a no-show shadowing session

My writing consultant and I waited it out for 15 minutes but the consultee never arrived. The consultant told me that the policy of the writing center is to wait in order to allow the student a grace period, then the student gets a "strike" and if they have 2 strikes, they may lose privileges of the using the Writing Center. It was nice to have some free time to discuss the freak tornado that rolled though campus this afternoon (which I am able to witness from my dorm room window!) and sort of break up the somewhat awkward tension when I usually shadow.

the rest of the week 9/10 readings & FAILURE

There were 4 articles to read for weeks 9 & 10 and I blogged extensively on the Sherwood article and the Smith article but I have yet to write anything about the "Redneck" article or the "Ethics" article so I just want to write a few brief points about the two....Firstly, I think the "Redneck" article is pretty self-explanatory and just further illustrates the importance of a writing tutor or consultant role to help a student with clarifying their ideas not proving them with so-called "better" ideas. I can see this being an issue for me in the future because I like to generate ideas more than I like to actually write so if I'm working with someone who has to do the writing I need to be conscientious about not just giving someone my ideas even though I'm not doing the writing. (Not sure if that made any sense as I wrote it.) Secondly, the article about ethics and the "non-traditional" student took a surprisingly different approach to the Smith article about the "non-traditional student. To be honest, at first I was confused about the main argument of the article but after some extensive class discussion, I have a much better grasp on the various issues brought up by the article including the issue between ethics of assumptions/practice/mission, as well as the traditional vs. non-traditional student, working with younger vs. older students, power distribution, ect., ect., ect. In my opinion the bottom line, the whole idea of the personality vs. situation controversy plays a much more fundamental role than even the article emphasized. In other words, at times the situation can overpower the personality of the consultant whereas other times, the personality of the consultant can overpower the situation. (Again, not sure if this is making any sense to anyone but me.)

On to the topic of FAILURE:
I definitely agree that failure can breed better understanding and stronger learning. For example, I did terribly academically 1st semester of college but that failure had enabled me to learning better study skills, be more motivated in my school work, as raise my GPA.
That said, I capitalized the word failure because I think the word itself has a lot of negative attribution and is seen as passive, when it can indeed be an active ingredient to success.

A much needed read

"Apprenticed to Failure: Learning from the Students We Can't Help" by Steve Sherwood was an article that it was about time to read. I would say that this reading differed from other readings in the sense that it wan't about arguing a point so much as about conveying a powerful message. It was written in easy-to-read and comforting tone as it contained a reassuming message about the fear of failure. It was nice to read because this 'fear' that Sherwood elaborates upon does indeed cross my mind because I would by no means consider myself as having some sort of 'writing expert' status and I do feel the day I get handed a paper above my level of comprehension. A question I think we all ought to consider is whether or not good writers necessarily make for good writing consultants?

Sherwood starts the article by recalling a past experience working with a student who had learning disabilities and requested to tape record the session for later use. Sherwood reveals that this ended up disastrous and the tape recorder became an "unpredictable interruption". This makes me think about shadowing writing consultations. Keeping in mind that the student coming into the Writing Center is never aware ahead of time that a thrid-party will be sitting there observing, perhaps the shadow's presence serves as an "unpredictable interruption" to the student.

Sherwood goes on to discuss how we should view failure in a positive light, stating that "failure toughens us" and is "a key to our growth". (On a side note, I think another reason I liked this article is because he often references psychologists and I am currently taking a psychology class so I can easily related to the connections he's talking about.) Anyway, back on subject--Sherwood makes the classic argument that much of our fear of success comes from grades. We've had lots of discussion on grades in class and I think it can continue to be an endless conservation but nevertheless it is important to note the influence that the entire notion of grades has on us as students and furthermore, as writers.

Sherwood goes on to suggest some rather interesting approaches to "cope with the extreme fear of failure" and among them I really liked the idea of "lower[ing] the stakes for writing". As the article claims (and as I agree), this tactic can allow for students to be more expressive if there is less pressure and thus less fear to fail. That said, it's a great idea but I think traditional boundaries pre-established in the academic setting are a little hard to bend.

Lets try and be a little open-minded Mrs. Smith...

