Such openings give a useful perspec-tive on the moves we sometimes make in the writing center. Perhaps students, used to such locutions, hear our open-ing compliments as backhanded, the encouraging “you have a good start” as an empty formula. By locating a consultant’s comments in between peer support and teacher critique, we can see that “Tutor Talk” needs to avoid the vague “good paper” ritual in favor of a teaching comment such as “I like the way you used visual details here.”

Like typical writing center sessions, these peer response letters moved from the opening pleasantry to language that creates a connection. Many students brought up their own similar experi-ence, or simply agreed with the writer’s views (“I agree with you be-cause this happened to me in high school too”). This personal link helps reviewers make a transition from class-mate chat to editorial advice:

I really like your topic because I

understand what you’re talking

about through writing my own

paper. In my introductions, I

sometimes find myself writing

down vague, meaningless

sentences just to try and make my

paper understandable [too]. . . .

Your first sentence . . . seemed

really awkward for me to read.

While a writing center session also benefits from the personal, student-to-student connection (“I have a ton of work due this week too”), writing con-sultants need not resort to back-handed advice about a common problem (“meaningless sentences”). Here a sense of “following the script” can come in handy, as the session moves into goal-setting and collaborative work on problem passages.

However, the peer response letters show that this transition from col-league to critic makes most students uncomfortable. Many of the peer read-ers simply shy away from providing concrete criticism, deflecting authority with a disclaimer:

To start off, I just want to say that what I write in this review is just my opinion and please feel free to disregard them [sic] if they don’t suit your style. Your paper is your paper.

Some responses continue to evade the role of adviser. In their effort to avoid a directive stance for which they feel unauthorized, the peer readers sub-stitute indirection. One such letter ear-nestly addresses problems but stays safely speculative:

The interview . . . relates to the basic idea of the paper very well, but it doesn’t fit where it is. Maybe it could be placed in the conclusion, but I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with the personal narrative either. It is a very nice touch, but I’m not sure how it could be incorporated to fit better.

As if still unsure about the reception of this dubious advice, the reviewer fin-ishes the letter with a flurry of reassur-ance: “and you provide a lot of effec-tive sources and make a lot of interesting points.”

Perhaps such deflection creates a safe place from which to launch the crucial next step of the response—one in which they must make judgments on the paper. But “non-directive” identifi-cation of problem areas can seem sim-ply evasive. In her article for Stories from the Center, Catherine Latterell suggests that writing center tutors need to be careful of such evasions and that we need a more nuanced understanding of the Prime Directive to be “non-di-rective.” These peer responses give us another reason to think about doing that. If we place the writing consultant’s advice on a continuum be-tween peer support and teacher cri-tique, we can see Tutor Talk clearly as more than peer reaction. Writing con-sultants are namers and explainers. The much-discussed “authority” of training and experience gives tutors an advan-tage over uneasy peer readers.

The directive moment

I believe the point of your paper.

. . . However, I’m not sure if I see

a clear thesis statement of your

point (if that was it) and that needs

to be worked on a little bit. I like

your examples a lot, they’re very

useful . . . and support your thesis. However, I think you might need a few more sources (maybe articles?).

There seems to be a lot of opinion

in this paper, which I feel is not a

bad thing, but a few facts are

needed to give the paper credibil

ity. . . . I think you have all the

makings here of a really good pa

per, you just need a little more re

search and editing. Again, these

are all just my opinions.

This letter also illustrates the last, and fourth part of peer response, when students typically return to the lan-guage of ritual in their Closing. Most of the responses in the sample con-cluded by going back to expressions of overall approval (“All in all, I think you’ve got a great paper”) and then closed with broad assurances of suc-cess, almost invariably minimizing the needed changes as minor adjustments (“You just need to clarify your thesis, and then once you write a conclusion, you’ll be all set”).

Such peer responses offer insight for writing center work by showing how students find ways to fit their authority (as readers and classmates) into what they perceive to be an appropriate style, tone, and form. Authorized by the teacher, peer response can be a way of “domesticating” collaborative learn-ing, as Harvey Kail and John Trimbur put it, “into the established structures of teaching and learning” (209). As we have seen, it is also an exercise in steering safely between the demands of their role as sympathetic classmates and the expectations inherent in this teacher-initiated peer review assign-ment.

