“Sometimes ESL students cannot explain about the problems in their writing.” (ESL student)

The idea of peer tutoring is often at odds with students’ assumptions about education. Muriel Harris states that ESL students tend to see teachers as the “experts and authorities.” Tutors are there to help with specific prob-lems that a teacher might point out in a student’s work. They are secondary to the teacher, but should be able to help students “fix mistakes” and “solve problems” (Harris 223). In terms of in-tercultural communication, “power dis-tance” describes the degree of influ-ence or power between two persons, and applied to education, the measure of distance between the teacher and the student. “In countries with a large power distance, teachers are viewed as the holders of truth, wisdom, and knowledge, and they pass this knowl-edge on to their students. Thus, ESL students from countries with a large power distance are perhaps less likely to value their peers’ views than are stu-dents from countries with a lower power distance (e.g. students from the United States)” (Nelson and Carson 129).

Consider the response of this student when asked if working with her tutor at the writing center had been helpful or not. “Being able to take advantage of a writing center is a privilege. But it didn’t help me much in improving my English. I think that’s because neither my tutor or me know more about my strength and my weaknesses than my professor.”

Even though this comment may seem like a negative reflection on the tutor’s ability, responses to questions about their individual tutors were overwhelmingly positive: “She was always eager to help”; “Very enthusiastic to be a tutor”; “Very professional and under-standing”; “Nice”; “Positive and friendly.” Apparently, negative reac-tions to tutorial sessions lie less in the ESL students’ perceptions of their indi-vidual tutors, but more in the roles that the tutors play as participants in col-laborative learning.

Tutors are well indoctrinated in the methodology of the writing center. They know that “good tutors” ask questions about writers’ work, their goals and processes. They are attentive to cultural differences at the interper-sonal level, and they try hard not to be too directive with their clients. Tutor training at Wright State University, and surely many others, reflects the valuable insights of a well-informed body of research about how to deal with ESL writers. Articles such as Muriel Harris and Tony Silva’s on tu-toring ESL writers include advice on how to prioritize grammatical errors, understand the implications of contras-tive rhetoric, and accommodate diverse cultural viewpoints (Harris and Silva 525-537). But in spite of their efforts, tutors may not realize that their essen-tial role at the writing center situates them in the context of cultural trans-mitters, and culture is embodied in teaching methodologies themselves (Duff and Uchida 469). Regardless of what they say or do, or how sensitive they are to their clients, tutors working within the constructs of English com-position theory are representatives of the dominant culture. They may not be aware of the “cultural and political un-derpinnings of their practices, materi-als, discourse, or teaching contexts” (477). ESL students who are not yet acclimated to the educational environ-ment of the United States may not nec-essarily feel conflict with their tutors, but with the methodology itself. Such a conflict could very well be what prompts international students to make comments such as “I hate when my tu-tor ask me: ‘Ok, what do you want to work on today’ because I don’t really know”; or “Overall, (my tutor) is good on terms of general talking . . . but I feel that (the writing center) waste my time.”

For international students, spending fifty minutes talking about a paper might just seem like a waste of time, especially if they are there to correct their mistakes. In the modern composi-tion classroom, non-judgmental ap-proaches to writing seem to be advan-tageous to developing writers. But native writers are likely to have been exposed to peer collaboration by the time they enter the university. Accord-ing to Tony Silva, it can be a disadvan-tage to blindly impose mainstream educational practices on ESL writers just because they are successful with native English speaking writers. (Silva 360).

“Getting a solid thesis and support can be like pulling teeth sometimes.” (tutor comment)

The above comment illustrates not only the conflicts brought about by collaborative learning, but also how cultural dominance is embedded in the expectations and conventions of writ-ing assignments (Duff and Uchida 469). Obviously, issues of contrastive rhetoric influence ESL tutorials. In a 1990 study of ESL writers in the writ-ing center at St. Cloud State Univer-sity, Robinson et al. state that “[o]ne of the most difficult problems that ESL students face at American universities is writing papers in the American aca-demic expository style” (77). They suggest that “patience and empathy are the tutor’s best ally, as the ESL writer copes with this academic culture shock” (84).

Generally, acceptable academic discourse in the American university is defined by the concept of argument, support, and a clearly stated thesis. Considering that international students come from a broad range of cultures, and within those cultures rhetorical conventions may not be the same as expected in the United States, it is no wonder that ESL students may appear to be “not getting it” when asked to point out a thesis statement. While they may be excellent academic writers in their native languages, they may not be certain what defines a thesis, or what constitutes an acceptable argument in American academic discourse. Judith Powers corroborates:

“Because collaborative techniques

depend so heavily on shared basic

assumptions or patterns, confer

ences that attempt merely to take

the techniques we use with native-

speaking writers and apply them to

ESL writers may fail to assist the

writers we intend to help.” (41)

Moreover, while indeed patience and empathy are well intended solu-tions to the perceived problems of con-trastive rhetoric, it may be even more advantageous to learn about interna-tional students’ background and try to understand the seemingly odd conven-tions of their writing. Finding out why a student organizes her paper in a cer-tain way may provide clues about how to introduce the conventions of Ameri-can discourse.

But even more importantly, rather than looking at ESL writing as an en-tity which must be transformed, it may be more enriching to the academic community to recognize its diversity as a way of learning more about our own rhetoric (Powers 46). Tutors recognize the advantage of working with writers from diverse language backgrounds. Their reflections on ESL tutorials ex-emplify the two-way street of collabo-rative learning:

• “Working with ESL students challenges me to think in a different, more analytical way about language.”

