THEW RITING LAB
NEWSLETTER
Volume 29, Number 1 Promoting the exchange of voices and ideas in one-to-one teaching of writing September, 2004
...FROM THE EDITOR...
With this issue we begin Volume 29 of the Writing Lab Newsletter, and while we continue to welcome new readers joining the group, many of us can remember when WLN began 29 years ago as a few typewritten pages. Appropriately, this issue begins with Neal Lerner’s study of where our field was fifty years ago and where we are now. And as he reminds us, it is impor-tant to contribute to the Writing Cen-ters Research Project’s work in gather-ing information about our field. (See p. 8 for WCRP’s call for participation in their most recent survey.)
Haeli Colina offers an account of a tutor stepping out of the comfort zone of a native speaker to gain a fresh per-spective on why we should seek out ESL students’ intentions. Rhiannon Kiesel explores ways to deal with stu-dents writing about inappropriate top-ics, Melissa Nicolas researches the academic progress of women in writ-ing centers, and Bonnie Devet offers another way to train new tutors.
Finally, you’ll note on page 2 that Mitch Simpson is no longer the Man-aging Editor of WLN as he moves on to teach full-time. Shawna Burton will at-tempt to take on the WLN work that Mitch performed so well.
• Muriel Harris, editor
...INSIDE...
Writing Centers Fifty Years Later
• Neal Lerner 1
Trading spaces: Looking out and Looking In on the Challenges of the Writing Process
• Haeli Colina 6
Conference Calendar 8
Tutors’ Column: “Tutoring Inappropriate Paper Topics”
• Rhiannon Kiesel 9
Where the Women Are: Writing Centers and the Academic Hierarchy
• Melissa Nicolas 11
A Treasure Hunt in the Writing Lab: Training New and Returning Consultants
• Bonnie Devet 14
Writing centers fifty years later
The state of the writing center pro-fession feels pretty positive these days. With an international organized net-work of writing centers, thriving re-gional organizations, two journals de-voted to publishing writing center work, and an academic press, our field seems established, relatively stable, ac-cepted. Yet fifty years ago, writing center directors likely felt similarly about their status and their prospects. Based on his 1953 survey of 60 writing laboratories nationwide, Claude Shouse concluded that “the writing laboratory is needed and desirable in colleges and universities of any type or size” (271). During this relative hey-day for writing centers in the early 1950s, six of the first seven meetings of the Conference on College Compo-sition and Communication featured workshops on writing centers (see Ap-pendix A). This promise and activity gave Claude Shouse some significant material for his dissertation. Yet within ten years after Shouse’s work, writing centers seemed to have slipped off of the professional map. As Albert Kitzhaber noted in a 1962 College En-glish article, “the writing clinics and laboratories are being abandoned since students are seldom so poorly prepared as to require special remedial services of this sort” (477). And it wouldn’t be until the late 1970s and early 1980s that writing centers would regain the footing they seemed poised to achieve back in the early 1950s. So what hap-pened in those intervening years? And could a similar rubbing out occur
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again, despite the gains our field has made? How illusory is our professional status and what is it based on?
An answer to these questions can be found by comparing Shouse’s findings with a contemporary survey of writing center life, the one conducted for the 2000/2001 academic year by the Writ-ing Centers Research Project (WCRP) at the University of Louisville (Ervin, “The Writing Centers Research Project.”). In both the Shouse and the WCRP survey, writing center directors were asked about institutional demo-graphics, staffing, and administration, among other topics. The results of these two surveys, taken roughly fifty years apart, offer striking similarities about the status of writing center direc-tors, the reliance on contingent staff-ing, and the never-ending search for additional resources and institutional definition. Shouse’s view of writing laboratory life circa 1953, then, acts as a daguerreotype of a previous era, but also as a snapshot of our contemporary lives, one that holds meaning for our future direction.
Prevalence and persistence of writing Centers
In 1953, Claude F. Shouse was the writing laboratory director at San Di-ego State College (now University) and a graduate student at the Univer-sity of Southern California. I first stumbled upon his dissertation while poking around on Dissertation Ab-stracts International and then, after for-tuitous email contact, generously re-ceived a copy from Shouse’s daughter, Mary (Shouse) Benson. The obscurity of Shouse’s research is particularly telling for me in terms of our field’s relative youth as an academic disci-pline and lack of knowledge of its his-tory. On one level Shouse was simply far ahead of his time. It wouldn’t be until 1975 that another dissertation would focus on writing centers (Carol Laque and Phyllis Sherwood’s co-authored research), but by no means should Shouse’s obscurity be equated with a lack of intellectual rigor. Shouse described in detail 60 writing laborato-ries nationwide, ones that had re-sponded to his 19-page survey or ones that he had personally visited (for a list of the institutions surveyed, see Lerner). His 350-page account contra-dicts the persistent belief that writing centers are a relatively new phenom-enon, part and parcel of the writing process movement and Open Admis-sions influx of under-prepared student writers onto our campuses. Instead, from Shouse we now know that writ-ing centers have long been the answer to the question of how best to teach writing, even if that question has seemed rhetorical at times.
Comparing Shouse’s survey and the data collected by the WCRP reveals the remarkable similarities of writing centers at these two points in history. Of Shouse’s writing laboratories, 57% were in public settings, and 43% were in private colleges or universities. Fifty years later, 68% of the institutions re-sponding to the WCRP survey were public, and 32% were private, a rela-tively similar distribution and evidence that writing centers have long been a solution for any type of institution, just as Shouse described.
Also countering a long-standing myth is Shouse’s finding that 76% of the labs he surveyed described them-selves as “writing laboratory available, for the most part, to all students on a college-wide basis” (71). Fewer than 7% of the labs Shouse surveyed de-scribed themselves as a remedial labo-ratory open only for students on a “sub-freshman level” (71). While the WCRP did not ask respondents for similar descriptions in the 2000/01 sur-vey, the question was asked in the fol-lowing year’s survey. Of the 125 writ-ing center directors reporting, 117 or nearly 94% described themselves as “available for all students” (Ervin, Per-sonal Communication). Thus, from the point of view of writing center direc-tors fifty years apart, the center’s reme-dial image is a representation consis-tently rejected, and perhaps the characterization of early writing centers as little more than houses of detention can finally be discarded as well.
One other mark of the prevalence of writing centers fifty years ago comes out of Shouse’s research methodology. Shouse sent his survey data to an “evaluation jury” of 17 composition professionals in order for them to offer opinion on the writing laboratory op-erations he had described. Those 17 read like a “Who’s Who” of composi-tion leaders of that era, including Glenn Leggett of the University of Washington, Barriss Mills of Purdue, Porter Perrin of the University of Washington, and Charles Roberts of the University of Illinois. Thus, many of the leading figures in the field of composition responded to Shouse's in-quiry, and, as a result, they were of-fered a comprehensive view of the writing laboratory scene in the early 1950s. It is much later, then, that writ-ing centers would become “Our Little Secret” (Boquet). In Shouse’s time they were a known and relatively com-monplace entity.