Although in writing centers we posi-tion ourselves outside “the established structures,” we too must navigate be-tween peers, products, and teachers “outside the normal channels of teach-ing and learning”( Kail and Trimbur 208). Like peer readers, writing con-sultants must maintain a companion-able stance with the student writer while always being aware of the absent participant, the teacher. And while a writing center session may bypass classroom protocols, our intention, too, is a fitting of the student into “estab-lished structures.” As theorists like Bruffee have pointed out, writing cen-ters do this by helping students make a bridge “between the knowledge or discourse communities they already belong to and the knowl-edge or discourse com-munities they aspire to join” (85).

Reading the efforts of students to create what I would call a “bridging” language in peer re-sponses, I became aware of our own stylized scripts and our own “bridging” strategies in the writing center. Em-pirical studies have shown that students learning to revise need more than an act of re-sponse; it is the quality of explanation and discus-sion of that response that leads students to produc-tive revision (Chinn et. al.). In the writing cen-ter, we can go beyond peer response to furnish that key explanation and discussion. But we can also employ some strate-gies from standard peer response strategies:

• After the initial
chat about the as
signment and
agenda-setting is
over, consultants
quite genuinely
turn to the positive
opening: “I really
like that sentence”;
“What an interest
ing topic.” But
perhaps we could

use more strategies of self-rev-elation: “I have had the same experience as you have” and shared academic work.

• Sometimes we should add an ex-plicit disclaimer: “I’m just giv-ing you my opinion.” “Your pa-per is your paper.” Perhaps we forget to stake out our position in the space between student and teacher.

• Writing center sessions focus on identifying and pointing out, asking questions, trying to engage the writer in dialogue, giving some advice. This is our way of bridging between worlds. And like the peer reader, we need to have an eye on the student writer and an eye on the academic world we work in. But a writing consultant has a trained and experienced eye and language to make explicit the demands of faculty, of assign-ments, of the academy, and to the terminology of composi-tion—thesis statement, “devel-oping” the paragraph, sentence fragment—the specialized language that students need to translate. So when we say, “I can’t tell you which is best for your paper—what do you think?” we need to help writers make that choice (“but this might work better here”), so that the writer hears help rather than evasion.

We have many truisms in writing center work that stress lack of uniformity: “No two sessions are alike,” “Every student brings a unique prob-lem.” Yes, indeed. But the under-graduate students who come to work with our trained writing consultants are increasingly schooled them-selves—however generally—in a lan-guage of peer response that serves as a bridge between student culture and classroom culture. We can make use of that knowledge . . . and that lan-guage . . . in the writing center as we seek to connect collaboratively with writers.

Jane Auten American University Washington, D.C.

Works Cited

Chinn, Clark A., Angela M. O’Donnell and Theresa S. Jinks. “The Struc-ture of Discourse in Collaborative Learning.” Journal of Experimen-tal Education 69 (2000): 77-97.

Harris, Muriel. “Collaboration Is Not Collaboration Is Not Collaboration: Writing Center Tutorials vs. Peer-Response Groups.” College Com-position and Communication 43 (1992): 369-83.

Kail, Harvey and John Trimbur. “The Politics of Peer Tutoring.” Writ-ing Center Journal 11 (1987): Rpt. in Landmark Essays on Writ-ing Centers. Ed. Christina Murphy and Joe Law. Davis, CA: Hermagoras P, 1995. 5-12.

Planning

Our Center is open approximately 35-37 hrs./week, Monday through Friday during the 9-month academic year.

Our staff consists of 15-18 upper level undergraduates and graduate students. Due to our small quarters, only three tutors have workspace at any one time. I have to adjust the schedule wisely each semester taking in account tutors’ availability, students’ preferences, and of course, our budget.

As a planning tool, WCOnline has been crucial in helping us to easily analyze and then staff those days/times which students most prefer or avoid. Now that I have years of hard data at my fingertips, I can identify increas-ingly reliable usage patterns. Not only has WCOnline facilitated smarter plan-ning, but it has helped with public rela-tions, too. Recently, for example, I was better able to explain to a some-what annoyed professor why we weren’t open the late hours she wished. At UWM, perhaps because we are an urban commuter school, WCOnline data indicated that when we offered later evening hours, we mostly sat empty. Those hours were a glaring hole in a schedule that often is filled 70-100% during the day. WCOnline informed a tough but necessary staff-ing/budget decision. Perhaps this pro-fessor is still disappointed with the out-come, but at least she knows that I took her suggestion seriously and that our scheduling decisions are not arbitrary.

