Peer Tutoring? What is it all about?

After reading They Say/I say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing I found many of the occurrences stated tend to be ones that I have come across in my academic career. In other words, many of the problems mentioned that students come across; I have once before as well. Graff and Birkenstein offer any helpful ideas and answers to students that need the aide, but how can these devices be used in a setting other then the classroom? Some may say that in a classroom is the only place that these tactics can work, however I do not think that is the case. While in a tutoring environment, the strategies provided in the book can be helpful to refer to for the fact that they are straightforward and provide examples of why they are important. The moves provided can be talked about or written. The tutee and tutor can converse about the different strategies while discussing a certain assignment that was given. Together, they can come up with the move that corresponds with their particular stance. The book can be used as an aide for the tutor to help the tutee and for the tutee to look at while creating their papers. While the templates provided create a starting stone for the tutee, they do not always have to be used.
Many times the templates are not even needed because the student already knows what is asked of them and how they want to answer it. The tutee may not need the template because they have already designed their paper and just have certain modifications they need to make that do not require a template. Tutoring is a conversation just like writing is, so at times the creativity is there in dialog but needs to come out into text. A tutoring session may require the tutor and the tutee to simply talk about the issue at hand for the tutee to gain ideas on how to word what they are thinking. Many ideas for their paper may come from talking about it and that will offer them other opinions the have that they may want to add into their paper. It is hard to distinguish what specific moves matter most in a tutoring conference because it depends on what the conference is about. It depends on what the students needs are, after those are found out the tutor can help get those needs met. The general ones that I would say is having a thesis, choosing a side and counter arguing the opposition and then working from there.