How I feel about becoming a Writing Tutor

When I first took this class last semester, I was shocked to find out that we were actually going to be tutoring ENG 099 students. I didn't think that the class would be about that. I thought it would be learning how to teach Writing to a class, like with a lesson plan and everything. But I was in for a whole new thing.

Now actually taking the class again, I am actually nervous because I am continuing the class. I feel scared because I going to be tutoring a grown person, not a child because my Major is Early Childhood Education. It is actually scary and exciting at the same time because now I can get more experience with people to help me better my skills as a Writer. I get to help someone out with a paper and get to give them feedback on their Writing. I think that is pretty cool. College for a class, I actually got to help students and tutor them for a credit."

I want to be able to help someone with the best of my ability and be able to make a change in their life. I want to be able to help them with something that they are having trouble with. I am also kind of scared because I don't want to give the wrong information or have a person who just doesn't want to put effort into their work. I want to be able to help this person achieve their goals and make sure they have a well written paper.

Sondra Perl- Felt Sense (Draft 1)

Cecily Rodriguez

Prof. Gallagher

ENG 220- 0878

Sept. 16^th, 2001

Sondra Perl- Felt Sense (Draft 1)

I was given the question, what is the most important idea Sondra Perl has contributed to in the field of theorizing the writing process? In order for me to answer this question I needed to find out who this Sondra Perl is. Sondra Perl is a professor of English at the Herbert H. Lehman College of The New York City University of New York. She is also the founder of the New York City Writing Project. Perl also specializes in Composition and Rhetoric. While reading some of her work I came to the conclusion that the most important idea to Sondra Perl is “Felt Sense”.

According to Perl, while writing it does not occur with words but with “feelings or non-verbalized perceptions…the move occurs inside the writer, to what is physically felt” (Perl 30-31). The term felt sense comes from Eugene Gendlin who is a philosopher at the University of Chicago. As Gendlin puts it

the soft underbelly of thought…a kind of bodily awareness that…can be used as a tool…a bodily awareness that…encompasses everything you feel and know about a given subject at a given time…It is felt in the body, yet it has meanings. It is body and mind before they split apart (Perl 31).

Felt sense is with in the body and deals with feeling while writing and also before your pen touches the paper.

In a flyer I seen to meet Sondra Perl called Felt Sense, Writing with the Body. This flyer was for a workshop which talks about felt sense and how “writing connects the mind and body. Learn to listen to what your body knows, to what is on the edge, but not yet in words, to cultivate ‘Felt Sense’ so that your writing comes alive. Felt sense is the key to understanding how new ideas come to us” (Web). Before we write we have to think about what we feel about the topic. For any topic we need to think about images, words, ideas, phrases and even our own thoughts and feelings in order to write a well processed paper. You have to feel what you write within yourself. Write what you feel is right, not just on the topic itself.

Felt sense is what writers use in order to guide themselves when they are planning, drafting, and revising. We have to ask ourselves a series of questions. For example, is this right or wrong? Are the words I picked right for me rather than for the paper? “Do they capture what I’m trying to say? If not what is missing” (Perl 33). All of theses questions contribute to felt sense. It deals with how we feel about what we have written. We have to feel it in our gut.

In Sondra Perl’s Composing Guidelines, she has a list of things you can do in order to “discover what is on your mind” (Belanoff and Elbow 36). These guidelines are what experienced writer’s do in order to write a perfect paper. They continue to write even when they don’t know where this will take them. The more you write the more you will learn from yourself. You should pause and ask yourself, “What is this all about?...periodically check what you have written against internal sense of where you’re going or what you wanted to say—your ‘felt sense’ (Belanoff and Elbow 36). I can relate to these things because while actually writing this paper, I did not know where I would end up by the second paragraph. I had no idea what I was writing about. But I kept on writing, paused and thought what I would write about and what point I wanted to get across. I also stopped after every paragraph to read what I wrote, to see if it made sense and if it felt good in my gut, in my “felt sense”.

While reading Perl’s work what appealed to me to be the most important idea was this “felt sense”. I had no idea what it was or what it meant. While I kept on reading, it clicked in my mind that it is a feeling in your body, that tells you what you have written is right or wrong for you. It is your gut feeling. I felt it was a perfect topic to write about because not many people know what felt sense is. It is also important because we use our felt sense almost everyday, for whenever we need to write. Not just for a school paper, but for work too.

Work Cited

• Belanoff, Pat and Elbow, Peter. Sondra Perl’s Composing Guidelines, A Community of Writers: A Course in Writing. 1987. P. 36-40.
• Perl, Sondra. Understanding Composing. P. 29-35.
• Felt Sense, Writing with the Body. www.stu.ca/inkshed/perl.pdf. Web. 2004.