Signs of trouble—Staffing and administration
Given the relative prevalence and ac-ceptance of writing centers back in the early 1950s, why did they slip off of the map by the early 1960s? One im-portant clue comes from the staffing and administration patterns described by Shouse, patterns still true and even more troubling today. For example, Ervin reports that 42% of the writing center directors in the WCRP survey held positions as tenured or tenure track faculty, followed by non-faculty or professional staff (32.64%). Still the majority of those reporting (58%) were non-tenurable faculty or staff. Back in Shouse’s day, of the 100 faculty writ-ing lab staff members, 43% held the rank of assistant, associate or full pro-fessor and 48% designated themselves as “instructor.” Based on this evidence, our field has made little to no progress (or even regressed) in terms of ensur-ing our writing centers are run by di-rectors who will have the protection of a tenure system during the next round of budget cuts or who actually get to vote at faculty meetings and serve on curriculum committees, rather than be invited as the occasional guest. In this measure of permanence and stability, we still have much work to do.
Writing center staffing patterns offer additional clues, given Shouse’s description:
Teachers in general and English teachers in particular spend much time on their own in helping individual students, but a formal laboratory setup may fail if not given released time and space. One director writes that the whole idea is being abandoned in her school because teachers are reluctant to refer students to a laboratory director already overworked, even though that director may be quite willing to spend extra hours, without compensation, to maintain the laboratory. (118)
This paucity of resources seemed particularly acute back then; in fact, over a third of the 60 laboratories that Shouse described were staffed by “only one faculty member.” While a few of these 20 or so laboratories had student or staff assistants, the common model is a writing center of one over-worked lab director as Shouse de-scribes in the previous quote. Such a situation made it easy to relieve those directors of their writing center duties once writing centers were cast off in the early 1960s. Faculty could be reas-signed to classroom teaching, and non-faculty staff could be let go to pursue non-academic options.
Contrast this situation with the find-ings of the WCRP. From Ervin’s re-port, we learn that the average number of consultants per writing center is 16, with a high of 100 and a low of 1. Also, undergraduate writing consult-ants make up the majority of staffs now, with 79% of those surveyed by the WCRP reporting such staffing (3).
In contrast, in 1953 only one of 60 in-stitutions described anything similar: San Francisco State College (now Uni-versity) employed 13 “student assis-tants” along with five faculty mem-bers, each of whom had 20 percent of his or her time dedicated to tutoring in the laboratory. Certainly the dynamics of our centers have changed dramati-cally with the introduction of under-graduate peer tutors. As Ken Bruffee writes, “peer tutoring is the systematic application of collaborative principles to that last bastion of hierarchy and in-dividualism, institutionalized educa-tion” (14). The prevalence of peer tu-tors in our centers ensures strong possibilities for the agenda of de-insti-tutionalization. However, that same presence offers a low-cost alternative to a writing center staffed by faculty or professionals and is an entity much more vulnerable to budget cuts and staff turnover.
These differences in staff size and composition also lead to other potential vulnerabilities for the contemporary writing center. Back in 1953, Shouse’s respondents reported that their labs were open anywhere from 1 to 50 hours per week with an average of about 13 hours. In the 2000/01 aca-demic year, writing centers responding to the WCRP survey reported that they were open an average of 46.5 hours per week with a range of 8 to 210 hours (“Writing Centers Research Project”). An interesting spin on these numbers is to look at how many hours per week each staff member was providing. In 1953 it was 3.7 hours per staff member per week, and fifty years later it was
2.9 hours per staff member per week. This drop is once again attributable to the composition of the staff itself—fac-ulty tutors were likely able to commit more of their time to staffing the writ-ing center than peer tutors with full-time class schedules and outside-of-class commitments. Once again a reliance on undergraduate student la-bor might result in more tutoring hours available, but the costs include fre-quent staff turnover or tutors that do not work enough hours to put into practice the ideas that educational sessions or tutor training might offer.
These labor conditions speak to a major economic shift in writing centers over the last fifty years (Ervin, Per-sonal Communication). It’s to no one’s surprise that a staff of peer tutors costs relatively less than a staff of graduate students, professionals, or faculty. Writing center directors responding to the 2000/01 WCRP survey reported an average undergraduate pay rate of $6.40 per hour, about half of the aver-age graduate student rate (“Writing Centers Research Project”). Inexpen-sive student labor has fueled the explo-sive growth of writing centers in the last fifty years. Perhaps, though, labor exploitation is nothing new in our work: The vast majority of the “regular faculty” who staffed writing laborato-ries in Shouse’s time performed that duty as part of their “regular salary,” while twelve faculty reported receiving “no financial compensation” (125). These economic realities act as an un-dercurrent of our work, reminding us of how complicit we are in the labor exploitation that has been essential to the enterprise of higher education. And they also offer a grim reminder that our stability is built on an extraordinarily fragile foundation.
Back to the future
So how secure are we fifty years af-ter Shouse’s survey? One disturbing finding comes from the response rate to the WCRP survey. The WCRP di-rectory lists 935 writing centers in in-stitutions of higher education (Ervin, Personal Communication); however, only 188 colleges and universities re-sponded to the survey despite exten-sive efforts to make on-line and mail contact. What does that say about the nearly 750 writing centers who didn’t fill out the WCRP survey? Did the overworked directors not have the time? Did they feel that their descrip-tions wouldn’t make much of a contri-bution? How much professional status has our field acquired given the relative isolation of so many of our centers?
Equally disturbing is the familiarity of the 38 responses Shouse received when asking his survey respondents to assemble a wish-list of sorts:
About one-fourth of these respondents would like more teacher-time, some wishing for better-trained staffs. In varying numbers others felt a need for better laboratory quarters and equipment; better coordination with the school as a whole, with special emphasis on the need of serving the student body in greater numbers; better-defined criteria for evaluating writing and writing instruction; and better attitude on the part of administration and student body toward the work (207-208).
The areas in need of improvement back in 1953 would likely be on any writing center director’s list in 2003. We have certainly come a very long way in the last 50 years, but we still have much work to do to ensure that this same list doesn’t appear on the year 2053 WCRP survey results.
But just what is it that we can do? I see at least three vital moves:
- Research our writing centers’ and our field’s history: Historical legacy is a powerful argument in higher education where preserving the status quo is often a powerful force. As Shouse demonstrated, many of our writing centers have been around in one form or another for a very long time.
- Make some hard choices about our labor practices: I am not calling for the jettisoning of peer tutors. Far from it; instead, I believe we should compensate peer tutors at levels that are fair, competitive, and attractive. Perhaps that might mean
operating for fewer hours per week, but one can make a powerful argument for more resources when services are maxed out and in high demand.
