Villanova University

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
 

Spanish Tutoring Center

Mission

The mission of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures’ Spanish Tutoring Center is to assist undergraduate students enrolled in all levels of Spanish to build on their knowledge and skills to become independent and successful life-long second language learners by assisting them to use effective and appropriate strategies and procedures in understanding, writing, and speaking Spanish, and to increase their understanding of course content.

Click here for the current semester's Spanish Tutoring schedule!
 
 

Preparing for a Session in the Tutoring Center

• Bring a copy of the specific assignment(s) such as the questions to answer or themes to address in an essay, topics of the essays, objectives/purposes for the specific assignment

• Bring a copy of the course syllabus

• Bring textbooks and other materials related to the assignment(s).  Tutors may not have copies of your textbooks in the Tutoring Center.

• You are required to proofread your assignment before coming to the Tutoring Center by following the steps outlined in the Proofreading section below  (*NOTE: Your instructors may also provide additional guidelines  Please also use her/his guidelines in preparation for your visit to the Center!)).

• Prepare specific questions about your writing that you would like tutors to review with you (i.e., specific paragraphs to review, questions about styles, tone, or vocabulary)

• Review the "Guide from the Villanova Writing Center" for additional suggestions!

Note:  We may read all or only part of your paper, depending upon your needs, goals, and the time available.  Please do not wait until the last minute as we cannot guarantee that you will receive assistance if we have a large number of last minute requests for tutoring!

How the Tutoring Center Assists You with Your Assignments

• Tutors review essays and assignments for appropriate style!   Please refer to the Proofreading section and follow these steps BEFORE coming to the Tutoring Center. 

• Tutors point out general problem areas in grammar, structure, vocabulary, and development as well as provide strategies for helping you to continue to proofread your own essays (compositions) more effectively.

• Tutors will work with you to help you self-correct your errors and provide you with strategies to improve your writing skills!

• Tutors will prepare and submit a brief report of each of your visits to the Center to your instructor so that, by working together, our tutors and your instructor can promote the development of your skills!

During tutoring sessions, you will practice and learn skills that will improve your long-term writing abilities in Spanish. 

University Code of Academic Integrity

Remember that in accordance with the Academic Integrity Code, tutors are not permitted to do your homework or (re)write your papers. 

BASIC STRATEGIES FOR WRITING COMPOSITIONS AND ESSAYS

• Plan what you are going to write.  Think (brainstorm) in advance how to write the essay and write an outline.  Revisit the outline as you write your essay and make any changes to the outline.  Organization is essential! 
• If you are a visual learner, concept maps may be useful  for organizing the themes, topics, and and ideas in an essay!  Click here for examples of concept maps and other visual techniques for organizing an essay!
• Edit grammar and mechanics AFTER your ideas are written (typed).  Postpone editing for grammar and mechanics until an appropriate moment because it often distracts you from getting your ideas down.  Don’t stop the flow of ideas and expression!  Save editing for later (**See "Proofreading your Compositions and Essays" below!).
• Go back over what you have written to determine what to write next!

NOTE:   **Your instructor may, of course, provide you with additional writing strategies and tips! **

 PROOFREADING YOUR COMPOSITIONS AND ESSAYS

Please follow the instructions below as you review the parts of your composition before visiting the Spanish Tutoring Center.

Do not be discouraged if you have more difficulty working with the topics mentioned in Section B than those in Section A.  This is to be expected!!  With practice your writing will improve!  Our Spanish Tutoring Center will help you primarily to reformulate your composition or essay for the circumstances described in Section B below.  While this process may seem long and arduous at times, it should help you to become a better writer.  The process and steps described below are intended to help you prepare compositions (essays) that have either been corrected by your instructor or which have not yet been corrected.

Before turning in your first draft or coming to the Spanish Tutoring Center you should always ask yourself if you’ve checked meanings of words and phrases, and you should always check adjective-noun agreement as well as subject-verb agreement.

A.     Reviewing Individual Words

1)      Have I spelled (typed) all words correctly and placed accent marks correctly?

2)      Is agreement for grammatical gender and number correct?

For example, perhaps this is an adjective in the masculine form even though it’s modifying a noun that is feminine.  Another possibility is that you’ve forgotten or added a plural marker that either should or shouldn’t be there.  Remember that agreement between nouns and adjectives deals with grammatical gender and number.

3)      Is this the correct ending for the verb form that you should be using? Perhaps you’ve added an ‘s’ or forgotten an ‘s’ or some other letter that actually changes?

4)      What does this word mean, and how is it supposed to be used (based on a text you've read, your textbook, or examples in a good dictionary)?

If the meaning is wrong, this is the wrong choice, and you need to find which word would be used in this particular context.  Perhaps you've used a word that looks like something in English yet it doesn't mean the same thing in another language. Such words are false cognates or false friends / “falsos amigos” (as they are sometimes called).  In other cases, it might just be that you thought a particular word meant one thing, but it actually means another.  Remember that prepositions are very tricky in any language.  They often do not translate directly.  A number of excellent bilingual and monolingual dictionaries are available in the Reference Area (1^st floor) of Falvey Memorial Library under call numbers PC 4625 and PC 4640 which illustrate the use of words in context.  See also Marcial Prado (2001), Diccionario de falsos amigos PC4593 P6 2001 in the Reference Area of the library.  See also Falvey Library - Modern Languages and Literatures Resources 

5)      Is the verb used correctly?

Check first to see if you have the correct mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, etc.) and the correct tense (present, past, etc.).  If the mood and tense are correct, did you use the correct form of the verb (e.g., Did you mix a first-person subject with a second-person verb)? Or is it some other combination of a mismatched grouping of the subject and verb?

6)      Do I have all of the necessary words?

Check to see if this word is actually supposed to be part of the structure.  This is often the case with prepositions, but it can occur with other parts of speech. For example, in the English sentence "I like tea" there is no article (a, an, the) before the noun tea.  However, in Spanish the masculine, singular article “el” is needed because that is how this type of structure is used (Me gusta el té. [literally: I like the tea]). Of course the opposite can be true: sometimes there is an extra word in English that would not be used in the same structure in Spanish.

B.     Reviewing a Group of Words, Sentences, and Paragraphs 

1)      How do I link one idea to another?  Does it flow?

Consider the ways in which you link ideas within and across sentences and paragraphs.  Such ties or connectors consist of conjunctions and other grammatical forms combining ideas together (“y”), contrasting ideas (“pero”, “por otra parte”), or showing how one idea “causes” the other (“por lo tanto”, etc.).

2)      Are the sentences too long?

Do your sentences have too much information that could be divided into smaller sentences?

3)      Is this the correct phrase or group of words?

Check the meaning of the phrase to see if it has the right elements/components, then check the meaning.  There are certain fixed expressions or phrases composed of two or more words, and these expressions often have a meaning that would be different if you were to use one or more of these words separately, in a different context.  In other words, the entire meaning could change.

4)      Is the order of the words correct?

Remember that some languages express the same or similar concepts with different word order.  Even if it is not a problem with entirely different word order or structure, you need to check the order of the words because in many languages the order helps establish the relationships between the subject, the verb, and the objects of the verb and any additional prepositional phrases that add information about the verb/verb phrase.