Scheduling

WCOnline allows students to make appointments by simply logging in to a Web page and choosing a day, time and tutor. This means that students can make appointments at their conve-nience—not just when the center is open. Once they make an appoint-ment, WCOnline sends them a re-minder 24 hours beforehand—another great feature. No more disappearing appointment books, bottles of Liquid Paper, unreadable scratch-overs or ap-pointment stealing.

Right from the get-go, students used the system with ease. Since we introduced this feature in summer 2004, online scheduling has been hugely successful. We anticipated a few problems—but had virtually none.

• WCOnline was designed from the ground up just for writing centers. Unlike TutorTrac which was created by modifying the existing Accutrac program, WCOnline programmers looked at what writing centers needed and made a program to exceed those expectations.

• WCOnline, unlike TutorTrac, is a web-based program installed, maintained and hosted remotely by the WCOnline staff.

• WCOnline saves centers from large up-front costs. Centers pay a small monthly fee for as long as they use the software. If they decide not to continue using the software, centers are not out the $2000+ that purchasing similar software might initially cost. And for the monthly subscrip-tion cost, centers are entitled to unlimited training and technical support, with requests usually addressed within a few hours of being submitted. While TutorTrac does offer some limited free support, they strongly encourage the purchase of a “Priority Support Package” costing anywhere from $250 to more than $1000.

Wish list

What else would I like WCOnline to do that it currently does not? Within the scheduler itself, we would like a feature to track two more statistics:

1) turnaways (students who cannot schedule an appointment because we don’t have enough tutors/space/open hours; very important numbers for budget arguments)

2) no-shows (allows us to remind students to courteously cancel appointments and to track repeat

Similar to using a tool in any produc-tion process, writers use strategies to create an essay. Sometimes though, writers may need to learn how to use a new tool to combat a writing ailment. In a way, the writing center could be thought of as the tool store for frus-trated writers. While we at the writing center can help writers by allowing them to use our knowledge of writing tools, a more beneficial conference would be one where writers learn how to use a writing strategy for their own use. The way for assistants to equip students with a new writing tool comes from an amalgamation of modeling the usage of the strategy and allowing writers work alone with the tool, and by doing so we can help writers ac-quire a strategy tool belt of their own.

A prime example of this type of in-teractive training comes from a sum-mer job I had working on the grounds crew of a country club. Tim, the course superintendent, had a set procedure he used to train an employee for a new task. First, he would acquaint the em-ployee with the new equipment needed for the job. For example, to familiarize an employee with foreign machinery, Tim would show how to check the engine’s fluids, search for mechanical problems, and start the equipment. Tim would then take the employee out on the course and demonstrate how to use the equipment. If the task were a mow-ing job, for example, Tim himself would make a few passes with the mower and then hop off the machine to allow the employee to give it a try. Af-ter the trainee had made a few passes under Tim’s supervision, Tim would retreat to the shop and allow the em-ployee to finish the job alone. Once the employee had finished the task, Tim would return to inspect the completed job. With the employee at his side, the final step in Tim’s training procedure was to give suggestions to improve the quality of the employee’s work.

Finally, just as Tim returned to in-spect and critique the quality of an employee’s work, learning assistants need to review the writers’ work. After observing students’ progress with a new writing strategy, we can then fur-ther writers’ expertise in using a new tool by offering writers some construc-tive criticism. It is in this final step where learning assistants can offer writers some words of wisdom and helpful hints to take into consideration when working with the newly learned strategy.

Though contrary to how it may seem, properly training students to use a new writing method does not have to be ex-tremely time consuming. There is plenty of time in a conference, even a 25-minute one, to introduce at least one strategy, for this whole training process can take place in just a few minutes. All that learning assistants need to do is briefly explain the ratio-nale for using a technique, model the strategy, allow writers to practice alone, and finally offer a few more hints to students. In these four simple steps, we can teach writers to use writing strategies on their own.