3. Support the Writing Centers Research Project as a key research site/think tank: Established in 2001, the WCRP, according to its mission, “conducts and supports research on writing center theory and practice and maintains a research repository of historical, empirical, and scholarly materials related to Writing Center Studies” (WCRP Mission). Unlike Shouse’s era, we now have a central place and source of energy for our work. Completing WCRP surveys and otherwise contributing to its mission benefits our entire field.
The descriptions of writing center life provided by Claude Shouse and the WCRP offer us all benchmarks against which we can judge our own centers, both historically and currently, and plan for our futures. My hope, of course, is that our contemporary his-tory isn’t as lost as was Claude Shouse’s research. Instead, my idea is that the continuity and persistence writing centers have shown over the last fifty years will be reflected in a new era marked by true professional status and the stability that comes with it.
Neal Lerner Massachusetts Institute of Technology Boston, MA
Works Cited
Boquet, Elizabeth H. “‘Our Little Secret’: A History of Writing Centers, Pre- to Post-Open Admissions.” College Composition and Communication
50.3 (Feb. 1999): 463-82.
Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” Writing Centers: Theory and Administration. Ed. Gary A. Olson. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1984. 3-15.
Ervin, Christopher. Personal communication. 18 Nov. 2003.
—. “The Writing Centers Research Project Survey Results, AY2000-2001.” The Writing Lab Newsletter 27.1 (Sept. 2002): 1-4.
Kitzhaber, Albert R. “Freshman English: A Prognosis.” College English 23 (March 1962): 476-83.
Laque, Carol F., and Phyllis A. Sherwood. “A Teaching Monograph: Co-Designed Laboratory Approach to Writing.” Ph.D. Diss. Univ. of Cincinnati, 1975. DAI 36 (1975): 4418.
Lerner, Neal. “Writing Laboratories Circa 1953.” The Writing Lab Newsletter 27.6 (Feb. 2003): 1-5.
National Center for Educational Statistics. “Ch. 3: Postsecondary Education.” Digest of Education Statistics, 2002. Washington, DC: US Dept. of Education, 2003. 13 Nov. 2003. <http://nces.ed.gov/ pubs2003/digest02/ch_3.asp#3>.
Shouse, Claude Fiero. “The Writing Laboratory in Colleges and Universities.” Ph.D. Diss. Univ. of Southern California, 1953. ADD W1953 (1953): 0220.
“Writing Centers Research Project Mission.” The Writing Centers Research Project. 7 March 2003. U of Louisville. 2 Dec. 2003. <http://www.louisville.edu/a-s/ writingcenter/wcenters/ mission.html>.
“Writing Centers Research Project Survey of Writing Centers, AY 2000-2001: Results.” The Writing Centers Research Project. 13 January 2003. U of Louisville. 14 Nov. 2003. <http://www.louisville .edu/a-s/writingcenter/wcenters/ survey2000-2001/surveyresults .html>.
Appendix A—Writing Center Workshop Accounts from early Conferences on College Composition and Communication
“The Organization and Use of the Writing Laboratory: The Report of Workshop No. 9A.”
College Composition and Communication 1.2 (May 1950): 31-32.
“Organization and Use of a Writing Laboratory: Report of Workshop No. 9.” College Composition and Communication 2 (1951): 17-18.
“The Writing Laboratory: The Report of Workshop No. 9.” College Composition and Communication 3.4 (Dec. 1952): 23-25.
“Clinical Aids to Freshman English: Report of Workshop No. 14.” College Composition and Communication 4.3 (Oct. 1953): 102-3.
“Writing Clinics: The Report of Workshop No. 2.” College Composition and Communication 6.3 (Oct. 1955): 125-126.
“Skills Laboratories for Any Student.” College Composition and Communication 7.3 (Oct. 1956): 143-44.
Call for submissions for undergraduate writing
Call for Submissions: Young Scholars in Writing: professor’s note that the essay was written by the stu-Undergraduate Research in Writing and Rhetoric seeks dent. Please send three copies of manuscript without theory-driven and/or research-based submissions from author’s name on manuscript. Please include author’s undergraduates on the following topics: writing, rheto-name, address, affiliation, e-mail address, and phone ric, composition, professional writing, technical writing, number on separate title page. business writing, discourse analysis, writing technolo-gies, peer tutoring in writing, writing process, writing in Send inquiries and submissions to Candace the disciplines, and related topics. Spigelman and Laurie Grobman, Penn State Univer-sity, Berks-Lehigh Valley College, P.O. Box 7009, Submissions should make an intellectual contribution Tulpehocken Road, Reading, PA 19610-6009. E-mail to their respective fields. Submissions should be 10-20 inquiries to cxs11@psu.edu or leg8@psu.edu. To be pages, in MLA format, and should be accompanied by a considered for Volume 3, please submit manuscript by January 31, 2005.
Trading spaces: Looking out and
looking in on the challenges of the
writing process
Maricruz leaned in, her eyes glisten-ing, and the words I had dreaded over the otherwise uneventful practice ses-sion finally surfaced: “Did you think about what we said last time?”
For the better part of a semester, we had been meeting every week to im-prove her conversational and written English. We had read books, filled out doctors’ forms, practiced professional correspondence, and laughed about the sometimes-surprising challenges of working between languages, all as part of a pilot program at Southwestern University, an effort meant to build community ties between students and staff. We had, in fact, bonded over these few months—gone from cordial and restrained to chatty and giggling, and had still managed to get some work done, but two weeks before this moment, Maricruz had found out that I was not a Christian, and since that time, she had consistently encouraged me to seek out my faith. I could have put a stop to it earlier. I should have, but the day she found out was the first day I really saw her struggle—I watched her push past the missing vo-cabulary and the shaky conjugations and the constant anxiety to tell me about something she felt so deeply that her voice cracked as she spoke qui-etly—and in beautiful English. I had not responded to her except to compli-ment how well she expressed herself, and thereafter, at the end of each ses-sion, she would inquire about my “progress.” I was caught in a very un-comfortable position as her volunteer ESL coach and her friend.
Hanging in the balance of this sensitive issue was the working environment I had been extremely careful to maintain. When we first started prac-ticing, each word out of her mouth had to be coaxed with gentle persistence— she was extremely shy and spent the majority of each hour in a deep crim-son blush. She had expected fill-in-the-blanks exercises and absolutist lectures on grammatical form, and I was asking her to tell me about her favorite movies and what she did over Thanksgiving break—we spent every other week’s session without pulling out a pen or a single piece of paper.
