course reflections

Update...
As I'm finishing up my last two research papers for other classes, I've noticed I have become much more prepared for papers than I used to be.  My desk is a huge mess of notecards and post its and notebooks with quotes.  Yes, it's a mess, but deep down there's organization to it.  And more so than I used to have.  So I think a combination of doing so much writing to prepare for my paper for this class and seeing other writers' sometimes lack of organization has actually sunk in with me.  It seems about right that I would get it my senior year =).




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My writing process has begun to change in terms of just getting it out.  I still need to work on it, but watching students fight over tiny details helped me realize it's more important to get out ideas instead of focusing on specific words and stuff.  
Also, having to post drafts to the blog really helped me just write.  I honestly have been pretty bad at doing drafts before.  I try to write everything almost perfectly the first time.  Shame on me, I know.  But having to put them on the blog and knowing everyone else is too helped. 

That ^ relates to my finished products... which I "finish" (at least in some sense) sooner/easier, so I have more time and sanity to finish finishing, or revising and editing.  So that's changed.  

As I said in class, I think I'm hyper-sensitive of my coaching right now - especially when I don't know what to do.  So I need to do some free coaching to figure out what I naturally do.  And then I'd like to do some more reflection on how I've changed or what I still need to change.  

I've definitely become more aware that in coaching conversation, variety is key.... Saying things different ways and have other people/resources around to help with that communication.

Doing the outline for the Lunsford essay helped me really wrap my head around it, so I think that means for me, it's important to re-say what I read.  I think I brought some of that to my sessions because I tried to get the writer to say what he/she was thinking or whatever.  

ma philosophie, the threequel (bog 22)

This is my revision as of 7:30 Monday night.  =)

A writing center is a home for writers, and a writer is anyone at our university who writes.  As students are the main groups of writers who visit the center, we are most geared toward them.  Every writer has different needs, and our center is willing to address each one.  But our ultimate goal is to help those who come in learn to confidently navigate the writing process.  We believe that writers benefit greatly from finding their own answers, and we also know that a collaborative environment is invaluable.  Therefore, we seek to share with each writer how he can learn from himself and the writers around him.

Institutional responsibilities

The institution should provide the necessary funding for tutors, administrators, faculty, space, furniture, and resources for the center.  The number of tutors and the amount of space will reflect the amount of students who use the center.  The center will employ a director, a few head tutors, peer tutors, and a few faculty members.

The center will be in one open, central location on campus.  It will have small tables as well as larger tables to accommodate various kinds of sessions.  The center will also be equipped with computers, the number of which will also reflect how many people come to the center.  The computers must have Internet access as well as Microsoft Office.

The center will also have a library of valuable resources to writers.  It will include dictionaries, thesauruses, handbooks, manuals for all styles of writing, books with writing strategies and prompts, grammar books, and sample writings from all stages of the writing process.

Faculty responsibilities

A few faculty members who would like to be a part of the writing center will be compensated for tutoring a few hours a week.  They are valuable to the center because some students enjoy working with a faculty member, faculty members can get a better understanding of how students approach the writing process, and other tutors can also learn from a faculty member coaching strategies as well as what the faculty generally expects from its students.  A faculty coach can come from any discipline in the university.

All professors teaching freshman/general education required writing courses should provide their syllabi/assignment sheets.  They should also provide a sample paper for each assignment that meets their standards.  Other professors, particularly those who make writing assignments a large percentage of the semester's work, are encouraged to also provide assignment sheets and sample essays.

Too, all professors are encouraged to recommend the writing center for any written assignment; however, no student may be forced to go to the center.  This means students' grades are independent of their visits to the center.  Any improvement after visits may be reflected in a grade, but a grade may not simply improve or worsen based solely on a student's visiting or not visiting the center.

Finally, if a faculty member disagrees with or has a question about something done in the writing center, he or she should approach the writing center director but not a tutor or faculty tutor.

Director responsibilities

The director's administrative responsibilities include hiring and training tutors, holding regular meetings for ongoing training and tutor feedback, dealing with faculty-tutor relations, observing characteristics/needs of students who visit the center and adjusting services likewise, and being a part of the day-to-day life of the center.