At the writing center, we have a duty not only to help students craft a better paper, but also to give writers some strategies and techniques to use at their own discretion. While the need for a reader/audience is always present in the writing process, ideally the writing center should teach writers strategies in an effort to make them more self-sufficient. We ought to teach strategies not in an effort to wean writers away from the writing center, but rather so that writers can become more confident. Once students learn strategies to use when writing, they become more confident and less intimidated by the writing process.

Through a combination of modeling and allowing writers space to practice with writing techniques, we learning assistants can effectively and efficiently equip students with strategies for their own developing writing tool belts.

Peter Moe Western Washington University Bellingham, WA

It might seem surprising to consider that we use social work, or therapy skills in the course of our work with writing center students. No, we don’t practice therapy (I hope!) with stu-dents, but there is a significant overlap in the ways in which we draw informa-tion from students, help them to find their own solutions, and maintain boundaries, with some of the ethical dilemma facing us.

I graduated with a Masters in social work in 1991, practicing individual and group therapy both during my training and for several years after graduating. I returned to school to pur-sue a Masters in English, and, in the course of keeping a journal for credit in my work at Oregon State University’s Writing Center in Fall, 2002, I discovered that I was using so-cial work techniques in my work as a writing assistant.

One of the primary actions I engage in with students is talking. First, I spend time finding out their under-standing of their assignments and their intentions in their papers. Students of-ten bring the assignment sheet with them, and we read it to discover what the professor is expecting. Sometimes, students will ask questions about what is expected; for example, many stu-dents inquire about what MLA style is. Other times, I have questions about the assignment, especially if the paper is for a field with which I am unfamiliar. This gentle questioning is similar to a first therapy session: a focused discus-sion which draws in the other person, an initial inspection of each other.

Guidance in writing is what writing centers are for. As Jane Honigs indi-cates (Writing Lab Newsletter 25.5 [2001]: 9-10), students’ essays are of-ten deeply personal. Too, they are dealing with various pressures, which spill over into their writing and discus-sion. Because I am not in the role of a therapist, I need to keep the focus on writing. Providing support by listening and normalizing (for example, when a first-year student says she feels over-whelmed by college expectations, say-ing that most other new students feel that way too is helpful) is essential. Though Honigs recommends against referring students to counseling, in-forming students that counseling ser-vices are available (even providing the phone number or location if they ex-press strong interest) is appropriate; students are not always aware of all the resources they can access.

Although delineations between writing center tutors and students are not as formal as they are between therapists and clients, these distinctions—called “boundaries”—exist. And, like therapists, however friendly and approach-able I might be, many students still see me as an expert, maybe even an au-thority figure. So, it is incumbent upon me to say when I don’t know some-thing and to check that information (if possible). In fact, I am an excellent role model when I pull out a writing reference book to check on comma us-age, for example.

Further, although I might have a class with a student who comes in for help, might even be friends with him, when I am in the writing center I need to remain professional. Basically, what this means is keeping the student’s needs primary. As a social worker, I never saw any friends or even acquain-tances professionally because I might have been unable to remain objective, and my friend or acquaintance would likely have had difficulty being as open with me because I was have been part of his “real” life. Similarly, if a friend comes into the Writing Center and I don’t feel that I could be honest in my feedback about his paper, I need to ask another tutor to work with him; his needs in regard to his paper are not being met if I can’t tell him what’s wrong with it. As another example, if I am tired, busy, and stressed, I need to be careful not to impose that on the student I’m working with. Full knowl-edge of my problems can make stu-dents uncomfortable about “burden-ing” me with all their writing-related questions and concerns. Refocusing on another person can take me away from my own stress, but if I am too wiped out, then I need to pass the student to another tutor if at all possible or I’m li-able to focus heavily on what doesn’t work instead of what does.

A wise social worker once told me to find something I like in every client I work with. That isn’t easy sometimes, but it is important for me to remember that everyone is complex, affected by multiple pressures, and that people generally respond well to praise. So, too, as a tutor, I must find something positive in every paper I see. A paper can be rife with errors, have an unclear argument, and I can disagree with the student’s standpoint. But I need to point out the sentence that’s nicely phrased, the metaphor that’s interest-ing, the vividness of a piece of descrip-tion—to find something to like, some-thing that’s good. Because it is there. And students need to hear it.

