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Writing
Center Theory vs. True Collaboration Last semester, as an aspiring peer tutor, I was desperate to know: What could I actually expect in the writing center? I turned to essays by writing center experts like Andrea Lunsford, Leigh Ryan, Stephen North, and Jeff Brooks, among others. They offered me advice about collaborating instead of instructing, asking facilitative questions, and "the conversation of mankind." Brooks told me to be firm, to offer support and encouragement, and confused me more than anyone else. Surely, I thought, all of these experts were leaving something out. After peer tutoring for one semester, I've been able to go back and find a better way into those experts' advice, but I still think that their essays were incomplete. The problem with these essays is twofold. Essays on writing center tutoring envision a homogenous body of students that do not bring practical questions to the session, and therefore, the theories and advice they offer are often rigid. Such rigid theories, I believe, can be counterproductive to the students' learning. First of all, the experts' essays seem only to imagine students who are equipped with the information they need but may be simply unable or unwilling to access it. For example, in her essay "Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center," Andrea Lunsford writes that writing centers "see knowledge as interior, as inside the student, and the writing center's job as helping students get in touch with this knowledge" (Lunsford 38). Jeff Brooks also promotes the idea of locating knowledge within the student. In his essay "Minimalist Tutoring," he writes that the good tutor should have students find and correct their own errors, and that students will likely be able to if they are simply made to engage with their own papers (Brooks 85-86). In fact, Brooks cautions against giving students any instruction at all, explaining that "A student who comes into the writing center and passively receives knowledge will not be any closer to his own paper than he was when he walked in. He may leave with an improved paper, but he will not have learned much" (Brooks 84). To help tutors draw this knowledge out of students, most essays recommend using "facilitative" methods of tutoring instead of instructive--usually by asking the students leading questions. These experts' essays, though, offer little help to the tutor who is faced with questions from students who may not have the actual knowledge or experience it takes to write a convincing or even coherent paper. The students I worked with this semester often presented me with sessions that did not look like those described in the essays. Many of the papers I saw were already finished and graded. These students, having already and sometimes enthusiastically engaged with their material, now expressed genuine curiosity about why their papers weren't "right." They wanted to know things like, "Why does my professor cross out my words? How do I know where to put my topic sentences? Why does my professor tell me that there are problems with my paragraphs?" Some students brought essays they were very comfortable with, but they had come because didn't know what their professors meant when they told them that they needed to use complex sentences. One despondent student, a graded "C-minus" paper in hand, sat back in her chair and told me that she knew there were rules for writing a paper, but that she just didn't know them. We had talked about her paper's argument, her understanding of the assignment, and her concerns about her writing, when she patiently explained, "I've already thought about these things. That's why I thought this was a good paper." Students like these seemed desperate for the advice and instruction that so many essays so rigidly cautioned me against. Irene Lurkis Clark writes that essays on writing center tutoring are often rigid to the point of being counterproductive to student learning. She points out in "Collaboration and Ethics in Writing Center Pedagogy" that a major focus of essays on tutoring writing, as opposed to other disciplines, are centered around admonitions of what tutors should not do or should not reveal, rather than what they should contribute. She writes, "Unfortunately, writing center policies seem to be characterized by a large number of 'nevers,'" including, never write a single phrase on any portion of a student's paper, never make stylistic suggestions, and never find or label any spelling, punctuation, or grammar mistakes (Clark 91). Essays that presuppose knowledge as interior or promote defensive or minimalist tutoring are often packed with these admonitions and others. So why do the majority of writing center experts adhere to theories that center on what not to do? It appears that though many essays promote the idea of collaboration between the tutor and student, they still maintain that the process of writing is a strictly solitary activity. Stephen North, for example, defines the idea of a Writing center as a place to "participate and observe in the ordinarily solo ritual of writing" ( North 28). Clark observes, "In writing centers, the kind of assistance which occurs regularly among colleagues might raise questions, if not eyebrows, over issues of