Speaking Center Tutors
What can I expect at a Speaking Center conference?
What Does a Tutor Do?
During the conference, tutors follow a tutee’s agenda. This means we can work with you at any stage of the speaking process and with any of the five rhetorical canons. We work with invention (developing an argument), arrangement, style, delivery, and memory. Whether you could use a brainstorming partner or a knowledgeable eye to offer delivery feedback, we are ready and willing to do it all. Our services are not limited to academic speeches and presentations. Do you have an interview coming up? Do you need to make a ceremonial speech for an extracurricular or community obligation? Are you working on a monologue or delivering your own creative writing? Then, come to the Speaking Center!
What Does a Tutee Do?
A tutee sets the agenda for the conference. Tutees come prepared with the task. What challenges or personal weaknesses do you face in this arena? Have you though about strengths to counter them? Tutees anticipate the assignment or speaking interaction as best as possible and ask questions to solicit tutor feedback and guidance. Tutees also answer questions posed by the tutor that stimulate critical thinking and preparatory awareness. Most importantly, tutees enter into the conferences with a willingness to dialogue with the tutor—this is where true progress and development take place!
To begin, sign up outside the Speaking Center door in lower McCain, show up on time for your conference, and be prepared for a fruitful, engaging discussion designed to facilitate the speaker’s challenges and to cultivate the speaker’s capacity for contextually attuned, instrumental oral communication.
Partner’s Program
The tutors of the Agnes Scott Speaking Center realize how hard it is to speak one on one, in front of a classroom, or with a potential employer. Such reasons have led the Center to start a Partner’s Program. It is designed for students of any year who want to improve their speaking skills. This program includes traditional and international students who are all working on different problems ranging from accent reduction to speech anxiety.
Tutors meet with their partners weekly for one hour. During this hour the tutor and partner work on class speaking projects, impromptu speaking topics, or rhetorical topic that that the partner wants to learn more about. This program is very new and the tutors are very excited to help students to become better communicators around campus!