Bedford Guide ch. 7-8... kinda

While I was reading the chapters for tomorrow, I realized something about myself; I can't read lists. I seriously tried to get through ch 7 (the checklists) about 700 times, but it simply couldn't be done. Ok I mean I read it...but it's pretty much gone now. I did manage to find myself thinking at least a little about tutoring when I was staring blankly at the pages. My first thought was that the checklists seemed like something that would be helpful in a tutoring session where the student doesn't have the assignment/rubric (and probably forgets the teacher, class, and possibly his/her own first name). However, I noticed that the checklists sorta reflected generalized theories for different kinds of papers (I think that sounds a lot fancier than what I'm trying to say). For example, the Science papers seemed Current Traditional, the English papers went a little more in depth in terms of assessing meaning, and the Business items were pretty cut and dry (like business I guess). It just seemed stereotypical to me if that makes any sense at all.

Chapter 8 on the other hand was a little more readable (although sadly not much... sorry Jackie). I liked that the book attempted to address non ideal situations, but it did so in an ideal way... A for effort I guess. At any rate, there was one type of writer that I have gotten before (only a few times though) that BG didn't talk about at all. The Overly Confident Writer. I know we've been talking in class about helping students that have a fear of writing poorly understand that most of the time they are capable of writing well. Every now and then (aka last week), I've had a student who feels his/her paper was really well done and perfect, and I'm pretty sure he/she is expecting me to say the same thing. I know that I can't let him/her walk out with a paper that needs a lot of work, but how do you break the news (aside from being "polite, patient, and supportive" as BG pounded into our heads)? It's not like the papers are unreadable, but when a student comes in on top of the world, how do you bring him/her down without bringing them down?