ethics." Though history students may be encouraged to study together, "Writing," she explains, "Ö has always been viewed as a solitary rather than an a collaborative activity" (Clark 90). I observed an instance in our writing center in which a tutor felt pressure to adhere to such rigid writing center doctrines at the risk of withholding information. He was tutoring an ESL student who was writing with a somewhat limited toolbox of words. As they discussed a vague paragraph in the student's paper, the tutor realized that the student was unable to get his point across because he didn't know the English word for what he was trying to say. The tutor and the student talked around and around the sentence. "I don't usually do this," the tutor finally said, visibly strained. "But I'm going to give you the word you need." I felt similar pangs of guilt when, working with another ESL student, I realized that he did not know the very phrase he was looking for: the phrase "in regards to." He was thrilled when I supplied it for him, and probed me for more words and definitions that he might use. When he asked me to write out these unfamiliar words on a separate sheet of paper for him, I couldn't help but oblige. I never felt, though, that I was doing all of the student's work, nor did I feel that he was only "passively receiving" knowledge from me. Rather, I felt as though I were supplying him with some tools that he may or may not use to find his way into more important parts of his writing. Were the tutor that I observed and I justified in our feelings of guilt? Not necessarily, according to Clark. "True collaborators respond to one another honestly and do not withhold information from one another about trivial aspects of a paper," she writes. "The more a tutor refrains from presenting information he knows, the more he is acting like a traditional teacher and the less likely it is that true collaboration will occur" (Clark 95). The pressure a tutor may feel to withhold information, she says, is antithetical to the flexibility that should distinguish the writing center from the traditional classroom. While asking facilitative questions is often an excellent strategy for getting writers to discover, articulate, and focus on ideas (Ryan 20-21), tutors should come to understand that no homogenous body of writers exists. I have come to believe that when a student comes to the writing center with a paper he has already engaged with--as many do--he will often benefit from honest advice, tips, and instructions. It does not help students to pretend that good ideas transcend the rules of writing. The fact is, there are rules and conventions in writing--any student who has ever gotten back a paper covered with editing symbols and red ink knows this--and there are strategies for writing that tutors are trained to understand. When a student confesses to not understanding the sometimes-cryptic language and codes of the writing process, a tutor should not feel pressure to withhold his or her knowledge. Tutors are trained to be fluent in the language and codes of writing, and we should not feel compelled to exclude students from this knowledge. All this being said, it is important that I acknowledge the practical usefulness of the essays I have just critiqued. A recent session with an angry and belligerent student showed me just what I should have taken away from North's article on defensive tutoring. While I tried in vain to help the student fit his wandering ideas into paragraphs, I should have instead stepped away from the paper and asked the furious student questions, like: Why was he so upset with his assignment? Why did he feel like he couldn't make anyone understand? I have also seen the value of facilitative questions, in several instances in which students--much to their delight and mine--blurted out the very phrases or ideas that they'd been looking for. The experts are
also right in explaining that a peer tutor works in the writing center
to provide his or her peers with an open mind and a willing person to
work through ideas with, and to benefit not just the students they tutor,
but the tutors themselves, in that they become a part of a community of
peers that exchange information with each other. What the essays might
also need to recognize, though, is that a tutor should be willing to be
a true collaborator: to point out and acknowledge problems in students'
writing and to turn to expertise or guidebooks as appropriate. Works Cited Brooks, Jeff. "Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work." The St. Martins's Sourcebook for Writing Tutors. Christina Murphy and Steve Sherwood, Eds. Boston: St. Martin's Press, 1995. 83-87. Clark, Irene Lurkis. "Collaboration and Ethics in Writing Center Pedagogy." The St. Martins's Sourcebook for Writing Tutors. Christina Murphy and Steve Sherwood, Eds. Boston: St. Martin's Press, 1995. 88-96. Lunsford, Andrea. "Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center." The St. Martins's Sourcebook for Writing Tutors. Christina Murphy and Steve Sherwood, Eds. Boston: St. Martin's Press, 1995. 36-42. North, Stephen
M. "The Idea of a Writing Center." The St. Martin's Sourcebook for
Writing Tutors. Christina Murphy and Steve Sherwood, Eds. Boston:
St. Martin's
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