GUIDE TO TUTORIALS

I’m a bit nervous! I haven’t done this before.

That’s quite common. Try to relax. The tutorials aren’t an exam. They’re there to help you, they’re not there to attack you. There will be criticism, but the point of it is to help you improve. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

First, remember that what happens in tutorials doesn’t matter too much for your grade. If you’re an Oxford student, it doesn’t matter for your grade at all. Everything will be decided in finals. The tutorials are there to prepare you for those exams (and, of course, to teach you philosophy!).

[Are those finals papers scary? Yes! Personally, I didn’t have to take a written philosophy exam as an undergraduate, and I consider myself damn lucky for that. The exams at Oxford are really tough. I guess that’s the price you pay for studying at a top-flight university. It’s hard, but I think it’s probably worth it.]

If you’re a visiting student, performance in tutorials might form a part of your participation grade. But this usually won’t be such a huge component of your mark. And what I’m looking for isn’t for you to be right all the time. I’m looking for you to think for and express yourself in your tutorials. Having a good understanding of what’s going on will help, of course. But what I mostly want is for you to try.

Second, keep in mind that we’re on the same team. I assume you want to write a great exam response or assessed essay and get a first. I want you to write a great exam response or assessed essay and get a first as well. We’ll be talking about various philosophical issues, and the point of this is to try and get a better understanding of what’s going on.

I felt foolish in a tutorial.

First of all, if you feel up to it, tell me how you feel. This isn’t supposed to happen. If it does happen, it’s my fault, not your fault. If you’re not comfortable telling me about it, consider informing your organising tutor or another person with pastoral responsibility for you. They can get in touch with me and then we can make changes.

Second, I don’t think you’re foolish. Philosophy is hard, and even us academics frequently get things wrong. I haven’t had a single student who was foolish. No, you’re not the exception.

Third, take a step back for a moment. You’ve come across something for the first time maybe a week ago, and you’re talking to someone who probably learned about it ten years ago and has been thinking about it on and off ever since. There’s a load of complicated stuff. Maybe you get something wrong. Maybe you feel like your tutorial partner is doing better than you. It happens. But if you focus on that, you’re missing the bigger picture. At the very least, you’re taking a philosophy tutorial in Oxford. That doesn’t happen by accident. You’ve got a lot to be proud of.

Fourth, keep in mind that I’m making mistakes as well. Everyone does. Even if you don’t notice them, let me assure you: it’s happening. It’s totally normal. The trick is to try and notice and correct them where you can.

What should I do to prepare for a tutorial?

Mostly, what you need to do is to do the readings and write the tutorial essay, on which see the “tutorial essay” section of this guide. The rest should come along with that. We’ll be talking about your essay, so if you’ve done it then we’ll be able to go from there.

Very occasionally, you might have a tutorial without an assigned tutorial essay. I should have told you what I expect from you in that case. It might be, for example, to come along with some notes on what you think about the week’s topic.

If I’m teaching you logic, you might have exercises rather than a tutorial essay. Normally we’ll go through the bits that you got wrong. The point of this isn’t to get at you. It’s to help you understand how to do those things correctly.

If you’re ever unsure what you should be doing to prepare for your tutorial, send me an email. (For the budding logicians: I mean an email asking what you need to do to prepare for your tutorial.)

When is my tutorial essay due?

I usually ask for essays to be submitted to me by email 24 hours in advance of the tutorial. I should have told you this explicitly (apologies if I somehow forgot to do this!). If you’re unsure about your deadlines for any reason, ask me by email.

You asked me a question, but I didn’t know what to say! So I said nothing, and it felt awkward.

Sometimes, I might leave you in silence for a little while. This is because we’re doing hard stuff, and it often takes time to think it through. You might also notice this happening with me. We might be talking about something, and I say I need a moment to consider what to say. It can feel uncomfortable to have a period of silence, but sometimes it’s needed.

After a little while, I might interject and move us along. The reason I do this isn’t because I’m bored, or because I’m unhappy that you’re taking too long to think about your response. It’s just that we have a limited amount of time, so sometimes we need to move along.

Your comments seem really critical!

This is partly a function of the way I’m trained. In my professional, non-teaching life, I generally have to comment in two sorts of cases. The first case is where a colleague is preparing a paper for publication, and they want to know what I think of it. It’s somewhat useful, then, to hear what’s good. But it’s often more useful to hear about the places where someone might push back. (“I lost track of things at this point.” “I’m not sure this argument really works.” “I’m worried you made a mistake, and that this doesn’t really follow”. And so on.)

The second case is where I’m reviewing a paper for an academic journal. And here, again, part of my job is to provide an overall assessment to the editor (“This is a very promising paper overall.” “I thought this paper was excellent.” “The paper felt like a bit of a mess to me.” “There could be something to this paper, but it needs a lot more work.” And so on.)

The other part of my job is to provide comments to the author. It’s very often the case that I’ll give a barrage of criticisms to the author, and I’ll say “this paper is really good” to the editor. My job, in this kind of case, is to give feedback that will help the author improve the paper. Usually, that means identifying weaknesses so that they can be tightened up. It can sometimes be useful to tell the author what’s good, but this is only really practically relevant in the case where the author might otherwise have mistakenly cut that part. (So, this is something that becomes more important to say if my overall comments are along the lines of “I think that a lot needs to change in this paper.”)

Long story short, I’m used to spending more time identifying what’s wrong than identifying what’s right. For teaching purposes, I do try to steer a bit away from this way of doing it, because positive comments are generally more helpful for students than professional philosophers. (Professional philosophers usually know what’s good about their papers, but you are less likely to already know what’s good about yours.)

Still, you will probably find that my comments are more slanted towards comments like “I didn’t understand this” or “I’m not sure this argument goes through” than “I liked this argument” or “interesting point!” This is normal, and it doesn’t mean that your essays are bad. If I’m asked to review a paper that is much better than anything I could personally write, I’ll still send back two pages of objections (while saying “publish this!” to the editor). Keep that in mind.

How can I get the most out of a tutorial?

See “what should I do to prepare for a tutorial?”. During the tutorial itself, I recommend just saying what comes to mind, without worrying too much about whether it’s exactly right. What I’m looking for in my students is for you to be thinking seriously about the course material and engaging with it. It matters much less whether what you’re saying turns out to be correct on further examination. That matters in your essays, but not so much in tutorials. We’re just having a friendly conversation about the issues. It’s not an exam, so just relax and use it as an opportunity to think about the topic.

If it’s hard to think of what to say because you’re confused about the topic, I would recommend you ask me directly for clarification, even if you think I think you should know it already. I won’t judge you for this, unless perhaps I think you haven’t even attempted the readings. (You really do need to do the readings.) This has never happened so far.

You keep asking me what I think rather than explaining things to me!

The tutorial system in Oxford is a bit different to tuition in some other places. There’s less of an emphasis on having instructors explain what’s going on to you, and more of an emphasis on you explaining what you think to the instructors. The idea of all this, in theory, is that you will learn better if you do it yourself. The role of the tutor is to gently guide you onto the right track to facilitate this. At least, that’s how I see it.

If you feel that you would benefit from having more explanations from me, you should ask me more clarificatory questions during the tutorial (on which see the previous question). But I will only let this go so far. Most of the time, the overall focus is going to be on you: your essay and your thoughts. I understand that’s tough. I think it’s much easier if you can manage to relax. Remember: it’s not an exam.