It’s all very hard work. It’s frustrat-ing, embarrassing, and irreplaceable as a learning method. Gradually, the par-ticular challenges of working with a non-native speaker of English became apparent. When a native English speaker comes to our writing center for a consultation, the given object of at-tention is the written assignment (al-though we always stress the impor-tance of turning out better writers over better writing). However, when the goal is either to teach English or to workshop writing produced by an ESL student, the attention is necessarily more personal and far reaching. The distance between the writer’s intention and the product’s expression has trav-eled through an added stage of transla-tion, and the emotional stakes are much higher. A native speaker can rest cozily in the notion that it’s not their grasp of the materials or their writing skills in question, but just this one pa-per that needs revision, while the non-native speaker has often already learned to accept that every stage of his or her learning, incorporation, and writing ability is fair game for workshopping. Therefore, we can say that, while there has been some dis-agreement over whether or not ESL students require more directive assis-tance in revising their work, it is doubtless that they often require more sensitivity and perceptiveness from the consultant. The vulnerability we all feel when sharing our writing increases exponentially when that writing has been painstakingly filtered through somewhat worrisome linguistic ap-proximations. The need to reach out for support in what can be an ex-tremely daunting task is often coun-tered by the feelings of shame that can arise from admission of this need or a perceived lack of independence in the act.
Within this context, Maricruz’s ea-gerness to help me find God could be interpreted not only as a spiritual prior-ity but as a psychologically-desirable attempt to establish stronger reciproc-ity in and therefore “balance” our rela-tionship. If I could volunteer my time to help her practice her English, she could devote hers to help guide me onto what she saw as the only true path. Unfortunately for my woefully unassertive self, it is the job of the con-sultant to culture a relationship with consultees that is welcoming enough to promote risk-taking and candor, non-directive enough to maintain the au-tonomy and responsibility of the writer, and professional enough to dis-courage unrelated personal entangle-ments like the one developed between Maricruz and me.
As I see it, the primary tool we must use in building this ideal relationship is honesty. Honesty will supply the sincere praise of written or oral work that will help the writer through the more tedious or discouraging tasks at hand, and it will promote trust of the consult-ant and consultation as genuine and worthwhile. Honesty will also prevent this praise from crossing the line into ‘cheerleading’ as described by Donald McAndrew and Thomas Reigstad (17), which, contrary to its purpose, can be infinitely discouraging because it is easily detected, severs the bond of trust, and generally patronizes the writer. Honesty will help us to delin-eate appropriate boundaries and speak up when those boundaries are crossed.
Although my situation with Maricruz was complicated by the fact that she was not an occasional visitor to the writing center but rather a much more intimate, long-term coaching partner and an older woman who had admitted to having some motherly instincts to protect and advise me, I should have been honest enough to voice both my discomfort with the situation and the fact that her aims were not appropriate to the circumstances.
* * * * * *
I was sitting in a computer lab in Montevideo, Uruguay, after nearly five months of wrestling with the Spanish language to produce anything from short personal narratives to historical research reports, and I had just re-ceived the best present I would have during my semester there. A small postscript included in an e-mail from one of my professors informed me that my term paper for his class, Anthropo-logical Philosophy, was “really, but re-ally good.” This was particularly satis-fying having come from the same professor who gave me the equivalent of a “C” on my first paper because it didn’t have a cover. As crushing as that had been to a student whose neu-rotic obsession with grades was unri-valed, my first grade had made it very clear that I would not be coasting through his class on special treatment, and that any praise I might receive would be hard won and deserved. It also showed me that whatever instincts I had as a writer would not be suffi-cient to help me predict or fulfill the technical expectations such as cover folders and single spacing and sec-tioned text with subtitles that were al-ready so second nature to my Uru-guayan classmates. Knowing full well that I would need someone else’s ex-plicit instruction to remedy the situa-tion, I still sat and deliberated with the phone in my hands for a long time be-fore I could bring myself to call and ask for this help. Even in that moment, I understood the irony of this dilemma, that a sometime writing consultant would be balking at the idea of re-questing help, but part of my reluc-tance came from a troublesome ten-dency of many of my Uruguayan acquaintances who had been a little too helpful in other cases. It seemed that whenever I showed signs of having difficulties (whether or not these diffi-culties related to language), the people around me would begin to speak En-glish. They did this with good inten-tions—a willingness to help or comfort me and perhaps enthusiasm for having an opportunity to practice their English with a native speaker. But I was al-ways embarrassed and sometimes re-sentful of this inclination because it impeded my practice in Spanish (which was my reason for studying abroad) and implied that my communi-cation skills in Spanish were inad-equate for the occasion.
I understand that not all ESL stu-dents seeking consultations are ex-change students like I was, but in a col-legiate setting, there can be many, and out of these, most will be studying at least in part to learn to operate in En-glish. This is why I feel that the grow-ing number of scholarly articles that recommend that ESL students do more work in their native language are not adequately accounting for the student’s overall goals. Yes, working in their na-tive languages may improve the quality of a particular writing consultation or limited exchange, but if the general goal is to participate in university life as an English speaker, encouraging them to go back to using their native language would be jarring at best and insulting at worst.
A separate and equally well-meaning habit of many people I met during my semester abroad was the tendency to “correct” my work for me in such a way that the complexities of the ideas or stylistic language were erased. Of-ten the phrasing I used expressed pre-cisely what I had intended, but the use of this sometimes figurative or abstract wording was immediately dismissed by my professors, who assumed I had meant something much more simple and straightforward without pausing to consider how it could work in the con-text. When I discussed these ideas with them, it often turned out that the lan-guage usage was effective for my pur-pose. Other times it may have been technically correct, but they would suggest idioms or different phrasing to express my idea. These misunderstand-ings were bound to happen, but what stuck with me was the concern that in many settings, including my own writ-ing center back in the US, non-native speakers were sometimes accidentally denied the privilege of using artistic li-cense. The underlying, often subcon-scious assumption is that these writers are incapable of higher-level or ab-stract thought and expression in a non-native language—the “no, it must have been a side effect of translation” ap-proach. The bad news is that this can be extremely harmful to the consultant-writer relationship. If a non-native speaker gets the sense that a consultant thinks he or she is not smart just be-cause he or she is not a native speaker, the confidence lost between them will be difficult or impossible to rebuild. The good news is that this little pitfall can be easily avoided by sticking to what should already be one of our most basic tenets: Ask First. This means thatwhether your consultees are native or of my writing. But for the very first nate and generally accurate sense of non-native speakers of English, we time in my life, I actually understand how to cater to those needs once we hold off our assumptions of their inten-this situation to be a luxury. I write can recognize and name them. Each tions and ask them to explain for them-without constant anxiety, talk without consultation and each consultee is dif-selves what they were trying to accom-constant clarification, and feel that I ferent, but by continuing to explore the plish in a certain passage or sentence. truly belong in the community of psychological needs and formal as-Sometimes it will simply be an issue of people and words that surrounds me. I pects of our work with them, we can mistranslation, sometimes the language know now that this is something not develop the necessary awareness and will be correct while the meaning is everyone has the pleasure of taking for resulting methodology that will allow unclear—sometimes they will mean granted. I also know now that they us to offer more appropriate, more per-exactly what it says, and it’s much should. And that they can, if we, as sonalized, and more effective services. safer and more responsible for us, as their consultants, strive to help them It may not bring us to God, but at least consultants, to give them the benefit of construct this comfort zone. What I it will put us on the right path for our the doubt. have written about here has not in-work with people like Maricruz.
cluded many concrete pieces of advice
* * * * * (“do this, don’t do that”)—there are Haeli Colina
enough manuals out there that do a bet-Southwestern University
Now that I’m back in my comfort ter job than I could in that area. What I Georgetown, TX zone, surrounded by people I know and hope to have brought to the table is a words I have been using for as long as first-hand sensibility about the particu-McAndrew, Donald, and Thomas I can remember, I once again have the lar emotional needs of non-native Reigstad. Tutoring Writing: A luxury of loosening up and feeling speakers with the understanding that Practical Guide for Conferences. confident in the communicative value we, as human beings, often have an in-Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook,
2001.
