using they say/ I say in conferences

I believe that it would be possible for a tutor to use the moves described by Graff and Birkenstein in a conference. A belief I held before our practice tutoring session on Wednesday which was reinforced during the tutoring session and in the notes provided afterwards is that for the tutoring session to be effective it can’t focus strictly on correcting the grammar of the paper. I think it would be a mistake for a tutor to read the student’s paper and select certain areas to use a template from the book. As a tutor I hope that during the conversation with the student we can look back on some of the templates suggested by the authors to help steer our discussion.
The author’s noted that summarizing other people’s work can be a difficult task for inexperienced writers. I think that if a tutee was having problems with this talking about what they had read with their tutor might make the topic more clear to them. Discussion with the tutor should also help the tutor better express their own opinions about what they read.
Graff and Birksenstein constantly ask the question “Why _____ “. If tutors have questions about their tutees choice of topics, use/meaning of quotes, or stance on a topic they shouldn’t be afraid to ask the question “why”.