I'd like to start by saying that when I first started reading the article, "Non-traditional students in the writing center: Bridging the gap from a process-oriented world to a product-oriented one" by Angie Smith, I was determined to keep an open mind because sometimes I feel that I criticize the readings just for the sake of criticizing them.

Besides the fact that it is the start of the article's title, the mention of the "non-traditional student" is virtually everywhere in Smith's article. I can understand if the author wanted to elaborate on the idea of the "non-traditional student" and correlate it with the use of the writing center but what really bothers me is what Smith defines a "non-traditional student" to be. From her personal experience, Smith is a "non-traditional student" for retuning back to school to earn her degree after spending over a decade in the workforce. Thus, she defines the "non-traditional student" as someone who follows her situation and has been out of the academic environment for a significant amount of time. I can agree with her on that but what bothers me is when she adds a note of sympathy for members of this classification by saying that they have to deal with the big change in environment and they "must re-learn how to negotiate critical writing and thinking skills". Well wouldn't you stay first-year students have to deal with the same issues? High school is a completely different environment and for a majority of first-year students, high school did not nearly demand the same critical reasoning skills that college does.

Further on in the article, Smith makes me dislike her even more when she acclaims that the "non-traditional student" is different because they "want help" and "always come early and come prepared". So are you implying that a 'regular' student is lazy and unappreciative of receiving help? Well I guess if that was the case we should just close the University of Richmond's writing center down completely. She also states that the "non-traditional student" needs to "start from the beginning" and needs help "to go through the necessary processes to get a final product that would be acceptable". Well excuse me Mrs. Smith, but isn't that every college writer's goal?

I can understand making the argument of "bridging the gap from a process-oriented world to a product-oriented on" in terms of writing where the context and situation differs but I don't think Smith has the right, let alone the authority, to define how students and their needs differ when Smith only stands on one side of the spectrum.

Consultation shadowing #4 (but really #2)

So last night was my 4th time going to the writing center to shadow but only my 2nd time actually shadowing a real consultation.

The student that came in was seeking help for a thesis paper she was to write for an International Studies class. Unlike the last consultation I shadowed, this student didn't have a written paper--she came in with a very organized outline and a proposed thesis. She really had a lot of strong ideas but she wanted help to formulate her ideas into a cohesive argument. Pulling a Cazort, I think I'll mention in every consulting post that the consultant started the session by having fill out the pre-consultation worksheet since that seems to be heavily emphasized by the Writing Center. Following this, the consultant asked the other student a lot of questions and the two engaged in conversation about the paper in order for the student to organize her thoughts and clarify what she wanted to write about. One thing I particularly noted was that neither the student nor the consultant had a paper copy of the outline--it was pulled up on the student's laptop. Except for the occasion notes jotted down on the worksheet by the consultant or things added to the document by the student, this session was almost all conversion. I think perhaps the fact that they had the outline on the computer allowed them to have a more natural conversation without a paper, concrete distraction to look down at and pinpoint. Mid-consultation, I also took note to how the writing consultant suggested the student take the time and actually write out some of her ideas (like more detailed explanations) before finalizing a thesis. This particular student had too large of a range of ideas to work from so she really needed to decided which to implement and which to throw out. At the end of the session, the student expressed how helpful the the session was for her to just talk about her ideas before writing.

This student also repetitively referred back to what her "professor wanted". I think that of course, meeting a professors expectations influences the outcome of a paper. But this made me think further about if the presence of my "shadow" sitting there and blatantly observing their session would in some way take away from the consultation. I think there a certain intimacy between the student and the consultant and by having a 3rd party sitting there and taking notes, maybe the student might feel a bit of the spotlight effect and become less hesitant to open up in discussion about her paper. Just a thought.

Apparently, 3rd time really is a charm...

With two initial fails at shadowing an actual consultation at the Writing Center, my third attempt was finally a success.

Before the student arrived, the consultant told me that the student had e-mailed the essays to her earlier (which is usually not a consistent thing). When the student arrived, the consultant had the student fill out the pre-consultation worksheet. The student was an international student and English was not her first language. She came to the writing center to work on a response paper about an assigned article. The paper already had side-comments from the professor but the student informed the consultant that her professor still wanted her to utilize the Writing Center as a resource.