Writing Centers Research Project Survey
The Writing Centers Research Project (WCRP) circulated its third biannual survey on writing centers in late August 2004. The WCRP survey establishes benchmark information for writing centers; accurate information about writing centers will depend on your generosity in providing information. Please watch for and complete this year’s survey.
If you are a writing center director and did not re-ceived the survey by the end of August, please go to the WCRP web site http://www.louisville.edu/a-s/ writing center/wcenters/ to complete the survey. If you received the request and are no longer a writing center director, we ask that you forward the survey re-quest to the appropriate person. Questions may be ad-dressed to Carol Mattingly (502) 852-2204 or carol.mattingly@louisville.edu.
Carol Mattingly University of Louisville Louisville, KY
Calendar for Writing Centers Associations
October 16, 2004: Michigan Writing Centers Association,
in Lansing, MI Contact: Jill Pennington, e-mail: penninj@lcc.edu, phone: 517-483-1298. Conference Website: <miwritingcenters.org>.
November 4-6, 2004: Midwest Writing Centers Associa-tion, in St. Cloud, MN Contact: Frankie Condon, Department of English, 720 Fourth Avenue South, St. Cloud, MN 56301-4498. Web site: <http://www.ku.edu/~mwca/>.
February 10-12, 2005: Southeastern Writing Center Association, in Charleston, SC Contact: Trixie Smith, Middle Tennessee State Uni-versity, Department of English, P.O. Box 70, Murfreesboro, TN 37132. E-mail: tgsmith@mtsu.edu; Web site: <www.swca.us>.
October 19-23, 2005: International Writing Centers
Association, in Minneapolis, MN
’
T UTORS COLUMN
Tutoring inappropriate paper topics
As a writing tutor in the peer tutoring program at a community college, I have encountered a diverse group of students seeking writing help. Interna-tional students, high school students earning college credits, and older stu-dents going back to school, all attend the college. When students have vary-ing backgrounds and perspectives, they often have a wide array of ideas and opinions. This can lead to differences in what topics students find appropriate to write about.
Students I have worked with, espe-cially in beginning-level courses, tend to feel most confident writing about their own experiences and subjects they have personal interest in. Teach-ers of these beginning levels give as-signments such as “write an essay about a recent experience” or “write an essay about an instance in your child-hood” because it can be easier for people who are just beginning to write academically to have a topic they are familiar with. It is an empowering ex-perience to put one’s thoughts into words, but it can cause trouble if the opinions of the student and the tutor differ in fundamental ways. For the tu-tor, it can be difficult to put time and effort into helping a student write about a topic that makes her/him feel offended, uncomfortable, nervous or disgusted. Some tutors may feel un-comfortable dealing with topics of:
- religion
- sexual orientation
- political opinions • overly personal content such as
-family problems
-abusive situations
-health problems
| - drug problems | work. Ultimately, the paper topic is |
| - criminal behavior or criminal | the student’s choice, but tutors can |
| history | help students see that every writer |
| must be conscious that certain topics | |
| There are two ways to deal with per- | may disturb or offend readers. |
| sonally unsettling or inappropriate sub | |
| ject matter. First, if tutors do not feel | Not everyone agrees with or feels |
| they can comfortably deal with the | comfortable with the same topics, so |
| situation, they could send the student | it is important not to take the situa |
| to another tutor, or to a supervisor. In | tions that arise in a tutoring session |
| this case it is important to explain to | personally. Tutors should remember |
| the student that it is the subject matter | that they are tutoring by choice. As |
| that is causing the problem, so they do | peer tutors, they have decided to help |
| not feel personally rejected. If the stu | other students with their work, but |
| dent appears to be troubled, or emo | they are not bound to do anything |
| tionally disturbed, a tutor can suggest | that makes them feel as though their |
| they see a counselor and then give | values are being compromised. Back- |
| them the contact information of a | ground differences create variable |
| counselor at the school. The second | perspectives, which can be valuable |
| thing tutors can do, if they feel that | to both the student and the tutor. A |
| they can handle the situation them- | potentially difficult tutoring session |
| selves, is suggest that the subject | could turn into a learning experience |
| seems offensive or inappropriate and | for both the tutor and the student if |
| that perhaps the instructor would feel | they share opinions and open their |
| the same way. The student might not | minds to new ideas. |
| realize the topic choice is not appropri | |
| ate for an academic setting, especially | Rhiannon Kiesel |
| if they are new to the college environ- | Greenfield Community College |
| ment. | Greenfield, MA |
| It is important to remember that feel | |
| ings and tutoring abilities can remain | |
| separate. Tutors are not always famil | |
| iar with the subjects of papers they | |
| help students organize. They may also | |
| be able to help with the mechanics of a | |
| paper even if they do not agree with | |
| what the student wants to focus on. Tu | |
| tors can try to work with students to | |
| help them see that some topics can dis | |
| turb or offend readers. The goal is to | |
| help students understand how to make | |
| a choice about the topic based on the | |
| audience that will be reading their |
Writing Program and Writing Center Director
Capella University
Minneapolis, MN
Capella’s Writing Program (which houses two Writing • Develop a systematic, on-going needs assessment for Centers) seeks to fill the position of Writing Program Coor-both Writing Centers, and respond to those as-dinator. The person who fills this position will be part of sessments by strengthening the Writing Centers’ the Writing Program, but will have primary responsibilities materials, teaching, and staff; within Capella’s Writing Centers. • Develop systems for researching, assessing, and evaluating the cross-curricular efficacy of both The Writing Program Coordinator is responsible for Writing Centers; strategizing, planning, building, and maintaining Capella’s • Contribute to the on-going growth of the Writing Writing Centers: the Mobile Writing Center, which travels Program and its relationship to the Writing Centers; across the country several times a year to offer services to • Provide necessary support, as determined, to Writing PhD learners; and the Online Writing Center, which offers Program faculty members and projects; online modules, handouts, and tutoring. The coordinator’s • Represent the Writing Program by participating on activities may include, but are not limited to: coordinating university-wide committees; the growth and implementation of the Online Writing Cen-• Other duties as assigned. ter and the Mobile Writing Center; conducting research re-lated to the Writing Program and the Writing Centers; over-PhD in Composition/Rhetoric or related field is pre-seeing new content development for both Writing Centers; ferred. ABDs are encouraged to apply, as are those coordinating writing center consultant schedules, training, with equivalent work experience. This is a 12-month, and professional development; participating actively in the on-site position. (Capella University is located in Min-university’s WAC initiatives; and working on committees neapolis, MN.) The salary range is $40-45,000. If you across the curriculum. have questions about the job itself, you can contact me at carole.chabries@capella.edu. For the full job de-Responsibilities: scription, visit our website at www.capella.edu/careers.
