When your students use the writing center, what do they get out of it?
We have seen a growing concern among faculty about their students' writing abilities. Their concern is about students' use of writing to learn the subject matter of the courses, and also about the writing they will be doing on the job after they graduate. We have also seen a growing realization that English 101 and 102 are just a beginning, and that students' education as writers must continue and be reinforced in other classes.
Fully half of writing center visits are about writing done in classes other than composition. Students come from almost every major on campus. So, since many of your students are using the writing center on the assignments you give them, we would like to describe the kind of help they get there.
Anyone should use the center, strong writers as well as weaker writers. We still hear reports of BSU instructors telling their classes, "Some of you have grammatical errors in your papers. You need to go to the Writing Center." Their intentions are good, and we appreciate their sending business our way. But they are reinforcing an antiquated image of writing centers that hasn't existed in reality for about 20 years. Without meaning to, by singling out grammar, they are discouraging good writers from using a service they would benefit from and enjoy.
Of course we help with grammar; some of us are grammar nuts and love to talk about it. But we do much more. If we had to state in a nutshell what service the Writing Center provides, we'd say that we provide a preliminary audience on which writers can try out their drafts. The primary goal of a writing consultation is for the writer to air his or her concerns about a paper and leave the session with a plan for further developing or revising the paper. Any writer needs an audience that can help with these things.
To answer this question, let us start by explaining a bit about what happens during a writing consultation. First, the consultant asks the writer what he or she wants to work on. They discuss this in order to set the agenda for what they hope to accomplish in 25 minutes. Then they read the draft together, if it is short; or, if it is long, they look at selected parts such as the beginning, the ending, and one or two representative parts of the body. They discuss the concerns the writer came with. After that, if time allows, the consultant points out any other concerns found in the draft that need attention. At the end of the session, they review the main things the writer should focus on in revising the paper.
Writers come to us for help at all different stages in the development of their papers. Whatever stage their papers are in, we try to give them the tools they need to continue the work themselves. If they are having trouble choosing a subject to write about, we have them brainstorm for possible subjects and then explore a couple of promising ones to see what they might do with them. If they have gotten partway through a draft and are stuck, we get them to talk out the problem and try some invention techniques to find more ideas. If they have a very rough draft, we listen to the draft and give feedback on how it strikes us as an audience. After we have helped the writers identify problems, we have them try out strategies for revising. If they have a finished paper and want us to help them proofread, we help them identify patterns of error and get them to practice some proofreading and correcting strategies.
A couple of things the consultants definitely don't do is (1) supply ideas for the writer and (2) proofread a writer's paper. They are under pressure all the time to do these things, because that's what many writers expect when they first come to us. (We're sorry to note that some instructors are erroneously telling students they can get their papers proofread by us.) The students soon learn that we don't operate that way. Instead, we steer writers into leaming strategies that will enable them to find ideas and proofread for themselves. For ideas, we teach various invention strategies or ask a series of questions that will draw ideas out of the writer. For proofreading, we may comb through a select part of the draft - about half a page - along with the writer, to demonstrate how to find the errors and correct them. After that, it's the writer's job to use the strategies.
We sometimes hear complaints from faculty that a student went to the writing center for help, but the resulting paper was still bad. Or the student complained that the writing center wasn't any help. What went wrong?
This is difficult to answer because there are so many unknowns. Did the consultant give bad advice or wrongly assume that the student understood what was discussed? How soon before the due date did the student come to the center, and how much time did the student allow for revising? How much work did the paper need? Did the consultant make suggestions the students didn't want to hear? Should the student have come to the center more than once with the same paper to work on further problems? Did the student actually do the revising that was discussed in the consultation?
One consideration concerning how much can be accomplished is the length of the session. The typical appointment slot is only 25 minutes. There are reasons why the sessions are fairly short. The center can schedule more sessions an dserve more people, and each session can stay focused on one or two matters instead of ranging over too many subjects and leaving the writer overwhelmed.
If the writer and the consultant focus on just one or two matters and do them well, that's about as much as can be expected from a single session. If they discuss too many different concerns, the writer will feel less inclined to work on them. If the draft needs a lot more work, the consultant will encourage the writer to make a follow-up appointment. We can also make 55-minute appointments if the writer tells us ahead of time that the paper is long or the writer wants to work on several different aspects. If the writer brings in a draft only one day or a few hours before the finished paper is due (this happens all too often), then the consultant has to do triage, guiding the writer into making the most sorely needed improvements and letting the rest go. So if a student attaches a Record of Consultation form to a paper verifying that the student has been to the Writing Center, that's not necessarily a guarantee that the paper is good. The paper may still be an improvement over the draft.
