Drop-In Tutoring and Time Management

The readings this week provide a spectrum of perspective on the management and attitude towards time. In the Geller piece, time becomes a restraint that the author encourages us to free ourselves from, insisting that a hypersensitivity of time limits will restrict us in our tutoring sessions and detract from what we can provide those we tutor. In the Murray piece, however, he argues that "the brevity of conferences gives them a productive intensity," and he advises against the sense of colloquialism and comfort we have been discussing thusfar throughout the semester.

Do you agree with Geller, that time restraints are extremely limiting, or do you agree with Murray, that the shorter sessions allow for direct focus on the writing, and that casual conversation detracts from the productivity of a session?

All this talk about time management is pertinent to the elephant in the room--drop-in tutoring. Drop-in tutoring may well be one of the most difficult tasks we are to take on in the Writing Center. In Beat (Not) the (Poor) Clock, Geller writes, "By the clock, there may not be enough time for everything we want to do. Conferences are too short to finish all the work we’d like to complete with student writers." How do you think this applies to drop-in sessions? For those of you who have taken drop-in appointments in the writing center, what techniques do you use to stay focussed and productive in the span of fifteen minutes? How do you keep track of time throughout your sessions, both drop-in and appointment? Do you think fifteen minutes is too brief a time period to truly be productive in a tutoring session? Do you think thirty minutes is adequate enough?

Academic Integrity

The U of A Principle Code of Academic Integrity contains the statement that "Students engaging in academic dishonesty diminish their education and bring discredit to the academic community" (italics mine). However, many students do not see plagiarism as such a serious offense, or as an offense at all. How can we as tutors demonstrate to students the academic and moral importance of avoiding plagiarism, and how can we help them implement proper documentation in their writing?

Suppose a writer has an appointment and comes in with a paper that doesn't seem completely original to you. Pointers mentioned in the Culwin and Lancaster article, such as dramatic changes in writing level ability, unusual references, and analogies with non-local or non-current events are all present. The writer seems unfamiliar with several terms and syntaxes within the work while reading it aloud. What should you do in this situation?

Now, suppose another writer who is an NNS (or ESL) student comes in and reads you his/her paper. Several statements and figures which do not seem like "common knowledge" are not cited. What would you say to help this student understand the concept of intellectual property in American culture and the possible consequences of not citing certain information?

Culwin and Lancaster write that “The Web is a valuable source for anti-plagiarism advice which can teach both students and tutors what plagiarism is, how to recognize it and how to avoid it.” The University of Arizona has used the online anti-plagiarism service Turnitin.com (at least until this academic year). What are your thoughts on this service? Is it useful? Unnecessary? Intrusive? Lastly, do you think the writing center should use some kind of technology to prevent plagiarism?

As Adam said last week, feel free to answer as many or as few questions as you want.

Ethical Dimensions of Tutoring

I'm so sorry this post is a couple hours late. There were technical difficulties (i.e. I'm horribly un-tech savvy and somehow never actually registered for our blog).

Wow. So, this week's readings are pretty intense. Interpreting our First Amendment rights as Americans and applying those not only to our government policies, but to our personal and professional lives is, without a doubt, a tremendous challenge. What are the limits of "freedom of speech"? Should there be limits? What about hate speech? Should people like Brother Jed be allowed to lecture and spread what many consider to be "inappropriate and offensive speech" on our college campus?

As Sherwood and Freed discuss, freedom of speech is incredibly relevant to tutoring in a writing center. When faced with confrontational, offensive, or possibly inappropriate writing, what is our job as tutors? Is it appropriate for us to "question a student's beliefs and move from objectivity to subjectivity?" (Freed, 39). Would we, as Freed also writes, "be doing students a disservice by not voicing our own opinions, forcing them to scrutinize their work" (40)? As tutors, we have an obligation to help our tutees become better writers. When that obligation is challenged by a clash of personal beliefs, is it our responsibility to question the beliefs of the writers that come to us for help? What about speech that could be construed as offensive to the writer's audience? Is it our job to impose some form of censorship?

Freed concludes her piece with this: "We won't be able to change students' minds in one tutorial session, but we can open them." Do you find her statement appropriate?

I've asked a lot of questions and this is definitely an issue that merits in-depth thought and discussion. Feel free to answer as many or as few of them as possible. And please feel free to include any personal experiences relating to sessions you might have had that challenged your notions of "ethical tutoring".

Tutoring In Unfamiliar Subjects

Business and Technical writing are two mediums that the majority of WC tutors are unfamiliar with. However, they share some of the fundamental ideas with the "normal" style of writing we encounter-- writing for a specific audience, keeping an appropriate voice, etc. We can indeed provide guidance in our own "technical side of English" way. Even though we cannot be expected to know the subject the student is writing about, can we take the writing in context of what the student tells us, and from there help them write a more concise and clear paper? How?

Which (pick one or a few) of the six "Basic Skills," as mentioned in Fearing's article, do you think a tutor should focus on in a session, if the paper badly needs help in every department? Should we treat a technical/business session similarly to, say, an ENGL 101 analytical paper session-- is it different at all, besides the writing (Does the author's creativity factor into it? Should we be addressing grammar "last" in our process, or do the symbols have more significance in technical writing?)?

Aside from the process of our tutoring, what do you think makes technical writing so difficult? How do we keep those science students who hate their lab reports motivated?



P.S. Did anyone catch the clever title sections of the Stone article? Funny how creativity *can* factor into (somewhat, in this case) technical writing...