In hiring tutors, the director should try to have at least one representative from all the school's disciplines.  Also, the director should take into account not only the writing abilities of a potential tutor but also his or her communication skills as they are both essential.  As a part of tutor training, the director should brief tutors on the various approaches to writing centers and individual session, explaining where their own center fits in.  The director should also address the specific needs of the school's students, focusing on any non-standard populations like ESL students, deaf students, those in remedial programs, etc.  Another core part of training should be looking at and talking about the tutors' personality types and how they will work together and with students.  Along with the different types of people, the training should address the different types of assignments.  Tutors who have specific expertise in one kind of assignment will be encouraged to coach other tutors who may not feel as familiar or comfortable.

The director should negotiate any problems between a faculty member and a tutor or even the whole center.  The director should present to the professor the common practices of the center, defending them with other research and literature.  The director and professor may also consult session notes (see Tutor responsibilities) when pertinent.  When a tutor needs help or constructive criticism, the director will meet with him or her in a private matter.

To determine if the center needs to be adjusted in terms of of its budget or services, the director will monthly review who comes into the center and what they do.  Important details for these reviews include how many students are coming in and what their special needs are.  These reviews will justify the need for the center as well as any expansions.

On a day-to-day basis, the director will be aware of what's going on.  He or she should also regularly coach sessions.  The director will also be easily accessible for any difficulties a tutor may have with a particular session.  As a part of ongoing training, the director will conduct regular meetings for tutors to reflect upon and discuss their work in a collaborative environment.

Tutor Responsibilities

The center will have some head tutors who have more experience and will be available when other tutors have questions or problems.  All tutors are responsible for conducting sessions, but they are not responsible for editing or proof-reading students' papers.  After each session, tutors will make notes about what was done in the session and any other information the tutors feels is relevant (like any disagreements).  These notes are for the tutor's benefit because they will serve as evidence if a professor has a complaint.

Tutors will be professional at all times.  They will treat students with respect.  They will refrain from discussing personal opinions about professors and students when students are in the center.

Also, tutors will be encouraged to conduct writing center research with the director's approval.

Student Responsibilities

Students may come to the center for any kind of writing assignment.  They should bring hard copies or electronic copies of any writing they have to the session.  While we are willing to be help at any stage of the writing process, we strongly encourage students do not bring in last minute work; we want them to have ample time to produce good work.  Students may not ask tutors to edit or proof-read their papers.  Students will treat tutors with respect.

Students should understand that they have complete ownership of what they write.  They are not required to take any suggestions a tutor has, nor do their grades pend on a tutoring session itself.

draft of everything! (blog 21)

I haven’t changed my data analysis much from the previous draft, which I definitely plan on doing once I get a better grip how to do it.  My discussion will (hopefully) reflect the revisions of the analysis.

And my lit review is still long, but I don’t think it’ll be too hard to cut it down more.  (Hey, I already cut it by 2/3 - and that's with new info added!)

How’s my intro?  Do I need to define the loss more?  Is my problem/research question clear enough?  Do I need to hold off on explaining my findings?  Need to more specifically include categories of classification in discussion section?  Does my conclusion answer my question?

Introduction

            Every writing tutor has found herself in a moment of uncertainty, a moment of panic, mind either racing or empty.  Even the best of tutors will come to a point in the lesion where she does not know an answer or the right thing to do or how to do it.  In these moments, she is at a loss of words or actions.  I have researched what happens in these moments, and I have found that there are indeed trends in losses, and when a tutor is aware of these trends, she can better handle the loss or even prevent it.  Also, a loss can be not only a point of conflict but also a time when a tutor can learn from her student.

Review of the Literature

Although in writing about __________, many people have used a tutor’s loss as an example (?), no research has been done that specifically pays attention to why losses happen, what happens, and how the tutor gets out of them.  Elizabeth Boquet comes very close to talking about this in her article Intellectual Tug-of-War: Snapshots of Life in the Center where she looks at moments when tutors struggle.  She shows that sometimes, there is no recovery and tutors are left with an internal battle of perception, wondering if they seem like bad tutors because they did not resolve a conflict.  Another loss revolving around perception happens when a tutor must negotiate between her own goals and responsibilities, the student’s needs, a professor’s agenda, and to which expectation she wants to cater.  While a tutor can choose one role to play and thus recover from the loss in the session, she may not be personally satisfied and therefore still at an internal loss with herself.

