Week 13 readings--Where did the semester go?

Wow, I can't believe there is only one more "weekly folder" of readings after this week. This semester has gone by pretty quickly. I am currently in the process of doing my classmate consultation project as well as making my final revisions to my article response essay from last week. Along with the readings for this upcoming week from the St. Martin's Sourcebook, my brain is about to overflow with all the rhetoric on the writing process and its million of components. At first, I felt that Part I of the reading was a bit all over the place. Then I realized, it was more of a nice and broad overview about everything we have learned thus far about the role of being writing consultants. It emphasized the processes, practices, the technique of utilizing conversation; it talked about cultural differences and the non-traditional student; it also explained the theories and paradigms of the consulting process. To be honest, the first time I heard the word "paradigm" was my first semester of college in an article about leadership for one of my classes. Since then, I have found that many of my classes here love that word and love to apply it to their field of study. After exploring the different stages of writing tutoring, Murphy and Sherwood give specific examples of tutoring sessions. It's almost ironic that the first example, with Darren and Yaroslav, deals with the issue of working with ESL students. In doing my final draft of my article response essay, (which is about ESL students and the role of cultural differences), I have been having trouble taking a clear stance on what the author is saying. However, after reading this short little example, it really helped to clarify that it is indeed important to attribute cultural difference as a major factor of understanding how to best help ESL students with their writing.

The Shamoon and Burns article, "A Critique of Pure Tutoring" took me off guard because I was not expecting to find an article in this book that criticized the whole collaborative, interpersonal, nonauthoritative approach to writing tutoring. The example with one of the author's professors providing direct, blunt criticism to her masters thesis was used to illustrate the beneficial effects of the alternative type of approach--or as the authors would say, contrasting to "orthodox" tutoring practices. After reading this article, I am still unsure as to what to make of it so I guess I will wait until tomorrow's class discussion to weight the pros and cons. I can't tell if I agree or not about what they are saying, party because we have just spent a semester learning the ins and outs of the approach we use in our Writing Center.