• “I get a lot from the cultural exchange—it’s not just a benefit or learning situation for the ESL students.”

Scott Geisel, assistant director of the writing center at Wright State, encourages communication as a way to bridge some of the cultural gaps between na-tive speakers and international stu-dents. He encourages ESL students to “ask questions about anything. Don’t limit yourself. Realize that your tutor may view your progress as a long-term process.” And to tutors he urges, “[g]et to know your client, what they want and expect, why they’re there with you. Also let them know what kind of help you’re willing to give. Ask if you don’t understand things. Don’t assume anything.”

So what do ESL students expect from the writing center? In the long run, they want the same thing as native speakers: to become better writers. But they may view their immediate needs as different from what the tutor chooses to work on in a session. Many do want more directive tutorials. Asked to offer advice to their tutors, they stated:

• “I would like to work more on my grammar and usage of right words, as these are my weak sides.”

• “I would like to get more grammar exercises. I mean I want to have a lecture about writing.”

• “In my view point, the tutor has to teach and react according to what ESL students want and need.”

Since ESL students do not possess the intuitive knowledge of English that native speakers have, it may be essen-tial to spend time in tutorials working on the technical aspects of language such as sentence structure and vocabu-lary. International students are often just learning the “building blocks” of writing that native students already possess. I am in no way suggesting that ESL tutorials be reduced to grammar lessons, but when ESL students ask for concrete examples of how to word something, they are asking because they need models. They look to their writing center tutors for examples and for “inside information” about lan-guage. When tutors get frustrated about grammar questions on early drafts, it is important to realize that their clients are simply asking for what they have learned to ask for. Building a tutor-client relationship takes time, and it takes even more time when tutor and client do not share language as a com-mon ground. It is unreasonable to as-sume that ESL students share the same background knowledge and percep-tions about writing as native writers. It is equally unreasonable, however, to assume that when they ask their tutors pointed questions about form and structure, that they are approaching the session in the wrong way or merely asking for a quick fix on a paper. In fact, because of critical language and cultural differences, it is appropriate to be a bit more directive with ESL writ-ers. The tutor in these circumstances is not merely collaborating with the writer, but becomes a “cultural infor-mant” (Powers 45).

“We can get some knowledge which only natives understand.” (ESL student)

Yes! A cultural informant with in-side knowledge of the language and the expectations of the academic com-munity. International students appreci-ate this relationship their tutors. One student wrote:

“She uses the method I call ‘best

of friends’ tutoring cause she

makes you really feel that she is a

real friend helping you out.”

Vivian Zamel is both a compositionist and an ESL specialist. She understands that for international students, learning to write for the American university involves more than just learning the conventions of academic discourse:

“Students entering a new commu

nity must take on its ways of

knowing and its ‘ways with

words.’ The idea of a culture sug

gests the kind of immersion, en

gagement, contextualization, full

ness of experience that is necessary for someone to be initiated into and to be conversant in that culture, for someone to understand the ways in which that culture works.” (1)

As the quarter progressed, the inter-national students became both more fa-miliar with U.S. culture and more adept at their language skills. Progress reports from their tutors reflected in-creased engagement in writing as a process. The complaints I heard at the beginning of the quarter seemed to fade. In some cases they took a com-pletely different direction. One of my students who was disheartened with his writing center sessions at the beginning of the quarter plans to work on his ap-plication letters for graduate school over the December break. When I an-nounced the writing center would be closed during that time, he let out a cry of dismay, “Oh no! Just when I need it most!” In fact, by quarter’s end, many of the students stated that they do in-deed plan to visit the writing center for future courses.

The responsibility of communication doesn’t lie solely with tutor and client. The ESL classroom instructor plays an essential role as well. Tony Silva in his article “On the Ethical Treatment of ESL Writers” outlines essential points for respectfully dealing with ESL writ-ers. He states that “they need to be un-derstood, placed in suitable learning contexts, and provided with appropri-ate instruction” (359). The instructor, as the ESL student’s primary contact with university culture, occupies a piv-otal point in the writing center learning triangle (student-instructor-tutor). Communication must begin in the classroom. If ESL students are ex-pected to conform to certain rhetorical conventions, then those expectations should spelled out clearly. Further-more, a composition course should in-clude an introduction to the writing center. Rather than simply informing students of their weekly appointments to help them with their writing, it would be of great benefit to take time to explain what to expect in a tutorial session. Perhaps a visit to the writing center, or a model tutorial in the class-room, would do a great deal in assuag-ing some of the frustrations caused by conflicting expectations. Inform the students. One hour of class time de-voted to learning about the writing center could save many hours of frus-tration. And in the true spirit of col-laborative learning, Harris and Silva urge ESL instructors to work closely with writing center directors and share the experiences and knowledge gained in both the classroom and one-to-one tutoring sessions (525-537).