Brooke Ann Smith’s The Socratic method: The answer for the new tutor looks at how a tutor can ask broad questions to help a writer discover answers and ideas on his own.  This method is effective even when the writer expects the tutor to provide all the answers and when the tutor is at a loss; however, the writer in Smith’s example is already observant and comfortable with the conventions of a college paper.

In her article Cultural Conflicts in the Writing Center: Expectations and Assumptions of ESL Students, Muriel Harris says that writing tutors and their ESL students have differing expectations about the routines of a writing session.  She notes, tutors are trained to be collaborators, and ESL students come to a tutor for answers and solutions.  She also discusses that as part of the cultural differences, ESL students may struggle with typical open-ended questions tutors ask because finding their own answers is a foreign exercise.  Too, she explains that these different expectations will indeed create a conflict, or a loss.  Harris also writes that ESL students respond positively to a tutor who is sympathetic or understanding about the challenges that come with learning English.

Finally, The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors suggests that when a writer is at a loss, she should admit it, then get help from a textbook or handbook (modeling good practice for the student) or another tutor.  When discussing grammar with a student, the authors advise tutors to being aware of their vocabulary as not all students will understand it.  The authors also recommend that tutors have students read their papers aloud to find their own errors, and the recommend that tutors ask general questions to help students find an answer.

Methods

            For my research, I conducted sessions in Kean University’s tutoring facilities.  I did nothing special to manipulate my sessions; I conducted them as I normally would.  I had some previous experience working part-time one semester a year ago at a writing center geared specifically for developmental writers at Charleston Southern University.  But I still consider myself a fairly novice tutor.  Also, I am a native speaker of English.

            The sessions were an hour long each.  Four of my seven sessions were with the same student, and the remaining three were with ESL students with varying levels of proficiency.  Out of my seven sessions, I documented 10 cases where I was at a loss.  After each session, I used a series of prompts to reconstruct the loss.  The prompts were a chronological outline of what happened, noting any preceding signals to the loss, the tutor’s and writer’s verbal and nonverbal actions during the loss, the details of the recovery, and both parties’ responses to the resolution.

            In my these notes, I wrote down nonverbal cues signaling emotions or thoughts, and I tried to be as specific as I could about the situation and what was said during the loss.

Data Analysis

Case 1: Jen

            Jen was an ESL student who had been studying the language for three semesters.  She spoke quietly and with a noticeable accent, so at times I struggled to audibly understand her.  She brought in a midterm paper that her professor had marked up, and she wanted to revise it. 

I quickly looked over her paper and saw several different kinds of problems, but the first paragraph in particular was difficult for me to understand – I could tell her paper was about perceptions of obesity, but I could not determine whether or not she was arguing that obesity should affect personal opinions.  My confusion about her topic was my loss, and I decided to use Socratic questioning by asking, “I don’t understand what you mean here.  Can you explain it?”  She answered by rereading some of the phrases in that paragraph over but never giving me the clarification I was looking for.  This exchange is an example of the conflicting expectations Harris describes where I was aiming to help her with the overall writing process by using the Socratic method, but she was not as willing to engage in free conversation.

So the conflict in this situation was external between Jen and me and our different expectations.  Ultimately I conformed to her expectations by taking a direct approach and telling her specific changes to make in her paper, but it did take me a long time to understand what she wanted to write.  After we revised that paragraph, I felt self-conscious about how I handled myself; I knew I was supposed to be the expert, but I had not known all the answers, and I could tell from her sighs and raised eyebrows that she was frustrated and tired.  At this point I was at an internal loss over perception, so I made an effort to rectify how I thought she may be negatively perceiving me by saying, “You’re doing a good job.  I know this is really confusing, and sometimes I don’t even know the right answers.”  Then she smiled and laughed and thanked me and said, “And you speak English!”  And Harris’ research shows that ESL writers are appreciative when their coaches are sympathetic to the difficulties of learning the language, which Jen’s smile confirms.

Case 2: Stacey

            Stacey was a senior English Education student who had four consecutive sessions with me.  She typically brought in journals about or lesson plans for her student-teaching.  She initially came in because her supervisor was very critical of her writing, especially her grammar, punctuation, and wordiness, and instructed her to seek tutoring.  She was very self-motivated – she told me about the practices she was doing at home and the resources she was using improve her writing.  Her directness in the sessions also indicated her initiative.