- Travel to residential colloquia at various locationsthroughout the United States to manage the Mobile Interested applicants should forward a cover letterWriting Center; and resume via e-mail to: brian.hughes@capella.edu,
- Oversee the building, customization, and branding of Capella Education Company, Human Resources, 222 Capella’s Online Writing Center; South 9th Street, 20th Floor, Minneapolis, MN 55402
- Oversee the ongoing development and branding of 3389. Applications accepted until the position is filled. Capella’s Mobile Writing Center
Where the women are: Writing centers and the academic hierarchy
Recently, I have been out on the job market, hoping to secure a tenure track position as an assistant professor and writing center director with adequate release time to run the writing center and conduct my research at an institu-tion that will value my writing center work as an administrator and re-searcher as something more than a mere committee assignment. I know. I know. Many of you have fallen off your chairs laughing by now. Of course, I have not yet found such a po-sition. But, through this process, I have experienced a moment of serendipity, albeit bittersweet, as my research inter-ests and my job search mission have come together in interesting ways.
My current research agenda concerns the marginalization and feminization of writing centers, and, on my campus visits, I have been privy to the unoffi-cial rhetoric surrounding many of these positions. Unfortunately, the news is not so good. For all the official inter-view talk about the value a particular school assigns to its writing center, I have not been able to shake the feeling that at least some members of the search committees are wary of my mo-tives for wanting to be a writing center director. The unofficial message I have received (on the ride to the airport, at dinner, on a campus tour) is that while that institution would love to have me on staff, this or that particular faculty member cannot understand why some-one with my “talent” and “credentials” (their words) would want the position. I specifically recall one campus visit where I had to convince the search committee that writing center work was my first choice and that I was not some literature scholar in disguise, tak-ing a writing center job until some-thing “better” came along. This visit ended with the department chair assur-ing me that if I took the director position, I would not have to stay in the writing center permanently, that I could move out of the center and, I guess, up a rung or two on the ladder of institutional respect.
At first, I was surprised by these atti-tudes because I assumed that if a de-partment were hiring a tenure track person to run the writing center, then at least that particular department re-garded writing center work as impor-tant, serious, and “real.” And, indeed, my assumptions were not completely unfounded as institutional rank is per-haps one of the most visible indicators of the value an institution places on the writing center. As Carol Haviland, Carmen Fye, and Richard Colby note when discussing the space (another visible sign of assigned value) writing centers occupy:
Location is political because it is
an organizational choice that cre
ates visibility or invisibility, ac
cess to resources, and associa
tions that define the meanings,
uses, and users of designated
spaces. . . . These locations . . .
shape the roles others perceive
writing, writers, and writing cen
ters play as well as the images
writers and writing centers have
of themselves. (85-6)
Even though Haviland, Fye, and Colby focus on the physical location of writing centers, their point about vis-ibility and invisibility, access to re-sources, and the shaping of perceptions of roles can also be applied to the situ-ation of center directors. After all, aca-demic rank, too, has “political edges that are costly if ignored” since there is a hierarchical structure in the academy that rewards people with power and re-spect based on their position.
In this ranking system, however, writing center directors, as a group, do not fare so well. Both data I collected and data collected by the Writing Cen-ter Research Project (WCRP) reveal that more than 50% of writing center directors are in non-tenure track posi-tions. These findings, while disheart-ening, are probably not surprising, and, before my recent interview experi-ences, I would have naively suggested that the way for writing center direc-tors to get more institutional respect was to have more of us in tenure track positions. Even though I would still like to see this happen, I am no longer so sure that even if most writing center directors were tenure track, faculty general attitudes about the worth of writing center work would change.
To begin with, as Linda Shamoon and Deborah Burns point out, writing center research is not regarded as a “real” intellectual pursuit by those outside the writing center community:
The tenure-line appointment usu-ally indicates a recognition of the academic value of the facility, and the mere candidacy for tenure means the director, at least, is not at the edges of status, security, and power as are the other center workers. Typically, however, in everyday practice many center di-rectors suffer severe stress or conflict because the demands of directing . . . are simply not seen by other members of the depart-ment or the administration as be-ing part of the intellectual work of the academy. . . . At the same time, these directorial activities leave little time for the more stan-dard forms of intellectual aca-demic work, particularly disci-plinary research and journal publishing. Furthermore, when directors do engage in this kind of
intellectual work, it often is, and
should be, about the work of the
center, a topic that may not have
the cachet of a literary scholar’s
analysis of a sixteenth-century
poem. (69)
What Shamoon and Burns highlight is the double-bind tenure line writing center directors may find themselves in: In order to garner institutional re-spect, power, and authority, the writing center director (usually) needs a ten-ure-track position. But, when writing center directors do engage in the kind of intellectual work valued by the academy, they usually study the writ-ing center, and scholarship on writing centers is itself marginalized since writing centers are not thought of in the larger academic community as vi-able sites for research.
This double-bind is part of the narra-tive surrounding the position of the writing center director. The narrative I am referring to is what I call the “femi-nization of the writing center narra-tive,” and one of its primary functions is to code the position of writing center director as “inferior,” regardless of rank. In reflecting on my campus visits and the dissonance between the official and unofficial rhetoric surrounding the writing center director position, I have come to believe that the feminization narrative is an underlying, powerful force shaping not only attitudes and perceptions of the writing center, in general, but also in influencing opin-ions about the position of a writing center director.
My reading of the feminization of the writing center narrative has been influenced by Sue Ellen Holbrook’s as-sessment of composition studies. Holbrook suggests that composition teaching is seen as “women’s work” because it exhibits four telling charac-teristics: It is undervalued, under-compensated, service-oriented, and employs a “disproportionate number of women” (202). Accordingly, composi-tion studies can be described as femi-nized because it is “associated with feminine attributes and populated by the female gender” (201). This descrip-tion of composition easily maps on to writing centers since we are seen as nurturing, service-oriented places and, as a quick review of the literature will tell you, greatly undervalued. Indeed, this association of writing centers with women and women’s work is com-monplace in the writing center commu-nity, and my research suggests that women are indeed overrepresented in writing center work.