So it does take time. It takes empa-thy, and it takes patience. It takes a real willingness from tutors, clients and in-structors to work together through their differences. Even more so, it takes a willingness to appreciate those differ-ences and educate ourselves about their possible consequences. When a com-position teacher and an ESL student walk through the door of the writing center and encounter the high energy, the informality, and the commotion of collaboration, they may have very dif-ferent perceptions. When ESL students complain,“ I do not think the atmo-sphere of the writing center is really nice; it is so crowded all the time and does not make me concentrate,” or “Bad (atmosphere), everybody talking and laughing, another student discuss-ing some different subjects from mine and sitting next to me. So, I can’t con-centrate,” let them know they can sug-gest moving their session to a quieter location.

In a ten week quarter, time is valu-able. Rather than allowing early ESL tutorial sessions to be arenas of cul-tural conflict and exercises in frustra-tion, make them productive by ac-knowledging and accommodating for possible conflicts either in advance or immediately as they arise. Communi-cate. Find common ground. Successful tutorials happen when tutor, client, and instructor are all on the same page.

Catherine Crowley Wright State University Dayton, OH

Works Cited

Duff, Patricia and Yuko Uchida. “The Negotiation of Teachers’ Sociocul-tural Identities and Practices in Postsecondary EFL Classrooms.” TESOL Quarterly 31.3 (1997): 451-77.

Harris, Muriel. “Cultural Conflicts in the Writing Center: Expectations and Assumptions of ESL Stu-dents.” Writing in Multicultural Settings. Ed. Carol Severino, Juan Guerra, and Johnella Butler. New York: Modern Language Associa-

tion, 1997. 220-33.

Harris, Muriel and Tony Silva. “Tutor-ing ESL Students: Issues and Options.” College Composition and Communication 44.4 (1993): 525-37.

Leki, Ilona. Understanding ESL Writers: A Guide for Teachers. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1992.

Nelson, Gayle and Joan Carson. “ESL Students’ Perceptions of Effective-ness in Peer Response Groups.” Journal of Second Language Writing 7.2 (1998): 113-31.

Powers, Judith. “Rethinking Writing Center Conferencing Strategies for the ESL Writer.” The Writing Center Journal 13.2 (1993): 39-47.

Robinson, James et al. “Contrastive Rhetoric and Tutoring ESL Writers.” Ed. Dave Healy. Centers For Collaboration: Diversity for the New Decade: Selected Pro-ceedings of the Annual Conference of the Midwest Writing Centers Association. Minneapolis (1990). ERIC Document 333 426.

Silva, Tony. “On the Ethical Treatment of ESL Writers.” TESOL Quarterly

31.2 (1997): 359-63.

Zamel, Vivian. “Questioning Academic Discourse.” College ESL 3.1 (1993). 13 Mar 1998. <http:// nyu.edu/education/teachlearn/ifte/ zamel2.htm>

Nursing—Kim Weber

Many similarities exist between nursing and working in a writing cen-ter. Just as a nurse’s clients (many nurses prefer the term “client” to the more passive term “patient”) often ar-rive confused, anxious, and uncertain about how to be an active part of the healing process, a writing consultant’s clients are confused, anxious, and un-certain how to revise their paper. Nurses focus on improving the client’s quality of life (rather than just healing the injured or sick body), and writing consultants focus on helping the client become a better writer (rather than just fixing the paper). And just as a nursing care plan is the foundation for the treatment process, a writing consultant can develop a care plan. Using a care plan can ensure that the consulting is client-centered, specific, and realistic.

Parts of the care plan are outlined below:

Assess: Nurses are careful to focus on the client, not on the injury. To do this, they assess the situation and assign a nursing diagnosis that is related to, but not the same as, a doctor’s diagnosis. For example, if the doctor’s diagnosis is “lacerated hand,” the nursing diag-nosis might be “pain.” This strategy can be translated to a writing center context, where the teacher’s diagnosis of “no thesis” could be matched with the writing consultant’s assessment, “writer unsure about where to take a stand.”

When making the assessment, nurses are careful to give both subjective (what the client experiences) and ob-jective (what the nurse observes) rea-sons for the diagnosis. A subjective reason might be “Client experiences pain”; an objective reason might be “Client appears distracted, is frown-ing.” In the same way, a writing con-sultant could look for subjective rea-sons (“Writer feels that neither side is 100% right”) and objective reasons (“Writer makes contradictory state-ments, sighs in frustration”) for the as-sessment.

Plan: A nurse will set attainable goals with the client, making sure those goals are measurable and timed: “Client will state pain is 0 on a 0-5 scale by second day post-op.” These goals are created to serve the client’s best interest, not the nurse’s best interest. In the same way, a consultant can work with the writer to set specific, attainable goals: “Client will choose a side, and will know strategies for addressing counter-arguments in a paper, by the end of the consultation.”

Interventions: Choose actions which effectively help the client achieve goals. These actions should require ac-tive participation from the client, and they should be individualized to ac-commodate the needs of each client. For example, a nursing intervention might be, “Allow client to express feel-ings of pain.” A consulting action might be, “Take notes on ideas expressed by the client, then review the notes with the client.”

Rationale: Give explanations for each intervention. These should be rein-forced with professional sources: “Al-lowing patient to express feelings de-creases anxiety, thereby decreasing pain” (Christensen and Rockrow), or “Taking notes on a writer’s ideas can help her see her own ideas on the pa-per” (Clark).

Evaluation: After the time allotted in the plan has elapsed, evaluate the effec-tiveness of each intervention to see if the goal has been reached. “Gave pain medication as prescribed; patient stated pain as ‘0’,” or “After discussing the list of her ideas, the writer chose a posi-tion to argue and she planned to use her contradicting ideas as counter-argu-ment.”