We help them to clarify their thoughts and feelings (some of which are in-tense), listen to their concerns and complaints, and listen to and read what they write. Just as the relationship be-tween therapist and client is important, the one between tutor and student is vi-tal, as well.

Melissa R. Weintraub Oregon State University Corvallis, OR

Conference reminder

This article follows up on my article that appeared in the Writing Lab News-letter in 2003. In that essay, “The Numbers Speak: A Pre-Test of Writ-ing Center Outcomes Using Statistical Analysis,” I indicated that statistical analysis confirms what we already know in more qualitative terms about tutoring: it improves student writing. I also indicated several shortcomings in the methodology I employed in that study. Now I wish to provide a brief re-cap of a research project I recently completed at the University of Texas at Tyler, where I direct the writing center. In the current project I used a stronger research design, which lends greater credibility to my central claims from the 2003 article: that statistical analy-sis enriches the way we describe our work; helps us understand how tutor-ing impacts the writing process; con-firms what we already know through more qualitative means; and helps us communicate what we know to be true about our work to those outside the discipline.

I should note, however, that there are several risks with regard to using sta-tistical analysis to study writing cen-ters. The learning curve is indeed steep. I’ve had to rely on the assis-tance of colleagues with strong back-grounds in statistics, as well as exer-cises from statistics texts, to help me design and implement this study. Ap-propriate instruments are also required, as some forms of analysis are not ap-propriate for some forms of data. Us-ing numbers alone can be misleading; I would suggest that quantitative forms of analysis be used within a richer framework of qualitative analysis (more on this below). Further, quanti-tative research is still new to this field. Not much has been written, or at-tempted, in these terms—although I should note that studies by Peter Carino and Doug Enders, Casey Jones, and Neal Lerner are significant in their own right. It’s difficult, too, to design a sound experiment, as separating writ-ers into “control” and “experimental” groups for the purposes of examining the impact of writing center interven-tion on their writing may compromise the amount and quality of tutoring they receive. Finally, there are issues of as-sessment to consider whenever em-barking on a study of this nature. If, for example, during one year I study my writing center and discover a given rate of improvement, but the following year I discover a lower rate of im-provement, I risk undermining the credibility of my center.

The study was an outcomes-based assessment—that is, I sought to mea-sure student writers’ mastery of the specific criteria noted above. I did this, moreover, without impacting, in-fluencing, or compromising the work of any faculty member or student at any point during the study. The 38 stu-dents involved in the study were not asked to write to specific prompts, nor were faculty members instructed to change their assignments or teaching styles in order to accommodate my work. I studied four classes, two up-per-division (Art History and Political Theory), and two lower-division (first year composition). On the day a pro-fessor was ready to turn back graded papers to her students, she instead gave them index cards with their grades written on them. On the basis of those grades, students self-selected: if they felt they could improve through contin-ued drafting, they could take a clean copy of their drafts to the writing cen-ter and receive tutoring. If they were content, they received their marked, graded papers back, and were not in-cluded in the study. I was provided with clean copies of drafts from stu-dents who chose to visit the writing center. (Clean copy was vital to this study, as it did not bias me, the writing center tutors, or faculty raters; I was not interested in, nor was I aware of, any grades any student received during the course of this study.)

Tutors, who were unaware of the specific classes being studied, tutored students according to their own best practices. (In this iteration of the study, the typical tutorial ran for an av-erage of 36 minutes; tutees were 54% female and 46% male; 52% were first-time visitors, and 48% were repeats. Two drafts each (a total of 76) from the 38 students who chose to be tutored were studied. After the tutoring was complete, students re-submitted their drafts, again with their professor pro-viding me with clean copy. I now had two stacks of drafts: a pre-intervention pile, or “A” stack, and a post-interven-tion pile, or “B” stack.

I then provided the three faculty rat-ers with both piles in a randomized, blind read. Each pile was coded and randomly ordered. All drafts had all names removed—both the student’s and the professor’s. The only specific marking related to the course was the assignment sheet that I included with each stack of papers; I did this to pro-vide a richer rhetorical context for the raters, so that they knew what was be-ing written and for what reason. Un-aware of each other’s identities, faculty raters read at different times and in dif-ferent places in order to minimize the chances that they would bias each other’s ratings. Raters assigned scores ranging from one (lowest) to five (highest), both globally and locally, for each draft. Faculty were not told that one pile was comprised of pre-inter-vention drafts, and the other of post-in-tervention drafts. This marked a major shift from last year’s pre-test, during which time raters knew which drafts had been tutored, and which hadn’t.