While doing my observations, I definitely saw how the consultant practiced the technique of asking many question in order to get the student to talk about what they were really trying to say. Looking the student in the eye with her hand placed in the middle of the paper, the consultant first asked the student to define what they felt the biggest struggle in writing the paper was. The student immediately replied that she needed her "writing to be more critical". I think if the consultant was looking down at the paper and asked the same question, the student would probably have taken a few moments and tried to find something from the paper. But by doing this, both the student and consultant initially established the main goal of meeting.

The entire consultation was not this broad. This was only the way it began. The session methodically progressed into the consultant asking more specific questions. For example, she asked the student to pinpoint a place in the essay where their summary of the reading stopped and their analysis began. The consultant would also make statements like "from what I understand by reading this is that...., is that correct?".  When doing an essay that integrates other sources, I never really realized how common of an issue it is to clearly decipher ideas and content of the source with the ideas and arguments of the writer. We often come across this issue doing the paper draft reviews in class and perhaps this is something I need to start paying more attention to in my own writing.

At one point, I actually noted how the student would talk about her paper and say the words "what I was trying to say". After all, this sort of characterized a role of the Writing Center and consultation session--to help a student bridge the gap between their ideas and their actual writing of those ideas--what they are trying to say.

I think next time I shadow, it may be more helpful to pay closer attention to the marks the consultant actually puts on the student's paper because I know that is also an important technique utilized by the writing consultant to help the student.

week 7 articles

I'm glad I decided to write this post today opposed to anytime prior because last night, a friend of mine asked me to review a paper for him. I can't even remember the last time I really reviewed someone else's essay for a class I'm not in or haven't taken. We spend a lot of time in this course discussing the editing and revising components of the writing process and every week we review drafts written by other classmates. I think we sometime fail to keep in mind the big role context plays in the consultation process. We have all read the same articles prior to reviewing the paper drafts on those articles and we have all read the same text prior to class discussion on those readings. Therefore, we may subconsciously fill in the blanks that would ordinarily confuse an outsider. 

Richard Straub's article, "The Concept of Control in Teacher Response: Defining the Varieties of 'Directive' and 'Facilitative' Commentary" correlates with Summer Smith's article, "The Genre of the End Comment: Conventions in Teacher Responses to Student Writing". Both of these articles criticize the role and effect that teacher's comments on a paper have in regard to the writer then making changes on their work. As I earlier mentioned, last night I was asked by a friend to review an essay for a class of his in a subject that I know nothing about. After spending way too much time on the first paragraph, I found myself pausing for a second then erasing everything I had written. I had realized that I was marking his words wrong and suggesting language that, in reality, is not how the paper should have been written, but rather, the style and tone I would have used to write the paper. I put my pencil down, reread the paper all at once, and realized his ideas were indeed very strong. I got a clear idea of his argument and main points having not even been given the prompt. But that said, his organization, sentence structure, tone, voice, and word choice definitely needed some time and effort. So along the margins of certain sections, I suggested areas he could be more concise and areas where ideas did not exactly connect understandably. Then at the end, I noted that he should pay attention to the grammar, sentence structure, verb tense, and all that other stuff. 

This experience gave me a connection to both of the articles because I found myself (after a real life application) disagreeing with the overall arguments made by both Smith and Straub. I did not write comments on my friend's paper because I "had to", I wrote them because as a reader, I found myself confused at parts and I was offering him feedback. Writing will never been definite--everything from word choice to ideas is of the author's personal choice. Thus, I think feedback can never hurt because in the end, it's once again the writer's choice on how they wish to apply that feedback to their writing. 

week 6 readings, part II

Earlier this week, I devoted an entire post to Cazort's book, Under the Grammar Hammer. The reading also included a selection from The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors and a chapter from Hjortshoj book.

The Bedford Guide (pages 45-54):
Hmmm, have we read this before? I am definitely noticing all the overlap in the concepts of course, as well as in this week's intended learning objective of 'style vs. error'.