Find connections in the data. Finding connections should be undertaken both subconsciously (e.g., imagining a pos-sible bridge design) and consciously (e.g., systematically evaluating the data to test the suitability of the imagined de-sign). A writer might imagine a possible thesis and investigate the data collected so far to see how it might support that thesis. A writing consultant might imag-ine a plan for the consultation and ask questions to make sure the plan will fit the writer’s needs.

Apply solution. An engineer develops the skeleton into a complete design for a bridge. Similarly, a writer drafts a pa-per, and a writing consultant proceeds with the consultation.

Revise and correct for error. As the bridge is built, an engineer knows that the plans have to be revised to take into account unforeseen factors and other possible problems in the bridge design. Writers also revise and rework their pa-pers to make sure the end product ac-complishes their original purpose. And writing consultants must be ready to change strategies if their original plan doesn’t meet the writer’s needs.

Of course, engineers would probably explain all of these steps with a flow

Table 1: The Engineering Process

chart! The engineering process can be very useful in understanding the writing process.

I entered the writing center on my first day of the Advanced Writing Seminar to begin my training as a tu-tor, and I thought that I would faint. “There must be a mistake,” I remember thinking, “I can’t possibly be in the same class as these people.”

Don’t get me wrong, I did not dislike any of the other students, but they in-timidated me. One of the girls had written a book and planned on pursu-ing a career writing historical fiction. The girl sitting next to her had stage managed the past three or four drama productions, attended a genetics camp run by Johns Hopkins University dur-ing the summer, and as far as I knew, had never received below an A- on her report card. I automatically assumed that she also had a strong handle on writing. The third girl, one I had known since pre-school but lost touch with as we grew older, struck me as the artsy-very-intelligent-writer-type. The fourth and final student was a boy a year ahead of me, and also very in-volved in drama. I had never met him before, but in my nutty little head I made the connection that if a person acted well, he also wrote well.

I began the Advanced Writing Semi-nar without a single piece of writing for which I felt the slightest bit of pride. I basically got pushed into the class when I had scheduling problems. My guidance counselor convinced me I would do fine in this course since I took honors English, but seeing my classmates, I thought, what does he know? I had never taken a writing course before, and I thought for sure that my skills as a writer were far be-low those of my classmates’. This course was designed to improve my writing skills and at the same time train me as a tutor to help others improve their writing, but I still had a lot of inhibitions.

Part of the tutor training entailed let-ting my classmates read my work and give me oral and written feedback, but I did not understand how they would do that. I mean, they’d be laughing so hard at my attempts to write that I’d be impressed if they could even hold a pen, let alone write with one. As for verbally giving me advice, forget it. Between suppressing their giggles and trying to keep a straight face, articulat-ing any type of word would be impos-sible. My writing was so bad . . . what had I gotten myself into?

This class was going to be tough. And I was right. It was tough, but I did it, and best of all, no one laughed at me! Instead they actually found aspects of my paper that they liked. I couldn’t believe it. The aspiring historical fic-tion novelist said my examples did a good job demonstrating my points, and my pre-school buddy commented on my word choice. The older drama boy liked my topic, and the genetics girl liked my voice . . . I didn’t even know I had a voice!

Of course they also offered me their constructive criticism, which I appreci-ated just as much as their praise. Con-sidering the suggestions of my class-mates and taking a closer look at my writing, I slowly but surely started to advance as a writer. I began to see the importance of writing techniques, such as avoiding “to be” verbs, a tip that I had heard about in English class but with which I had little hands-on expe-rience. I discovered the magic way topic sentences could improve organi-zation and the amazing way thesis statements could create a focus. Most importantly, in the midst of it all I learned that there was hope for me as a writer after all.

After I gained more confidence in my writing skills, I began to feel more comfortable tutoring and offering my classmates advice. At first, since I had already decided at the beginning of the course that all of my classmates were phenomenal writers, I regarded their papers as perfect even before I began reading them. I did not believe that little old me could ever help them im-prove their writing. I had to try so hard to look at the papers with an objective point of view without any precon-ceived notions. As I started to view my writing abilities in a more positive light, I began to ask myself questions while editing like “Would I add an ex-ample here if I were she?” or “Do I feel like this conclusion has wrapped everything up?” Then based on my opinions, which I now believed had some substance behind them, I could finally give some solid feedback to those whose opinions I valued so much.

When I walked into the writing center on that first day, I made the assumption that since these students had such strong writing skills I would never be able to keep up with them in a tutoring situation. I now know that to help others improve their writing, knowing what makes a good paper is just as important as being able to write a good paper. Even though I did not have as much writing experience as my classmates, I still could recognize the strengths and weaknesses of their work. By the end of my experience, I came to the realization that even the best writers need tutors. Who would have guessed?

Rasika Welankiwar Medfield High School Medfield, MA

Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as a process of inquiry.— Paulo Freire

Once there was a man, begins the Sufi teaching story, who traveled from town to town. One day while traveling he came upon a peaceful village and as he got nearer he could hear people yelling and running. Soon a crowd of villagers passed him on the road. They were shouting, warning him to turn around if he knew what was good for him, because there was a monster out in the field. The man said that he had never heard of such stupidity and went to the field to see for himself. When he got there, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He pointed at the villagers and began to laugh. “That is no monster, you fools,” the man roared, “that is a water-melon.” Then with one quick move-ment he broke the melon over his knee, dug into it with his hands, and put a big piece into his mouth. He was grin-ning ear to ear when the villagers pounced on him with their hands, their shovels, and their rakes because they were more afraid of a man who could kill and eat the monster than they were afraid of the monster itself.

