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.