            During our second session, we were looking at semicolons and colons she had used in a journal.  I pointed out an example and said, “You don’t need this colon here.  It’s unnecessary because the sentence just… flows right along… it’s a complete thought together.”  She said, “Okay” and changed it, but she clearly had not understood because later in similar sentences, she did not always use colons correctly.  The loss here was external in that I was not able to effectively explain the rules to her, but I also was in internal conflict because I was frustrated that I could not help her.  At the end of the session, I asked if I could e-mail her some more information and examples for semicolons and colons, and she accepted.  The next day, I e-mailed her with explanations and examples from Joseph Williams’ book Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace.  She thanked me in a reply as well as in our next session, and I noticed in that next session that she had printed and highlighted the e-mail.   In our following sessions, she used the two punctuation marks correctly, proving her understanding. 

The resolution for this loss was staggered.  In the session, I instructed her on how to fix the errors, but I was not satisfied because I knew she had not grown as a writer.  So though it was unconventional, the second part of the resolution, going to an authority, helped me help Stacey conquer the colon.

(*I also want to work in to this how using a resource was helpful in two ways: it said it better and it was more of an authority – since Stacey and I are both senior English students, we were on a pretty even playing field (sort of…) and she sometimes disagreed with what I said even though it was pretty undisputable.)

** Also mention later session where I brought in handbook and avoided loss!)

Case 3: Stacey

            The following losses happened during my first session with Stacey and they are surprising in terms of my topic because I was very passive in the resolution to the loss.  As I already mentioned, Stacey was driven and certainly so from the very beginning.  She sat down, pulled her papers out, and said her supervisor wanted her to work on grammar and writing.  My first loss was very quick, and it was a loss of how to start the session.  I wondered momentarily exactly what we should work on, for she had given me some pretty broad subject areas.  Right after explaining why her supervisor sent her, she took the lead, pointing to a few specific paragraphs that she wanted to work on.  This was a completely internal loss on my part because neither of us ever physically or verbally acknowledged it, and she resolved it without ever knowing something needed resolving, with which I was perfectly content.  (blech I know that sentence is bad, but this is a draft.  so there.)

            The second loss, however, was anything but invisible.  We came to a sentence that was long and wordy, so I suggested she revise it.  As I talked aloud about the sentence, where its issues were and how they could possibly be fixed, she said, “No...,” not liking my ideas.  This was an external loss between Stacey and me and our different opinions.  After a few suggestions, I changed my mind and said, “You know, maybe it’s fine the way it is,” indicating we should move on.  But once again, Stacy recovered my loss.  She came up with her own revision and wrote it down.  So while I did not intentionally ask a leading question, hoping to lead Stacey to her own answer, I did open the session up for her to … um… figure out on her own what needed to be done.

Discussion

            From Jen’s session we can see that personality and background play a major role in a session with an ESL student and a native tutor.  When a tutor is not aware of how the cultural differences conflict, she may walk right into a problematic situation for tutor and student.  On the other hand, a tutor may pick up on stress signals from the student and make an effort to comfort the student even when the tutor has not read or heard that ESL student respond positively to praise and understanding. (combo of informed tutoring and responding to instincts.) (socratic method didn’t work)

            Stacey’s sessions also shed light onto several aspects of a tutor’s loss.  First, not all losses are completely resolved.  In such a case, a tutor can try to settle the loss as much as possible during the session, perhaps just helping the student get through one assignment, and then the tutor can follow up with the student on the given subject through e-mail or even in a subsequent session.

            Secondly, writing resources are incredibly useful during a loss about a rule or convention.  They serve several purposes; they answer a tutor’s question, they answer a writer’s question, they provide answers than can be different or more clear than a tutor’s answers, and they may be perceived as having more official and authoritative answers.

            Finally, Stacey was just one student who proved that students themselves may recover from and resolve a loss.  In many of my sessions I was at a loss from the very beginning because I did not know how to start the session, but the students often initiated the direction for the session very quickly.  The student may also recover from a more involved loss, like when I suggested changes and then recounted them.  Here, all I had to do was point out an area for improvement and Stacey, as an attentive writer, came up with her own solution.