The next year a different man who traveled from town to town came upon the same peaceful village. He too found himself in the midst of a terrified mob running from the fields, but when he saw that it was only a watermelon he instead waved his arms in the air and ran away yelling louder than any-one had ever yelled before. Later, the man returned to the village with the villagers and began to live with them. The man got to know them all by their

writing center

names. He helped the shepherd tend his flock. He helped the blacksmith tend his fire. He helped the baker shape his bread, and he helped the clergy with the wounded. He helped the farmers with their fields, and he helped the merchants with their stock rooms.

One day while working in the shop of the blacksmith, the man heard a commotion. He knew right away that the monster was once again in the field. So the man went out into the street and joined the running villagers, but this time, as they neared the edge of the village, he stopped them. He talked to them and led them out into the field. Once they were all there, he walked up to the watermelon and poked it. He rolled it from side to side and thumped it with his fingers. And he sniffed it. Then he took his knife out and cut it open. All the villagers watched as the man put a piece of the melon in his mouth. The villagers all came closer to the man, and he cut off a piece of watermelon for each of them. They all ate, smiling, and shaking their heads happily.

This is a story of a wise man and a fool, among other things of course. And I tell it here first, before telling anything else, as a sort of nervous ex-planation for the things I want to ex-plore with you as your tutor. I am afraid that I may appear to be a little too much like the first man in the story, the fool who strides into town all full of himself and boastfully points out what appears to him to be the obvi-ous—and then of course meets a ter-rible fate at the hands of the villagers. I am not going to say that I am anything but a fool, but I would much rather like to deceive myself into believing that I am more like the wise man in the story, the second man who is wise not be-cause of his knowledge, but because of his kindness, and because of his will-ingness to discover right along with the others the limitations of his fears and the possibilities of his hopes. The sec-ond man, the wise man, knows that truth comes of itself in due time, and that it is made up of friendship and compassion.

Since as a tutor I can not get to know you as the second man in the Sufi story gets to know the inhabitants of the vil-lage, by living with and working with them everyday, I can only hope to be trusted when I say that the monsters in the fields of our lives are most often not monsters at all. They exist only as long as we see them as monsters. When we educate ourselves, learn by experience, and change our percep-tions, the monsters become only the sweet fruit in the fields of our future.

In the short time we will have to-gether I will try to tell you who I am. I will work with you to make a friend-ship we can rely on, based on trust and the work that we do together. We will approach what we need to learn as the traveling wise man approached the vil-lagers, with compassion toward their possibilities and not arrogance in the face of their limitations. But most im-portantly we must approach ourselves like the wise man approached the wa-termelon, as a fruit ripe and bursting possibilities, if only we can learn to touch upon it with wisdom instead of fear.

S.R. Meins

Adirondack Community College Queensbury, NY

The Writing Center was imple-mented at Marist College in 1994, and presently has between 800-1000 ses-sions per academic year. Since we do not have a large graduate program, our tutors are drawn from full and part-time faculty. While, theoretically, any professor from any discipline can be a tutor, what has generally been the case is that we have a preponderance of hu-manities-trained professors, and in par-ticular, English professors. We started offering tutor internships for fourth-year English majors in 1997.

Our first interns were very success-ful, and added an interesting dimension to our staff. They also presented a problem regarding training in that we needed to work them into our existing shadow/mentoring system. Like Liz Buckley and Barbara Jensen, both strong advocates of using mentors in tutor training, I feel that mentoring is very important and wanted to keep the mentoring component of our training. We, however, needed to decide if we wanted to implement special training over and above the existing shadow/ mentoring system that we used for the faculty tutors, which entailed new tu-tors “shadowing” experienced tutors. The consensus was that we simply in-clude the interns in the training pro-gram, and treat them as colleagues. As one of our first interns wrote in his journal, “The meetings were like Cheers for English professors, ‘Where everyone knows your name.’”

The shadow/mentoring aspect of tutor training for student tutors was essentially the same as for our faculty tutors. As part of their training, new student interns were assigned to a shift with experienced tutors to observe for a week or two, then encouraged to “jump in” when they felt ready to tutor. Student tutors were assigned to participate in the weekly meetings, and were required to keep a journal with a minimum of one entry per week to hand in for their final grade. All internships are taken on a Pass/Fail basis.

Student interns brought a very differ-ent set of expectations to the training sessions. While my original concern with assessment was the effectiveness of the shadow/mentoring system in training student tutors and new faculty tutors together, I found that the two groups brought completely different outlooks to the training. While the usual questions regarding facilitative tutoring that came from new faculty tu-tors dealt with the distinctions between tutoring and teaching, the concerns and expectations of the student interns were quite different. For the most part, they were concerned with being ac-cepted into the cultural community of the Writing Center, where they were outnumbered four to one. Where a fac-ulty colleague had no problem explain-ing why he/she handled a tutorial ses-sion in a certain way, the student interns were very sensitive to criticism, and concerned with “getting it right.” I decided to analyze this difference by recording conversations from our weekly meetings, and comparing the journal entries of new faculty tutors and student interns. The semester this analysis was done found us with only one student tutor, a graduating senior, and two new faculty tutors. Our other tutor had been wait-listed for a pro-gram in England, and found out she could go at the last minute. The differ-ences in expectations and outcomes came to light in the training session conversations.