In my conclusions from last year’s pre-test, I noted that numbers provide us with a unique window into what ac-tually occurs during tutorials. I noted that, for example, on the basis of the sample studied, the writing center I di-rect was having a greater impact on lower-division writers. I was able to fold this knowledge back into an ongo-ing program this year, an initiative called “Tutor the Tutors,” during which faculty teaching advanced or up-per-division courses visit with the staff during regular meetings to share their expectations of student writers; the meetings, in turn, have opened power-ful communications channels for the writing center across the disciplines. I have also discovered that the improve-ment noted above has its own remark-able character: it’s primarily global. In fact, we see a mean improvement of

1.03 from pre-intervention to post-intervention. Local improvement runs approximately .6. This suggests to me quantitatively what I already know to be true through experience: that our writing center provides more guidance at the level of thesis and argument rather than punctuation and mechanics. I have, in turn, begun work on a stylebook for our writing center, a grammar guide featuring patterns of and errors in usage that we see frequently, as well as updating our online grammar review materials to make them more acces-sible to even the most casual Web surfer. More than this, though, my staff and I can deliver our regular “we’re not an editing center/ we won’t write your paper for you” mantra with increased confidence.

This data can also provide me with more information as I do what has be-come routine: defend the writing cen-ter against well-intentioned colleagues who repeatedly question why student X was tutored, but nonetheless turned in an imperfect draft—imperfect, I should note, primarily at the sentence level. I now have firm evidence that writing center tutoring produces incre-mental results, and those primarily at the global level. Significantly, this form of statistical analysis enables me to communicate with others outside the discipline about what goes on inside the discipline. My colleagues outside the discipline don’t quite know what to make of the well-worn adage, “it’s the writer, not the writing.” So with my stats in tow, I can state a variation on that theme: we help writers make “bet-ter writing,” and I can explain exactly what I mean.

I would think, too, that demonstrat-ing through regular assessments such as this one that incremental improve-ment is in fact possible (and often after only half an hour!) constitutes a strong component of a year-end report. That component is made even stronger when we consider the overall consis-tency of raters’ scores in this study. If independent raters can verify our claims of performance, we’re doing something right. And if this sounds like I’m being unduly defensive, or protective of turf, it’s because I am: I am very much concerned with the im-pact of ongoing budget cuts on the writing center. So I understand the value of numbers in justifying the ex-istence of the writing center.

Luke Niiler University of Texas at Tyler Tyler, TX

Works Cited

An Assessment of the Literature.”

Education 12.1 (Fall 2001). 3-21.

Lerner, Neal. “Writing Center Assess-ment: Searching for the ‘Proof’ of our Effectiveness.” In The Center Will Hold: Critical Perspectives on Writing Center Scholarship. Ed. Michael A. Pemberton and Joyce Kinkead.Logan, UT: Utah State University P, 2003. 58-73.

Niiler, Luke. “The Numbers Speak: A Pre-Test of Writing Center Out-comes using Statistical Analysis.” Writing Lab Newsletter 28.7 (2003): 6-9.

Wolcott, Willa, with Sue M. Legg. An Overview of Writing Assessment: Theory,Research, and Practice. Urbana: NCTE, 1998.

Conference reminder

New England Writing Centers Association

Hi folks,

Patricia Stephens and Ann

Larson from LIU/Brooklyn asked

that I pass on this gentle reminder

for NEWCA 2005, to be held at

LIU-Brooklyn, on April 15-16. In

addition to all their hard work

planning the conference, they’ve

also launched a conference Web

site: <http://www.brooklyn.

liu.edu/newca/>. Please think

about attending.

Cheers, Harry Denny Stony Brook University Stony Brook, NY hdenny@notes.cc.sunysb.edu

Muriel Harris, editor Department of English Purdue University 500 Oval Drive West Lafayette, IN 47907-2038

Address Service Requested

Non-profit Organization
U.S. Postage
PAID
Purdue University