On a larger plane, I have found that conflict is always the heart of a loss, and that conflict may be a tutor’s own internal struggle or an external friction between tutor and writer.  The conflict may be over perceptions, knowledge, or communication.  A internal conflict is often one where the tutor dances between a professor’s opinions, a student’s desire, and a tutor’s philosophy.  Another internal conflict may also be between how a tutor wants to be perceived and she is perceived.  The most obvious loss may be one where a tutor simply does not know the answer to a student’s question.  And a loss revolving communication is one where the tutor does not know how to explain something to a student or how to understand what the student is saying. 

Conclusion

            Because of the nature of my study, much is left to be researched about losses.  A study of different tutors, for instance, would broaden the scope of what happens in a loss.  More cases in general would have more statistical weight.  Research on the most effective ways to handle a loss could also be conducted. 

            Despite these limitations, my study does offer useful insight into the world of the loss, for simply being aware of what causes a loss can help tutors prevent them.  And on the other hand, realizing that a loss can be a moment for growth can help a tutor feel less anxious.  So really, tutors should embrace their losses.  They are inevitable, so when tutors take note of what kinds of losses they are prone to have, they become better tutors because they better understand themselves and the dynamics of the sessions they conduct.  And when tutors notice trends in their losses, they can then anticipate problems they will face and be prepared for them.  

on writing my philisophy

I'm having a sort of hard time negotiating between the Ideal and the Real... Ideally, students won't be forced to come to the center.  But in reality, it is probably pretty easy for a professor to at least make someone feel like she is being forced to go.
hmm.

data draft (blog 20)

Data Analysis

Case 1: Jen

            Jen was an ESL student who had been studying the language for three semesters.  She spoke quietly and with a noticeable accent, so at times I struggled to audibly understand her.  She brought in a midterm paper that her professor had marked up, and she wanted to revise it. 

I quickly looked over her paper and saw several different kinds of problems, but the first paragraph in particular was difficult for me to understand – I could tell her paper was about perceptions of obesity, but I could not determine whether or not she was arguing that obesity should affect personal opinions.  My confusion about her topic was my loss, and I decided to use Socratic questioning by asking, “I don’t understand what you mean here.  Can you explain it?”  She answered by rereading some of the phrases in that paragraph over but never giving me the clarification I was looking for.  This exchange is an example of the conflicting expectations Harris describes where I was aiming to help her with the overall writing process by using the Socratic method, but she was not as willing to engage in free conversation.

So the conflict in this situation was external, between Jen and me and our different expectations.  Ultimately I conformed to her expectations by taking a direct approach and telling her specific changes to make in her paper, but it did take me a long time to understand what she wanted to say.  After we revised that paragraph, I felt self-conscious about how I handled myself; I knew I was supposed to be the expert, but I had not known all the answers, and I could tell from her sighs and raised eyebrows that she was frustrated and tired.  At this point I was at an internal loss over perception, so I made an effort to rectify how I thought she may be negatively perceiving me by saying, “You’re doing a good job.  I know this is really confusing, and sometimes I don’t even know the right answers.”  Then she smiled and laughed and thanked me and said, “And you speak English!”  And Harris’ research shows that ESL writers are appreciative when their coaches are sympathetic to the difficulties of learning the language, which Jen’s smile confirms.

Case 2: Stacey

            Stacey was a senior English Education student who had four consecutive sessions with me.  She typically brought in journals about or lesson plans for her student-teaching.  She initially came in because her supervisor was very critical of her writing, especially her grammar, punctuation, and wordiness, and instructed her to seek tutoring.  She was very self-motivated – she told me about the practices she was doing at home and the resources she was using enhance her writing.  Her directness in the sessions also indicated her initiative.

            During our second session, we were looking at semicolons and colons she had used in a journal.  I pointed out an example and said, “You don’t need this colon here.  It’s unnecessary because the sentence just… flows right along… it’s a complete thought together.”  She said, “Okay” and changed it, but she clearly had not understood because later in similar sentences, she did not always use colons correctly.  The loss here was external in that I was not able to effectively explain the rules to her, but I also was in internal conflict because I was frustrated that I could not help her.  At the end of the session, I asked if I could e-mail her some more information and examples for semicolons and colons, and she accepted.  The next day, I e-mailed her with explanations and examples from Joseph Williams’ book Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace.  She thanked me in a reply as well as in our next session, and I noticed in that next session that she had printed and highlighted the e-mail.   In our following sessions, she used the two punctuation marks correctly, proving her understanding. 