Our training sessions usually start with a student text brought to the meeting by one of the faculty tutors. We all read the text, and then begin a general discussion. Questions that arise are the usual: How would you begin a tutoring session with this text? What would be your focus? How would you facilitate? How much teaching, if any at all, should you do? How strongly should you adhere to the strict facilitative model? In one particular session we looked at a paper that was written for a Classics in Western Literature course. Both new and experienced faculty tu-tors immediately focused on problems of ambiguity and structure in the essay, and where to draw the line between teaching and tutoring. I’ve selected some of their comments below to illus-trate the main concerns with the paper held by the faculty tutors:

• We need to focus on the very first sentence; there is an ambiguity in the word “Race.”

• Help the student find a word he/ she really means.

• I like the ambiguity in the first sentence.

• We need to help the student reaffirm the message regarding the human race and talk about clarity.

• This is a case of too many metaphors; this makes the paper incomplete.

• The student needs to be shown that he/she hasn’t done much.

• There is an outline of an answer here. The paper needs to be completely restructured.

• How do we do that? We are tutoring, not teaching.

• What is wrong with this paper exactly? Do we talk about spelling and grammar?

• No. We need to get the student to back up any statements.

Notice that the comments by the faculty tutors focused mostly on the prob-lems of ambiguity, paper structure, and backing up an answer with clear state-ments. In other words, they were very “teacherly” concerns, and as teachers they were alert to the question as to how much teaching they should do in a case where a paper is generally lacking any real focus. Indeed, the paper as it stood was a failure, and the student had been given a chance to rewrite. On the other hand, our intern tutor made com-ments regarding the paper that showed a different perspective even though he had essentially the same training as the new faculty tutors. Below are selected comments made by the student intern.

(I)

Maybe we should ask to see the question? I am very concerned with the awkwardness of the writing. Not only does the metaphor fall flat; it is not clear. In fact, it seems to be just taking up space.

(I)

I’m not even sure what course this paper is for. I think the student just got an idea and started writing —needs to organize an answer to the question.

(I)

Do we give remedial help here?

The student tutor was more directly concerned with how well the student addressed the question that had been asked, or what the question specifically was, realizing that the failed metaphor may have come from the assignment, something none of the faculty tutors thought of. He also demonstrated a stu-dent-centered concern by pointing out that the writer of the text in question may require more help to get “up to speed.” He approached the tutoring problem from the perspective of one who is being graded, and as such, had more specific concerns with helping the writer improve the grade. Later in the conversation he even mentioned the fact the “institution is here with us,” reminding the faculty tutors that there are requirements for papers that are outside the purview of the Writing Center. The student tutor approached the writing as one who is concerned with getting grades, where the faculty tutors belonged to a community who was in the business of giving grades.

Another conversation took place re-garding a tutor exercise I wrote after giving an assignment to a College Writing I class. The assignment was to compare an excerpt from John Henry Newman with an essay by Adrienne Rich. I tried to incorporate every prob-lem I found in the papers that were handed in. Again, there was a differ-ence in the concerns of the student tu-tor and the faculty tutors. For instance, the faculty tutors focused on the gen-eral flow of ideas, or lack thereof, in the sample paper. Then they focused on the ambiguity of the assignment, claiming it was a bad assignment. Their conversation then turned toward the difference between tutoring and teaching. The student tutor was more concerned with the failed mechanics of the paper, and in helping the student resist the poor assignment. The conver-sation of the faculty tutors went as fol-lows:

• I think this “student” is struggling. The conclusion is the classic non-conclusion.

• This seems artificial, since you wrote it, but there are some important problems here. I can guess that this student does not know what a response paper is.

• No. He certainly does. He responded.

• You think the question is too vague?

• Yes. Definitely, especially for freshmen.

• No, the question is fine. Look, we see papers like this every day. What I would do is ask the student some questions. Why did he think that Adrienne Rich wants us to change education? What is it that Newman means by a “liberal” education?

• Ask him about those differences.

• I still think the question is too broad. You’re asking for trouble with an assignment like that.

The faculty tutors dominated this

part of the conversation. Our student tutor made only one or two remarks about paper organization. The surprise came when the conversation shifted to a discussion of what made a good as-signment. Both the new and experi-enced faculty tutors struggled with what a good assignment should look like, but then one of the new faculty tu-tors asked what we should do with a bad assignment. Our student intern gave an interesting answer to the prob-lem, and the conversation went some-thing like this. The contributions made by the intern is designated by (I):

• What do you do with a dumb writing assignment?

• Depends on the student.

• She’s bright and struggling with it, and is resisting no end.

• (I) Help her resist.

• And fail?

• (I) I’ve resisted bad assignments before, and my professors didn’t mind.

• Really? At Marist?

• (I) You can resist a bad assignment if you do it right.

The faculty tutors were amazed that this resistance was at all possible. Our student intern claimed that he and some friends had not only resisted bad assignments, but also had professors change the assignment, and in some cases change the grade. Our student in-tern kept bringing up something our sometimes overly theoretical discus-sions kept forgetting–students are in the business of getting grades. The more precocious will call a professor to task for a poorly developed assign-ment if only to get a better grade.