The reading was about two types of revisions-- global revisions and sentence-level revisions. Just to clarify and reiterate what I took from the readings, global revisions consist of two parts-- development and organization. I think development could almost be a revision type of its own because it refers to the formulation of ideas, main points, support, connections, and analysis. The organization component of global revisions is about how the parts of development listed above are all sort of glued together in a productive and successful way. I think the organization component is really the bridge between developmental revisions and sentence-level revisions. Lately I feel as though the other readings (like Cazort's book) as well as class discussions are starting to limit a degree of importance and attention towards sentence-level revisions. I mentioned in class, a lot of these readings and ideas fail to really acknowledge that some writers need to constantly fix sentence-level mistakes as subconscious means in correcting their underlying ideas. Basically what I mean is that some people aren’t capable of organizing their overall ideas when their wording and sentence structure is in state of disarray.

On a final note about this particular reading, pages 49 and 50 offer "other suggestion for global revision". The first states to "read the paper as naive reader and indicate those places where it needs more details". My opinion is that this actually much, much more difficult below the surface. Changing perspective is not an easy task and that was never really acknowledged by the authors. Secondly, they suggest periodic breaks by paragraph or section to "summarize" or "explain what you anticipate will follow". I have nothing against this point-- I think it’s something that is pretty automatic at this stage in our academic careers, yet nonetheless, it doesn't hurt to reiterate. Thirdly, among the authors "other suggestions for global revision" is "don't overwhelm the writing with too many suggestions for improvement at one time". This third suggestion really rang a bell in my mind, because it definitely correlates to my previous post about how one of the Writing Center consultants telling me how he sometimes comes across working with frustrated writers. I also thought back to working with the high school student from the College Mentoring Program. I definitely could tell that I overwhelmed her at some points. I think basic human nature is what indicates the point of ‘overwhelmedness’.

Hjortshoj (chapter 7):
I'll only mention a few brief points on this reading, as I have just realized that this post is starting to turn into a brief novel.

The chapter is called “Writing in Reference to Others” and to broadly put it, the chapter covers how perception and reference relate to one another. I never realized the significance wording has in deciphering which idea, point, or summary belongs to whom—the writer or the reference. We saw this in last Wednesday’s class when reviewing the article essay draft of the week.  

While I could go on and on about everything Hjortshoj writes about, I’d just like to make the basic point that this reading (as do many other chapters we’ve read by Hjortshoj) tie into the notion of THEORY. After all, this course is called Introduction to Composition THEORY and Pedagogy. I think that sometimes we all forget that concepts and rules of the process of writing that are actually set in stone are incredibly minimal. There is not a defined way to write something-- in fact we call replicating another word as plagiarism. The majority of the writing process is and will always continue to be evolving and changing. Thus, I think it’s important to use this reading to reinforce what we often forget—there is rarely a right or wrong way to write; style and error may conflict, but in the end, the final product belongs to the writer and is dependent on the audience (if one even is intended to exist).

Another epic fail in shadowing..

So this past Wednesday, I was unable to shadow an actual consultation for the second week in a row-- however, this time it was due to my own obliviousness. To be honest, I actually feel pretty stupid because when I opened the door to the Writing Center, I failed to notice the big, bright yellow note on the door stating in big, black, capital letters that my consultant would be doing her session a study room at the library.

Oh the flip side, I was able to get more insight about the “writing consultation process” because another consultant (along with a student from our class) was in the Writing Center and did not have a scheduled appointment. Despite having yet to shadow a real consultation, it was still helpful to get another perspective from a different consultant.

Something he mentioned that had never been brought to my attention before was the issue with patience. I never really thought it would be an issue, but this consultant mentioned how sometimes other students can get frustrated when working on certain parts of their paper. I can understand how many students come to the Writing Center in the first place because they are seeking to revolve some sort of struggle with a given writing assignment. Also, as any Richmond student deals with, time is usually of the essence. The consultant mentioned various ways he deals with a “consultee” who gets discouraged. Interestingly, he mentioned that sometimes the best thing to do is just move on and work on other issues that student needs help with.

It was good hearing how his styles both overlapped and differed from those of the consult I normally will be shadowing. I think perhaps, switching consultants partially through the semester would be really beneficial so that we are not just learning to mimic the tactics of one consultant—but rather, integrate many observed tactics to create a style of our own to help enhance and encourage fellow students as writers.  

Oh, and just to finish this post off, I’ll add that I finally noticed the yellow sign on the door—as I was leaving…clearly this has not been the best week for me!