The resolution for this loss was staggered.  In the session, I instructed her on how to fix the errors, but I was not satisfied because I knew she had not grown as a writer.  So though it was unconventional, the second part of the resolution, going to an authority, helped me help Stacey conquer the colon.

(*I also want to work in to this how using a resource was helpful in two ways: it said it better and it was more of an authority – since Stacey and I are both senior English students, we were on a pretty even playing field (sort of…) and she sometimes disagreed with what I said even though it was pretty undisputable.)

Case 3: Stacey

            The following losses happened during my first session with Stacey and they are surprising in terms of my topic because I was very passive in the resolution to the loss.  As I already mentioned, Stacey was driven and certainly so from the very beginning.  She sat down, pulled her papers out, and said her supervisor wanted her to work on grammar and writing.  My first loss was very quick, and it was a loss of how to start the session.  I wondered momentarily exactly what we should work on, for she had given me some pretty broad subject areas.  Right after explaining why her supervisor sent her, she took the lead, pointing to a few specific paragraphs that she wanted to work on.  This was a completely internal loss on my part because neither of us every physically for verbally acknowledged it, and she resolved it without ever knowing something needed resolving, with which I was perfectly content.  (blech I know that sentence is bad, but this is a draft.  so there.)

            The second loss, however, was anything but invisible.  We came to a sentence that was long and wordy, so I suggested she revise it.  As I talked aloud about the sentence, where its issues were and how they could possibly be fixed, she said, “No...,” not liking my ideas.  This was an external loss between Stacey and me and our different opinions.  After a few suggestions, I changed my mind and said, “You know, maybe it’s fine the way it is,” indicating we should move on.  But once again, Stacy recovered my loss.  She came up with her own revision and wrote it down.  So while I did not intentionally ask a leading question, hoping to lead Stacey to her own answer, I did open the session up for her to … um… figure out on her own what needed to be done.

                Although in writing about __________, many people have used a tutor’s loss as an example (?), no research has been done that specifically pays attention to why losses happen, what happens, and how the tutor gets out of them.  Elizabeth Boquet comes very close to talking about this in her article Intellectual Tug-of-War: Snapshots of Life in the Center where she looks at moments when tutors struggle.  She shows that sometimes, there is no recovery and tutors are left with an internal battle of perception, wondering if they seem like bad tutors because they did not resolve a conflict.  Another loss revolving around perception happens when a tutor must negotiate between her own goals and responsibilities, the student’s needs, a professor’s agenda, and to which expectation she wants to cater.  While a tutor can choose one role to play and thus recover from the loss in the session, she may not be personally satisfied and therefore still at an internal loss with herself.

draft: lit review, methods, data analysis (blog 19)

Parts I'm still missing:

One more lit review

2 or 3 more case study samples

I'm still trying to decide which sessions would be best.

And, um, if you can't tell... this is already really long.  I'm at 7 pages.  Seven.  And this probably isn't even half of the whole thing.  I'm an undergrad, so my requirement is 8 pages.  I think my last 2 lit reviews are too long... Maybe after looking at everybody else's I'll see how I can trim mine down.

Also, I'm wondering a little how much extra commentary goes in the data analysis section.  In my notes from that class, I see that I can include some supporting discussion and small observations.  I'm just eager to see what ya'll have done so I can know if I'm on the right track with that.

Literature Review

            Brooke Ann Smith’s The Socratic method: The answer for the new tutor was the first writing center discourse I ever read.  Smith, at the time of publication, was an English instructor and writing center tutor at Utah State University.  Her article describes one of her first sessions in which a girl brings in a fairly good paper, and Smith is at a loss as to what to say – after she read the paper aloud, the writer “looked… expectantly” at Smith, hoping she would “reveal the problems with her paper and correct them” (9).  She wanted to “move beyond the role of proofreader to that of facilitator, helping students… become fundamentally better writers,” but the writer clearly walked in with different expectations.