Learning Diversity

Collins writes, "I have used the phrase 'learning disability' to talk about Asperger's, but that is probably not entirely accurate. My impression of the way in which my son learns is not that he has a disability--but rather he sees the world in a different way." Collins' claim for a different way of seeing the world, rather than a disability, can be applied to any sort of learning difference. How does rethinking disability as a different way of seeing the world change the way you think about learning diversity? How will looking at difference in this way translate into the way you approach a tutoring session?

Sharing Similar Assumptions with ESL Students

For the past several weeks, our primary focus has been to wrap our minds around what a tutor does, our roles as tutors, and ways in which to engage our students. Now, we can expand on our goals and initiatives into another realm of understanding by gearing our skills to help ESL students. ESL students sometimes struggle throughout their educational careers, rendering assumptions of what tutors do, having had possible past horror stories upon getting help, especially in the field of English. We have to learn and understand that ESL students may not be prone to 'actively learning,' which goes against how we've learned as native speakers. "Because collaborative techniques depend so heavily on shared basic assumptions or patterns, conferences that attempt merely to take the techniques we use with native-speaking writers and apply them to ESL writers may fail to assist the writers we intend to help" (Powers).

What have you done as a tutor to establish a common ground with your ESL students, what techniques have you applied in your sessions, and have you noticed trends with problems you've faced and your approaches to address them? Furthermore, how has tutoring ESL students effected your views on culture in America and specifically on our campus, in regards to educational behaviors (i.e. posing discussion in class, questions the teachers, etc.)?

Multiculturalism in the Writing Center

During these past few weeks we have all discussed the strategies involved in being an effective tutor. The reading this week, "Whispers of Coming and Going": Lessons From Fannie, unfortunately does not divulge tutoring secrets. Instead, this piece critically analyzes the writing difficulties many multicultural students face.

We, as individuals, represent different cultures and identities. In this week's post focus on your individual identity and how it is effected by your environment. In what ways has your culture contributed to your educational struggles/successes? Do you think as a tutor it is your job to embrace multiculturalism, i.e. the culture of ESL students, in order to better improve their writing process? What strategies can you utilize in preventing a "cultural barrier", in order to avoid sessions like Morgan's with Fannie? In what ways can you relate to a multicultural student, without being ignorant or offensive?

Collaboration in the Writing Center

This week’s readings focused on the role of the tutor as a collaborative partner and the ways in which a tutor can develop his/her communication skills and ability to help a writer better their writing skills.

In class, last week, we discussed different methods of dealing with difficult or challenging students. Discuss ways in which you can create a collaborative environment with a difficult student. How would your methods change if you were working with a student that didn’t want to be there in contrast to a student that had difficulty understanding (ESL, learning disability)? Keep in mind Freire’s "problem-posing method" and discuss how this collaborative environment would allow both the tutor and writer to become more creative and cognitive. Do you think it’s important for the tutor to learn just as much as the writer? If so, why? Try to incorporate your recent experiences in the Writer Center as either a tutor or observer.

Agenda Setting in Tutoring Sessions

The readings for this week assert that it is important to establish a “mutually agreeable” agenda between the tutor and the writer at the beginning of a tutoring session. In any session, the writer should be given control (as we discussed last week) but the tutor should also make sure the session goes in a direction that will help the writer learn to evaluate his or her own work; sometimes, the ideas and goals of the tutor and the writer do not agree.

Think about the challenges of balancing your duties as a tutor with the wants of the writer. What do you feel are the most important factors in setting the agenda for a tutoring session and choosing points of focus throughout the session? You can draw on your conversations with tutors from your appointments and interviews to help explain what you have learned about dealing with agenda setting and tutoring challenges. You might also think about some strategies for agenda setting mentioned in the readings, such as having the student read the paper aloud while the tutor takes notes which determine the focus of the session; what types of strategies do you think are strongest/weakest and why?

The Tutoring Process

This week's Allyn & Bacon reading from Chapter 3 emphasizes the idea of the writer being in control in a tutoring session. According to the text, one way to do this is to have the writer read their writing out loud, ultimately allowing them to "call the shots."

In class last week, we learned that some tutors at the writing center have their students read out loud while others prefer to read their student's work to themselves before engaging in conversation. Based on what you have read (North, A&B, etc.)and our discussion last Thursday on the idea of a writing center, consider what you feel is the most effective way to place control in the hands of the writer. More explicitly, keeping in mind your experience last week as a student in the writing center, what techniques worked well (or poorly) in making you feel as though you were the "expert" as opposed to the "learner?"

What is a Writing Center?

Now that you have had a chance to read North and the background of writing centers from the Allyn & Bacon guide, reflect on what a writing center is. What did you think a writing center was before you encountered this week's readings? What is it to North? Have the readings changed your perception of what a writing center is, and if so, how?

Make sure to also look at your colleagues' perceptions of what a writing center is in the blog comments, and make connections to one another's ideas in your comments.

Welcome!

You've found your way to the blog for ENGL 393. This is a place where we will share ideas about the content we encounter throughout the course.

Each student will be added as an author (you will recieve an invitation via your UA email address). When it is your turn to act as a discussion leader, you will author a blog post here by noon on Monday before the class discussion of the readings. You should point us to things of interest in the readings and ask us to respond to critical questions. The rest of the class will add comments to the blog entry; some may specifically respond to your post, others may raise new ideas. In short, it's a place for discussion.

In class when you lead the discussion, you should bring the digital discussion into play (e.g., "Sally said x about this issue on the blog; what do the rest of you think about that?").

You may also author entries when it is not your week to lead discussions. For instance, maybe you have some ideas for your portfolio that you want to share and get feedback on. Please feel free to share those ideas here!

For privacy's sake, you may want to create a separate Google account for these online conversations. Also, please identify yourself only by your first name (and last initial, if we happen to have multiple people with the same first name in the course).

I look forward to discussing ideas with you!