Here, as with the question of requiring students to use the writing center, opinions differ among the experts. Some argue that writing consultants should know the subject matter, so if a student comes in with a paper on economics, philosophy, or engineering, the consultant will understand what the paper is saying and will know the rhetorical conventions of the discipline. Others argue that "ignorant" consultants can be effective because they can report back on whether the writing is clear; they can't unconsciously fill holes in the text from their own knowledge.
The BSU Writing Center has not had much luck recruiting consultants who are not English majors. We have had some terrific consultants from other majors: math, history, social work, modem language, and criminal justice, but they have been exceptions. Therefore we find ourselves taking the role of the "ignorant" consultant. This has worked out satisfactorily for the most part, because most BSU professors ask their students to write so that a general audience can understand what they're saying. Such a request makes sense, because all professionals need to communicate with some kind of lay audience, whether a single client or the general public - and for an expert this is sometimes the most difficult kind of writing to do. Besides, to a great extent good writing is good writing, no matter what audience or purpose it's written for.
There are opposing positions among writing-center experts about the long-term goals of their work. One is that "our job is to do ourselves out of a job." In other words, a writing center should be turning its clients into independent writers who don't need our help any more. The opposing attitude is that no writer ever outgrows the need for help, the need to find someone to talk to about their writing and provide new perspectives on it. Both positions have some merit. We feel less sympathetic toward the first, that we should be doing ourselves out of a job, because it implies that the writing center's main function is remedial.
The second position comes closer to our ideal. We have many regular clients who are independent learners. They don't come to us out of dependency. They come expecting to bounce their writing off us to see how it's working; then they go home, reflect on their conversation with the consultant, and revise on their own. They can function perfectly well on their own, but they like to come to us for a different perspective on their writing.
This, too, is a point of endless debate among writing center experts. There are good arguments for and against requiring writing center visits, and you can probably guess what they are. Those arguing against required visits point out that students who are required to use the center come with a negative attitude. They resent having to come, and they are not in a mood to get any benefit out of it. We have seen this happen. On the other hand, those arguing for requiring visits point out that many students are glad they were finally forced to use the center, and they come back with other papers for other classes. We've seen this happen, too. On the whole, we are willing to put up with a bit of resentment for the chance to try to convert some students who otherwise would never have come to us.
In the WACRATS program (see the next section), students are required to participate by submitting drafts and working with a WACRAT in the center. This works well, with a minimum of resentment, if the instructor has enthusiastically plugged the program and stressed the benefits. Most of the students we work with in the program are appreciative of our intervention in their writing processes.
The most effective way to work with the center is to join the WACRATS program. We have already written quite a lot about the program in previous issues of Word Works. Very quickly, here's how it works. A team of WACRATS (Writing Across the Curriculum Rhetoric AssociaTeS) is assigned to a class: one for each 10-12 students. Each student is required to give the instructor a draft of each writing assignment. A WACRAT reads the draft and meets with the student to discuss revision strategies. The student then revises the paper and submits it for evaluation and grading by the instructor. The WACRATS keep in touch with the instructor and the class, visiting some of the classes and meeting with the instructor about the assignments, the grading criteria, and any particular problems students are having with the assignments.
The WACRATS program has some important advantages. It involves every student in the class. It stimulates communication among the instructor, the students, and the WACRATS about the writing assignments. It allows the instructor to compare the drafts and final papers to see whether the students did effective revising. Because WACRATS is a fairly labor-intensive program, we can usually handle only about a dozen classes each semester. Classes are accepted into the program on a first-come basis.
For the past two years we have tried a variation on the program that shows promise. The instructor of a core music class has helped us recruit previous students who did well on the writing assignments for the course. We train the students and they, in turn, help students in the current class – sort of an "auxiliary WACRATS" arrangement. Such an arrangement helps us stretch our limited resources. We would like to explore similar arrangements with other instructors.
If you would like to work with the center but in a less formal way than the WACRATS program, we can make other kinds of arrangements. Call us with your ideas. Here are a few for starters.