This open-ended conversation, where the student tutor, new tutors, and expe-rienced tutors all have equal input tends to level the field; we learn from each other. We all try not to sound like “super tutor,” and it is my job to keep egos in check (including my own). This general discussion, group-mentoring session sets up the second element of tutor training, one-on-one mentoring. Our student intern and the new faculty interns were allowed to shadow an experienced tutor, and then handle a tutorial session on their own. It became evident again that the two groups of tutors had two very different needs and reactions to the one-on-one mentoring. Below, I have excerpted some thoughts from the journals of two new faculty tutors. They were mainly concerned with the differences be-tween tutoring and teaching as demon-strated by these excerpts: (I have des-ignated the faculty tutors as F1 and F2).

F1: I have discovered that tutoring requires a different mind set than teaching. In the Writing Center I only have time for first aid, no major surgery. I find the most glaring problems and address them. I am coaching.

F1: One spin-off of this process has been a feeling of comrade-ship with other faculty members. Students come in with assign-ments that remind me of mine. We are all trying to get students to engage the ordered creativity that is writing.

F2: I have to say that tutoring is more demanding and less rewarding than teaching. When I teach I am in full control of the situation, and know what to expect from the students. When tutoring I may have only a hazy idea of the subject matter.

F2: I do not have time to build a rapport with students. I usually only see them once.

The faculty tutors were involved with the similarities and differences between tutoring and teaching. One in particular found tutoring to be less re-warding than teaching, and decided not to work for us after one semester. The comment “I do not have time to build a rapport with students” shows that this tutor had a problem defining the rela-tionship to the student. This faculty member is noted for being popular with students, and I found it curious that there was such resistance to the role of tutor. The other faculty tutor, while expressing a certain frustration with the limits of what could be done in a tutoring session, found the experi-ence rewarding and engaging, and gave a feeling of “comradeship.”

The following excerpts come from

the student intern’s journal. They show

a completely different focus on the

mentoring and tutoring experience. (I): I had my first “client “ today; I admit that I was very nervous. I was afraid that I wouldn’t catch all of his mistakes. Dr. A. told me that if I did make a mistake, it would not be the first or the last. I really like working in academia. (I): Yesterday I tutored two students, and Professor M. got to observe me. We discussed icebreakers to ease a student’s nervousness. One of the students today had read everything she needed to read, but didn’t know where to begin. We brain-stormed and outlined her essay. She felt more relaxed with the assignment. (I): I had the biggest challenge yet today, an adult student that took one hour and forty-five minutes to help. (Author’s note: our typical session is 30 minutes.) He had extremely awkward sentences. I fixed a couple and set them as examples; he worked on the rest. I ended up giving him a handout on comma usage. (I): I was directly asked for input at today’s meeting. I gave my opinion, and the others respected it. The results of my input were dwarfed by the fact that my input is needed, as well as respected and appreciated by my academic superiors.

Conclusions While these excerpts are necessarily

condensed, I think they present some

very basic differences between the

concerns and conditions of a student

intern and the concerns and conditions

of a new faculty tutor. The intern was,

as are most students, concerned with failing, and with not doing well in the eyes of the other tutors. Much of the intern’s journal writing was concerned with being accepted as a peer. The fac-ulty interns tended to be concerned with the difference between tutoring and teaching. In other words—which hat should they wear in a tutoring ses-sion? In some cases the peer tutor’s lack of teaching experience actually helped get him to the nuts and bolts of tutoring. “I helped him with his sen-tences, and gave him a handout on comma usage.” The faculty tutors were more concerned with defining their re-lationship to the tutee, and felt con-strained by the practical and institu-tional limits of the tutoring session. “I have time only for a band-aid.” “I do not have time to build a rapport with students.”

The shadow/mentoring system, coupled with weekly group mentoring sessions seems to be the best for a small Writing Center. New student and faculty tutors both successfully tutor in a short time. This method has the strength of individual attention, and tu-tors do not get “lost” in the system. Two random exit surveys have shown that students using the Writing Center respond well to new tutors, and have a high degree of satisfaction with their tutorial session regardless of whether the tutor was a faculty member or a student. This system also has the added strength of giving the new tutors the specific guidance they need. Faculty tutors get to fine-tune the differences between teaching and tutoring, espe-cially through the use of student texts. Student interns need more specific guidance and to be reassured that they are doing the right thing. This system of training also has the added dimen-sion of training two distinct groups who have two sets of priorities and ex-pectations for what is essentially the same task. Drawbacks to this system of training are that it is time consuming, and it can be a slow process. Our Writ-ing Center, like so many others, gets very busy early in the semester. The shadow/mentoring method, by its very nature, requires a longer time-line that runs concurrently with actual writing tutorial sessions than a formal training session, which could be implemented in late August or early September, just at the start of the academic year. One other problem that came to light after reading Liz Buckley’s article, “Dis-tance Mentoring: The Mentoring is in the E-mail,” was that our mentoring was confined to the four walls of the Writing Center. I hope to implement an e-mail mentoring program involving tutors from other colleges, and tutors who previously worked in our Writing Center, in the near future to comple-ment our existing training program.