Our professional conversations, how-ever, do not seem to pay much atten-tion to the gender politics inherent in this narrative, and as a consequence, the writing center community itself loses some of its own agency in chang-ing the way the narrative affects our professional circumstances. For ex-ample, the Writing Centers Research Project for academic year 2000-01 de-signed a thirty question survey asking for data on writing center directors’ rank, number of years in position, highest educational level attained, along with questions about the number of hours centers were open, the number of contact hours per week tutors were available, and even about the square footage of centers. But, significantly, these surveys did not ask about the sex of the directors (or tutors or clients). This omission became even more strik-ing to me when I read that the stated purpose of the survey was “to gather data about as many writing centers as possible. . . . The items on the survey reflect information frequently re-quested by writing center personnel as they seek benchmarks for their reports and for planning” (emphasis added). If these survey questions reflect the most frequently requested information about writing centers—information requested by writing center personnel them-selves—then it is clear that sexual poli-tics are not at the forefront of the ways we think about what we do and how we do it.
I would like to propose, however, that they should be. Sexual politics are embedded in the history and present of the writing center community and are representative of a problem in the academy writ large. According to a re-port by the American Association of University Professors:
As female participation in the
profession [higher education] in
creases, women remain more
likely than men to obtain appoint
ments in lower paying types of
institutions and disciplines. In
deed, even controlling for cat
egory of institution, gender dis
parities continue and in some
cases have increased, because
women are more often found in
those specific institutions (and
disciplines) that pay lower sala
ries. (Benjamin 1)
The writing center, then, is a micro-site where a macro-institutional prob-lem is manifested. Given this situation, I can imagine how and why the faculty on those search committees who ques-tioned my desire to do writing center work had my best interests at heart. But, at the same time, I am reluctant to let this issue continue lurking beneath the official conversations search com-mittees in English departments have. I am reluctant to have the writing center community acknowledge these issues with little more than a shrug and a nod to “the way it has always been.”
Because women make up a majority of the writing center community, I feel we have a duty to begin considering the ways the feminization narrative af-fects all levels of writing center work. We need to start asking questions about who is using the writing center and why (and its corollary, who is not using it and why). We need a better un-derstanding of who chooses to work in writing centers and how and why they come to that decision in spite of the negative coding of the position. We need an accurate account of the num-ber of women and men directing writ-ing centers and a collation of that in-formation with data on the institutional rank of female and male writing center directors. Importantly, we need to ask if male writing center directors are more likely than females to hold tenure track positions. We need to look at our journals and our international organi-zation and see if there is a gendered nature to whose voices are heard most frequently.
Besides looking at these (and many, many other) important issues surround-ing the gender politics of the writing center, I would like to see the writing center community take more control over the feminization narrative that codes so much of what we do and how we are situated in the academy. We are a large professional community with important relationships with (and of-ten, access to) faculty and administra-tors across the institution. Instead of tacitly accepting the place we have been put in, if we are going to Total be identified as a space where women do women’s work, then let’s start to make some noise (to co-opt the title of Beth Boquet’s wonderful new book) about it and use our feminized identity as a call to action that positions us as a proactive campus and academic space.
- It is important to emphasize that I am talking specifically about the writing center administrator posi-tion and not the writing center ad-ministrator as a person. Specific writing center directors may be greatly valued and respected at their institutions for the work they do and the people they are. I am concerned with the institutional recognition, in the form of aca-demic rank, of the position of a writing center director.
- In conjunction with my dissertation research, I designed a survey instrument to collect demographic data from a sample of college and university writing centers across the United States. Potential participants were identified using the alphabetical
listing of writing center directors in the back of the 1998-99 Directory of Writing Centers. Community college, high school, and international writing centers were not included in this survey. Ninety-three writing center directors were identified and sent a package containing a cover letter explaining my research, the thirteen-question survey, and a self-addressed, stamped return envelope. Directors were asked to use data from the 1998-99 academic year.
The chart below summarizes both
my data and data from the WCRP from
2000-01.
issues/womeninHE/wrepup.htm>.
Boquet, Elizabeth. Noise from the Writing Center. Logan, Utah: Utah State UP, 2002.
Haviland, Carol, Carmen Fye, and Ri-chard Colby. “The Politics of Ad-ministrative and Physical Loca-tion.” The Politics of Writing Centers. Ed. James Nelson and Kathy Evertz. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 2001. 85-98.
Holbrook, Sue Ellen. “Women’s Work: the Feminizing of Composition.” Rhetoric Review 9 (1991): 201-29.
Nicolas, Melissa. “Re-Telling the Story: An Exploration of the
Non-tenure Tenure
Sex and rank of writing center directors based on my survey.
Female Male
Writing Center Tutoring.” The Politics of Writ-
Non-tenure N = 34 (68%) N = 4 (57%)ing Centers. Ed. Jane Nelson and Kathy Evertz. Portsmouth:
Feminization of the Writing Center Narra-tive.” Diss. Ohio State University, 2003.
Shamoon, Linda, and Deborah Burns. “Labor Pains: A Political Analysis of
Melissa Nicolas Assistant Professor of English Penn State Berks-Lehigh Valley College Fogelsville, PA
Works Cited
Benjamin, Ernst. “Disparities in the Salaries and Appointments of Academic Women.” (1998). 18 July 2002 <http://www.aaup.org/
Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 2001. 62-73.
Writing Centers Research Project 2000-2001. 15 Jan. 2003 <http://www.l ouisville.edu/as/writingcenter/wcenters/survey2000-2001.html>.
A treasure hunt in the writing lab: Training new and returning
consultants
Both directors and consultants strive to show clients that a lab is a place of discovery, not just a warehouse of infor-mation (Lunsford). It has to be admit-ted, though, that a prime reason clients knock on our doors is to ask for quick answers to such questions as, “How do I cite a videotape using Turabian?” or “What is a comma splice?” or “What is a thesis statement anyway?” No lab plays a storehouse role exclusively, but providing answers is, undeniably, part of being a writing lab.
Providing information is no easy task. Consultants (or directors, for that mat-ter) cannot carry all the information in their heads. Nor should they try. As Samuel Johnson said, “Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find informa-tion upon it”(Boswell).
How, then, can a director train con-sultants—especially newly hired ones— in what a lab offers so they can readily secure the resources for answering cli-ents’ questions? A director’s walking consultants around the lab like a tour guide, pointing out the sources (the most used, the most beloved) is not suf-ficient. New consultants often forget which book helps with Turabian foot-notes and which handout is useful for clients writing history papers; after all, as new workers, they must absorb myriad details about a lab.
The treasure hunt concept
A possible solution to helping new workers locate as well as know key re-sources (books, dictionaries, thesauri, handbooks, and handouts) is to use a treasure hunt. Lab directors probably experienced such an exercise during their MA or PhD course work when they had to explore their university’s library by locating a rather inconse-quential detail. (How long, for ex-ample, is the 1975 edition of J. H. Freese’s translation of Aristotle’s ‘Art’ of Rhetoric–Loeb Classical Library? The answer, by the way, is 493 pages, counting the index.)