            At this point, Smith began to panic a little because of the high quality of the paper, and she reflects on her internal battle with perception, “Not only was my reputation as a tutor on the line… but my own self image as an ‘English person’” (15).  She settles on asking a leading question about what the writer’s thesis is and how she supports it.  The writer discusses these points, then says of one paragraph, “…it is kind of a tangent, now that you point it out,” though Smith said nothing at all about that (15).  For the rest of the session, Smith asked broad questions “prompting the observant writer to find opportunities for improvement on her own,” which the writer did (15).  So Smith concludes that “often a student knows what can be changed in her paper to make it stronger” (15).

When Elizabeth Boquet wrote Intellectual Tug-of-War: Snapshots of Life in the Center, she was a graduate student in a rhetoric and linguistics program, and she describes working in the writing center as her first “real” job.  In her essay, she uses personal “snapshots” to examine “moments when tutors are simply at a loss,” and to look at “those moments when tutors feel their own progress toward becoming the ‘ideal’ writing center tutor is jeopardized. 

            In her first mini snapshot, she describes a tiring day where one student ends up storming out of the center because she could not find her file on the computer, and then when an ESL writer comes in to get his grammar checked, Boquet fights the urge to be cynical.  In just this small picture, Boquet describes a situation where there is no recovery to the loss when the writer’s paper disappeared, and she touches on the internal conflict tutors often deal with in terms of perception, wondering if she seems like a bad tutor. 

            Boquet begins the bulk of her article by discussing the position of the tutor.  First of all, she claims, “Tutors are often objectified and essentialized in literature devoted to them” because most publications are about and for peer tutors, but rarely by peer tutors (118).  She also points out that “a peer is not a professional; a tutor is not a teacher,” so tutors have a confusing position of authority which affects writing sessions (118).  Boquet mentions Brooks’ article on minimalist tutoring and calls it “downright militant,” and while she “wouldn’t wrestle authority away from the writers themselves, [she] also [knows] that simply reflecting student concerns back to the student does not always foster the most productive tutorial environment” (118-19).  She also mentions she does not want to be perceived as having all the right answers (even if she does) because in an ideal session, she “would facilitate a student’s self-discover, [but she] also [knows] that real tutorial cases are not always as simple as that” (119).  This less than ideal situation can put a tutor at a loss where she battles the internal conflict of perception versus reality.

            In one session Boquet writes about, she had to negotiate between her goals and responsibilities as a tutor, the needs of a student, and that student’s professor’s agenda.  The tutee, Michael, brought in a work sheet packet with cryptic symbols and the professor’s assignment to write two sentences a night prescribed by a code that would ultimately yield a paper.  Michael asked for help deciphering the symbols, and Boquet “was astounded, speechless” (120).  Michael asked if all English classes were as troubling as his.  Boquet disagreed, to say the least, with the professor’s methods, and she writes, “I was caught between my knowledge as a professional, my responsibilities to students, and my precarious position as a graduate assistant in an ancillary university service” (121).  After some internal debating about all three arguments, Boquet decided to follow her center’s faculty-tutor-student protocol by keeping quiet and helping the student the best she could given the confining but required task.

            At the time, Boquet justified to herself that the “ideal” tutor is neutral and should help writers “operate within the constraints of his rhetorical context,” but later she was not so convinced by her justification (121).  She felt like she sided with the faculty because she did not “speak to the situation in any meaningful way,” yet she did not want to get involved in the politics of challenging a faculty member (121).  And ultimately she admits, “I don’t know how I would have done it differently…, [but] I never felt more acutely that I had fallen short of my own ‘ideal’” (121).  So while she did resolve her loss of how to respond to the student, she herself remains at a point of conflict.

Though her article Cultural Conflicts in the Writing Center: Expectations and Assumptions of ESL Students does no deal specifically with a tutor’s loss, Muriel Harris does point out key areas where tutors and writers have differing expectations of the session which can, certainly in my experience, cause a loss.  First of all, she notes that tutors are trained to expect or create a “collaborative, interactive, individualized setting” and to avoid taking control of the session in lieu of leading writers to internalize and adopt ways to become better writers (209). 

            To see what ESL writers expect from a session, Harris gave eighty-five international students a lengthy questionnaire.  In contrast to what tutors are trained to do, one ESL writers wrote, “Tutor works with you to fix your mistakes or solve your problems” (209).  Most other writers had the same perception that tutors work on specific errors rather than abstract writing skills and processes and tutors “deliver information” while controlling the session, “finding problems and offering solutions” (210).  Writers, in turn, say their role is to listen, so typical tutor questions like “How would you fix this paragraph” may be met with silence even if the writer has an answer; Harris explains, “For ESL students, finding their own answers rather than being told what the answer is or what they must learn can be a new process” (211).