In spite of the drawbacks, I feel our tutor training has a lot to recommend it as long as we stay aware of the differ-ent needs and expectations of faculty and student tutors. A shadow/ mentoring tutor training method coupled with group discussion (I some-times call this group mentoring) is al-most a non-system, which is appealing. This non-system seems to supply what is needed for both the student intern, who comes to the program with practi-cal academic considerations, and the faculty tutor, who is more concerned with tutoring as a teacher. Authority does not rest with me as the Writing Center Director. I can push authority out to the other tutors, and choose to say very little in the course of a meet-ing. The phonocentric nature of this method of tutor training is also appeal-ing. It takes place in the actual medium that a tutoring session must take place and helps breaks down the tension be-tween speaking and writing. Since per-forming this analysis, I have become very sensitive to the different and sometimes conflicting needs, expecta-tions, and outcomes of the student tu-tors and faculty tutors. I feel, however, that this system of tutor training, through interchange, exposure to, and awareness of, different perspectives found in student and faculty tutors can give us a useful synthetic approach to tutor training. Such an approach gives us an excellent way to train new tutors, and keep experienced tutors fresh.

Joseph Zeppetello Marist College Poughkeepsie, NY

Works Cited

Buckley, Liz. “Distance Mentoring: The Mentoring is in the E-mail.” Writing Lab Newsletter 23.10 (June 1999): 1-5.

Jensen, Barbara. “The Benefits of a Tutor-Mentor Program.” Writing Lab Newsletter 21.2 (October 1996): 11-12.

The Writing Center has been in ex-istence at Francis Marion University for over ten years, and I have been in-volved with it since the beginning. Each year we help hundreds of stu-dents from all over campus, in every discipline, with an amazing variety of writing assignments. We pride our-selves on what we do for our students, but seldom do we think about what working in the Writing Center does for us, the classroom teachers and future classroom teachers who staff it. What Buffy and I want to discuss here is what we have learned from tutoring in the Writing Center, and how we can apply it to composition teaching.

One of the first things I noticed when I began tutoring was how my relation-ship with students changed as I shifted from the role of teacher to tutor. As a tutor, I was no longer an authority fig-ure holding a grade book, but more a concerned listener. In the one-on-one setting of the tutorial, the students felt free to talk openly to me about their lives, school, and how they felt about writing and the writing tasks they were asked to perform. What I learned made me question many of the things I thought I knew about writing and how to teach it.

As an aging baby-boomer (the same generation that is now writing the com-position textbooks), I had based many of my ideas on the writing process on my own college experiences. I had gone to a mostly residential four-year college, lived in the dorm, had no out-side jobs, and considered college, both in the classroom and out, my universe. In contrast, at Francis Marion, most of our students are commuters, almost all of them work, and many already are parents. Most of them have no contact with their classmates outside of class, and have no one in their personal worlds who understand what going to college is all about. I soon realized that what had worked for people like me was not going to work for them.

For example, a conventional approach to the writing process might be to give an assignment on Monday, re-quire a rough draft on Wednesday and a final draft on Friday. The assump-tions were that a student, with the help of a composition textbook and class-room instruction, would somehow steer herself through the writing pro-cess. Think how this would work with a typical student I’ll call Terri—a bright, personable, articulate young lady I tutored recently.

Terri is an eighteen-year-old fresh-man. In the course of her tutoring ses-sion she told me that she “didn’t learn much in English” in high school, her parents were divorced when she was eight, and she’s been pretty much on her own since she was fifteen as she worked a wide assortment of minimum wage jobs. Currently she works from thirty to forty hours a week at a popu-lar restaurant where she waitresses and stocks the salad bar. She admits that she doesn’t have a draft of her paper yet, but has some ideas. She then lets me in on her writing process. She thinks about the assignment at work— of students who asserted that they had no experience with doing anything wrong. From this mistake, I was able to learn to think about whether the topic of a prompt could be offensive to some people.

Finally, working in the Writing Cen-ter has helped me grow professionally. Usually, I work at least one or two hours a day every semester with a pro-fessor. This close contact gives me the chance to listen to the professors speak with one another about their teaching and writing ideologies. By working with these professors, I have learned how to agree or disagree politely with my colleagues. I am now much more confident about stating an opinion or asking a question about my chosen ca-reer. I have had the opportunity to know the professors more personally by working with them, and the profes-sors that I have worked with have pro-vided me with some behaviors and practices that I can model after in my future classroom.

By working in the Writing Center, I have been able to gradually apply what I have learned in my English and Edu-cation classes in my tutorials. When I teach in public school, I will have pre-vious experience with working with student writing. I have heard what the students and the professors have had to say about particular course assign-ments, projects, and activities. Because many of the Writing Center’s clients are freshmen, I feel confident that I know where most high school stu-dents’ interests lie, and I am comfort-able that I know how to critique their work in an encouraging and positive manner. Working in the Writing Cen-ter has also enhanced my content knowledge and my professional skills. I cannot think of any better work expe-rience that could have prepared me more for my future career as an educa-tor.

Buffy Boatwright Francis Marion University Florence, SC

English Tutor’s Mantra

I am afraid . . . Questions tease my wisdom My intellect is challenged

I am afraid . . . Ineffective vessel is my mind Elusive is my helpfulness

But, unexpectedly . . . Answers come easily Thirst for knowledge is quenched Insecurities melt away Smiles all around Words fly off the pages

Muriel Harris, editor Department of English Purdue University 1356 Heavilon Hall West Lafayette, IN 47907-1356

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