarching goal is to guide students through the planning, drafting, revising, and proofreading processes. Throughout, the emphasis of the lesson is to facilitate lasting writing skills, rather than simply improving a single assignment.
Benefits of online writing tutoring
Most would assume that writing is easier to teach face-to-face than online, but surprisingly, this isn’t the case. As 2019 research finds, students view online learning systems as an effective way to develop academic literacy. Crucially, the researchers observed no statistically significant differences between their satisfaction with online tutoring vs. in-person tutoring.
This tells us that both approaches can be equally effective when they’re thoughtfully designed, which is encouraging news for both tutors and students alike.
Arguably, one of the greatest benefits of online tutoring is accessibility: students can work with an experienced online writing tutor from anywhere, whenever it best suits them. So, whether they’re preparing for a school assignment, applying to university, or just looking to become a more confident writer, geography won’t be a barrier.
Online lessons also make collaboration extremely easy, just as you’d expect from an in-person session. Instead of constantly passing papers back and forth, tutors and students can edit the same document at the same time, leave comments, highlight passages, and work through revisions together over a call.
Virtual classroom platforms like Pencil Spaces make that process feel even more natural. Tutors can annotate essays, brainstorm ideas on a collaborative infinite whiteboard, use built-in word processing tools to edit text together, and highlight passages as they discuss them, all in one place.
But perhaps the ultimate advantage of online tutoring is that it naturally encourages students to take ownership of their words. Since feedback is often delivered through a combination of shared documents, annotations, and guided discussion, students are always actively involved throughout the revision process. This sense of involvement is what gives them the confidence to start identifying and solving their common writing challenges more independently over time.
As the online tutoring industry continues to grow, writing tutors have more opportunities than ever to support students wherever they are. With the right teaching approach and the right technology, your online writing tutoring can be every bit as engaging and effective as it would be in person. All you have to do is create an environment where your student feels confident enough to keep writing.
Want to deliver more engaging online writing tutoring? Pencil Spaces’ virtual classroom brings together collaborative whiteboards, built-in writing tools, live annotations, lesson recordings, and much more in one purpose-built virtual classroom. Try Pencil Spaces for free, or book a free demo to see how it can support your tutors and students.