            Harris briefly describes what happens in a writing session where both parties have these diverging preconceptions as a “cross-cultural…clash… [because] the two parties are acting out assumptions and expectations from very different worlds” (212).  This clash is where I see the loss, though the tutor may not recognize it. 

            Harris also discusses some ways a coach can deal with the discomfort created in the loss, which are possible ways to approach a recovery.  She mentions how some coaches can relate to being in a foreign country with limited linguistic knowledge, and she says, “It is our responsibility to be sensitive to their discomfort and to help them restore their sense of self-worth as they go through this process” (214).  In the questionnaire, the students themselves most often said they most appreciated American friendliness.  On the other hand, they impatience when they do not know answers annoys ESL writers.  And again, a coach’s lack of awareness of cultural differences may lead to other habits that annoy the writers.  In the advice to tutors section of the questionnaire, one writer wrote, “Try to understand how hard they have to work to study in the foreign country and language” (217).  The writers also said that if they respect writers, tutors will “be patient, polite, and helpful… [and] will make an effort to understand the student” (218).

Methods

            For my research, I conducted sessions in Kean University’s tutoring facilities.  I did nothing special to manipulate my sessions; I conducted them as I normally would.  I had some previous experience working part-time one semester a year ago at a writing center geared specifically for developmental writers at Charleston Southern University.  But I still consider myself a fairly novice tutor. 

            The sessions were an hour long each.  Four of my seven sessions were with the same student, and the remaining three were with ESL students with varying levels of proficiency.  Out of my seven sessions, I documented 10 cases where I was at a loss.  After each session, I used a series of prompts to reconstruct the loss.  The prompts were a chronological outline of what happened, noting any preceding signals to the loss, the tutor’s and writer’s verbal and nonverbal actions during the loss, the details of the recovery, and both party’s responses to the resolution.

            In my these notes, I wrote down nonverbal cues signaling emotions or thoughts, and I tried to be as specific as I could about the situation and what was said during the loss.

Data Analysis

Jen is an ESL writer who has been studying English for three semesters.  Her native language is Spanish.  In our session, she was not hesitant to talk, but she spoke quietly and with a heavy accent.  She brought in a graded midterm paper that was a response to a reading about obesity.  She wanted to correct the errors her professor marked, which were mainly sentence-level errors with some coherency problems from sentence to sentence as well as from paragraph to paragraph.

            I read the first paragraph of her paper and was immediately confused about what she was trying to convey.  I could tell she was thinking about how different sexes perceive obesity, but I could not understand any main idea beyond that.  So pointing to the page, I said, “I don’t understand what you mean here.  Can you explain it?”  Then she reread to me some of the phrases in the same paragraph without using any different words.  Back and forth we had an exchange where I would repeat back to her in my words what I understood her to be saying, and she would sigh, say, “No,” and re-explain herself, pointing to and repeating words from that paragraph.  Her sighs and firm pointing told me she was getting tired, and I was sending signals that I was also tired because my voice became more monotone.

            Finally she says, “Yes” to what I say about her point, but then I find myself at a second loss; I did not know how to begin helping her revise this paragraph.  I already concluded that open-ended questions would not work out well with her, so I sat holding her paper, squinting, saying, “Hmm” and “Umm,” and pausing before I finally decided to be directive.  I said, “Okay.  Well, this should be…,” and I proceeded to specifically walk her through the paper, telling her what to change. 

            After we revised the first paragraph, I sat back in my chair, took a big breath, and told her, “You’re doing a good job.  I know this is really confusing and sometimes I don’t even know the answers and you’re doing a good job.”  She smiled and laughed and thanked me.  I also told her, “I respect you a lot for learning another language because I’ve learned a little bit of other languages – even Spanish.”  She replied, “Oh, like, Hola?”  I laughed and said, “Oh, no!  I know a little more, um, like, [pause] Donde esta la puerta por la biblioteca?”  Later when we would come to a problem that I did not know how to answer, I would say, “Wow.  Okay this is tough.  I’m not sure.”  Then she laughed and said, “And you speak English!”