Tutoring Across Disciplines- McKay

This is something I've been thinking about recently as I just got a few new students in the Writing Center (relatively recently)-- one is a first year in Business/Economics, and the other is a Senior in Sports Management. There was a paper recently for Economics which was all about marginal analysis which I did not understand. I think it was especially hard because this student had a lot of questions about not understanding the prompt or what the professor was asking him to do with his analysis. I told him I didn't really know anything about marginal analysis but we could try to dissect the prompt together. This only went so far, and what I ended up doing is just asking him to the best of his ability to explain marginal analysis to me and what they were talking about in class. I think this turned out okay, because when he had to explain it, I could grasp more what it was about and I think it also helped him clarify what he knew so he felt a little more confident. 
But I think in those scenarios its probably best to advise the student to talk to their professor or TA or even peers for clarification on the prompt or to talk through some of the finer points of their argument. But I think in the session, it worked to ask a lot of questions because the student got the chance to be the authority on a topic and share what they were learning and teach me, so that I could try to help them. 

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