The treasure hunt for a lab, though, eschews such minutiae. Instead, a treasure hunt focuses on any part of the writing process (invention, editing, transitions, paragraphs) and with any types of students (students writing per-sonal statements for graduate school, history students using Turabian, or in-ternational students worried about a, an, or the). Best of all, it is not a direc-tor but the veteran consultants who create the exercise.
Creating a treasure hunt exercise
- To create a treasure hunt, experienced consultants write both the questions and answers
- On a piece of paper, they write a question using a client’s phrasing. For instance, “I have trouble with transitions, and my paper doesn’t make sense? How can I make my writing flow? My professor said my writing is too choppy?”
- On a separate sheet of paper, veterans provide the answer, telling where to go in the lab to locate help (on what desk? in what file drawer?), what source(s) to look at (thesaurus? Harbrace Handbook?) and what possible answer(s) to tell clients.
Only after new consultants complete the Treasure Hunt do they, then, look at the answers provided by their experienced colleagues.
Samples from a Treasure Hunt
Typical questions, with possible answers, include:
Sample One
Question posed by the client:
“ A student whose second language is English enters the lab and asks, “I don’t understand the difference between ‘sitting around the house’ versus ‘sitting in the house.’ Can you explain the correct usage to me?”
Go to: the bookshelf labeled “Helping
International Students.” Sources: 1) NTC’s English Idiom Dictionary 2) Longman Dictionary of American English 3) Harbrace Handbook (most recent edition)
Answer(s): My advice is to show the client how our idiomatic phrases are used in the first source (NTC’s English Idiom Dictionary). Certain preposi-tional phrases simply must be accepted. The Longman can show the various uses of a specific preposition in English, however. Harbrace can show the rules governing general usage of prepositions (See 1c and 22a.).
Sample Two
Question posed by the client: “My professor says that I can’t just make a quote its own sentence. What do I have to do with it?”
Go to: the Writing Lab’s file drawer on rhetorical concerns. Source(s): See the file folders “Quotation Framing” and “Quotations: How to Handle Them”
Answer(s): Have the client do the following:
- write a passage that identifies the source, the position it takes, and the quotation itself.
- write a sentence offering one reason for your position.
- write a sentence explaining how your position and that of your source are related.
- combine the above to create a rough paragraph and then revise and organize the paragraph, adding transitions.
Sample Three
Question posed by the client:
“I really don’t know what my professor is looking for in a paper. I have the assignment, but I wish I could see a paper he has already graded.”
Go to: the file drawer with sample papers. Source(s): Find the subject and the professor for whom your client is writing a paper. If your client’s professor has not provided a sample paper, check the file drawer on rhetorical concerns for any handouts applicable to the client’s subject or paper.
Answer(s): Pull a sample paper from the appropriate file. Let the client examine the paper, but do not allow him or her to photocopy or remove the paper from the Writing Lab.
Benefits to experienced consultants
Creating a treasure hunt offers expe-rienced workers numerous benefits. Their walking around the lab to look up answers means they are becoming re-familiar with the resources, thus in-creasing their efficiency and effective-ness as tutors. As a veteran consultant noted, “Writing up the answers helped me to slow down and reflect on details I had already internalized as a tutor.” More importantly, though, hunting for the treasures boosts their egos by showing them how much they have learned as tutors and how much they can share with others.
Besides building confidence, the treasure hunt helps veteran consultants gain new insight into their own learn-ing curve. All too often, experienced consultants, with only a year of tutor-ing, believe they have “mastered” the fine art of being consultants. When writing up the treasure hunt, though, veteran consultants discover many questions they had yet not figured out. As one veteran consultant said about creating the treasure hunt, “I could think about questions I had not previ-ously solved, such as the proper MLA citation for an InFoTrac article.” An-other veteran consultant confessed that he had not realized that more than one resource might solve a client’s prob-lem. Consultants, who once thought they knew most of the answers, teach themselves more. One experienced consultant used the opportunity to study a grammar issue she herself had always found “disturbing.” The client’s question was, “My teacher says that I write passive sentences, and they need to be active. What’s that mean?” The consultant said she had enjoyed researching the answer. In-stead of feeling rushed when a client is sitting next to her, waiting for her to look it up in a handbook, the consult-ant had the luxury of time to study about voice in verbs. Crafting and then providing the answer, she now feels better prepared when this gram-matical issue arises.
Benefits for new consultants and for directors
New consultants do become more fa-miliar with a lab’s layout and re-sources, but a treasure hunt accom-plishes more: it also fosters a bond between new and veteran workers. Since experienced colleagues are usu-ally nearby in the lab when new work-ers are hunting for answers, new con-sultants readily seek their help with specific concerns, thus promoting a dia-logue among them. The questions themselves are also a preview. Since veteran consultants have generated them based on real consultations, these authentic questions give new consult-ants invaluable experience into what to expect from clients.
And the benefits for a director?
The treasure hunt questions are ba-rometer for what experienced consult-ants see as the lab’s top concerns. The most frequently asked topics focused on writing literature papers; editing for grammar and usage; documenting with APA, MLA, and Turabian; helping in-ternational students; preparing for post-graduate tests, (such as GMAT, GRE, or the MCAT). So, I found—at least for my lab—the treasure hunt offered insight into the clients’ interests.
Conclusion
The hunt is on. Directors are always searching for novel ways to acclimate new consultants to a lab and to tap into the experience of veteran consultants. Though a treasure hunt takes time to create, it helps directors to train new consultants and— ironically—to retrain returning ones. As one veteran con-sultant noted, “Although our lab has all these handbooks and handouts, we con-sultants usually just work with clients and, then, let them go. Now, we know better what is available to help stu-dents.” Samuel Johnson, then, was right: it’s knowing where to find the in-formation that is the true treasure.
Bonnie Devet College of Charleston Charleston, SC
Works Cited
Aristotle. ‘Art’ of Rhetoric. Trans. J. H. Freese. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1975.
Boswell, James. The Life of Johnson. No editor. Vol. 9, v. Chap. ix 1775. London: No publisher. 1835.
Gadsby, Adam, and Della Summers, eds. Longman Dictionary of American English. New ed. NY: Longman, 1997.
Hodges, John C., et al. Hodges’
| Harbrace Handbook. Orlando: | Center Journal 12.1 (1991): 3-10. | Bacon, 2001. 92-99. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harcourt, 2001. | Rpt. in The Allyn and Bacon | Spears, Richard A., and Betty | |
| Lunsford, Andrea. “Collaboration, | Guide to Writing Center Theory. | Kirkpatrick. NTC’s English | |
| Control, and the Idea of a | Ed. Robert W. Barnett and Jacob | Idioms Dictionary. Chicago: NTC, | |
| Writing Center.” | Writing | S. Blumner. Boston: Allyn and | 1993. |
THEW RITING LAB
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