...INSIDE......FROM THE EDITOR...

THE RITING LABN E W S L E T T E R

WVolume 30, Number 8 Promoting the exchange of voices and ideas in one-to-one teaching of writing April. 2006

Idle assumptions arethe devil’s plaything:The writing center,the first-year faculty,and the reality check

Nothing is more comfortable than anunexamined assumption; like anoverstuffed sofa, it’s easy to sink intoone but very hard to get out of. For ex-ample, at my school, both faculty andWriting Center tutors take it forgranted that the Center plays a centralrole in teaching writing in all thecourses of the first-year curriculum.Both groups agree that the Center of-fers vital support to students negotiat-ing the unfamiliar territory of college-level writing. But are we agreeing tosomething that exists only as an as-sumption? Many first-year studentsvisit the Center—they account forabout 25-30% of our “business”—butmore do not. I would argue that theCenter’s ability to attract and help stu-dents in their first year of college writ-ing and college adjustment is ham-pered by a disconnect between what istaken for granted and reality: we havea clash of expectations coming from allsides. Students, faculty, and tutors allassume they want the same things fromthe Writing Center, and will get them;

Idle Assumptions Are theDevil’s Plaything: TheWriting Center, the First-Year Faculty, and theReality Check

Conference Calendar 5

Classical Rhetoric and theProfessional Peer Tutor

“‘Where’s Our Teacher?’Reflecting on Peer Tutoringand Teaching”

Tutors’ Column:

• Carol-Ann Farkas 1

• Lisa Lebduska 6

• Aesha Adams 10

Review of Rafoth, Ben, ed.A Tutor’s Guide, 2nd ed.

• Ron Scheer 12• Laurie JC Cella 12• Kim Donovan 13

The Road Less Traveled:English Education MajorsApplying Practice andPedagogy

• Maggie Hammerbacher, Jodi Phillips, and Shannon Tucker 14

For those of you planning yourregional’s next conference, please sendme announcements by May 15 so that Ican include them in the June issue ofWLN. If you don’t have all the detailsnailed down, a brief announcement, withcomplete information to follow next fall,will help those who have to plan theirtravel budgets now. And for those of youconsidering the IWCA 2006 Summer In-stitute, there’s information here on p. 5.

Also in this month’s issue Carol-AnnFarkas examines of some long-heldassumptions held by students, tutors, andteachers. Lisa Lebduska finds more waysto help tutors professionalize by consid-ering how outreach materials should bewritten. Aesha Adams reflects on herteacher/tutor persona and how her tutor-ing has influenced her teaching. Simi-larly, three tutors who are English educa-tion majors examine what they gain astutors that will enhance their futureteaching of writing, and three reviewersbring their different perspectives andcontexts to bear on the second edition ofBen Rafoth’s collection, A Tutor’sGuide: Helping Writers One to One.

So, grab some coffee, relax, and enjoythe voices of some colleagues discussingwriting centers.

• Muriel Harris, editor

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The Writing Lab Newsletter, published inten monthly issues from September toJune by the Department of English,Purdue University, is a publication of theInternational Writing Centers Association,an NCTE Assembly, and is a member ofthe NCTE Information ExchangeAgreement. ISSN 1040-3779. All Rightsand Title reserved unless permission isgranted by Purdue University. Materialwill not be reproduced in any formwithout express written permission. How-ever, up to 50 copies of an article may bereproduced under fair use policy for edu-cational, non-commercial use in classes orcourse packets. As always, properacknowledgment of title, author, andoriginal publication date in the WritingLab Newsletter, Purdue University,should be included for each article.

Editor: Muriel HarrisManaging Editor: Charlotte Hartlep,English Dept., Purdue University, 500Oval Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2038; 765-494-7268.e-mail: harrism@purdue.edu (or)

wln@purdue.eduweb site:http://owl.english.purdue.edu/wln

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You may also subscribe to the WritingLab Newsletter and the Writing CenterJournal, plus become a member of theInternational Writing Centers Associationby visiting <http://www. iwcamembers.org>. Please pay by check or online bycredit card.

Manuscripts: Submission guidelines areavailable on the WLN Web site.Recommended length for articles isapproximately 2500-3000 words, 1500words for reviews and Tutors’ Columnessays, in MLA format. If possible, pleasesend as attached files in an e-mail towln@purdue.edu. Otherwise, send hardcopy and a computer disk or CD-ROM,and please enclose a self-addressedenvelope with return postage not pasted tothe envelope. The deadline for announce-ments is 30 days prior to the month ofissue (e.g. Sept. 1 for an October issue).

everyone means well and assumesthey’ve been doing well; but from in-terviewing individuals from all threegroups, I have found that there arehuge differences between perceptions,expectations, and action.

In the tutors’ perceptions, first-yearstudents come in with a variety of ex-pectations and assumptions, but gener-ally are not really sure what will hap-pen in the Center, why they’re reallythere, or what the writing process re-ally is. Tutors feel that some studentshave an exaggerated sense of theirown abilities; that others are over-whelmed by the task of writing; thatlarge numbers are actually very badlyprepared for college-level work. Onelarge problem the students have goesbeyond understanding writing to howthey become acculturated to collegelife: they don’t really understand howand why student services like the Cen-ter work (especially the ratio of budgetto operating hours); and they aretripped up by their own developing,but often still-limited time manage-ment skills. The result is that, fromwhat the tutors hear and perceive, stu-dents expect the Center, like the Secu-rity office, to be open at all hours, andto have openings in the schedule to ac-commodate any student who comeslast minute—and are frustrated whenthey can’t get appointments when andhow they want them.

Once at their appointment, studentsappear to the tutors to struggle to ar-ticulate what they want from theirvisit, and often ask for help with“grammar” or with “checking thingsover.” The tutors, all sharing similar,comfortable ideas about the writingprocess, assume that the students arethe ones making false assumptions, er-roneously believing that writing is amechanical, surface business, that, likemath or science, is either right orwrong, and that their need is for some-one to identify their mistakes and tellthem simply and concretely how to fixthem.

Students’ other main request is forhelp in getting started, decipheringtheir instructors’ instructions and com-ments. However, few students bring inassignment sheets—only partly be-cause of their own work habits; appar-ently, many instructors give their as-signments orally. So the students try toexplain the assignment to the tutors,who in turn have to spend a lot of timequestioning the student. The result ofwhat the tutor understands is necessar-ily an interpretation. All of our tutorshave taught in the classroom beforeand know how they would handle writ-ing assignments but can’t be com-pletely sure their methods are the sameas the instructors’, especially those inother disciplines; thus, the tutors try tokeep their comments fairly broad, so asnot to lead students down a specificpath which might really be a misdirec-tion. Tutors subsequently notice thatthe students feel varying levels of frus-tration. Their perception is that the stu-dents want to be told what the instruc-tors want, and what they must do to becorrect: to the tutors, the students seemvery impatient and baffled when theyare instead met with more questions,instructions about ideas when theyknow they need help with grammar, orinstructions to rewrite the whole paper.In this last case, the students are espe-cially skeptical—it’s not that they’relazy, the tutors feel, but that 1) theydon’t understand the writing processwell enough to know why they shouldhave to rewrite a whole paper, and 2)they don’t want to do a lot of radicalrevision when they can’t be sure thetutor’s instructions are the same as theinstructor’s.

The tutors are sympathetic to the stu-dents, yet are not sure what they couldbe doing differently. As I said, theyknow how they would like the studentsto draft or revise; they assume the first-year faculty share, and thus teach,similar ideas about the writing process.But hard evidence is elusive, basedonly on how the students present them-selves during their visits; from the stu-

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dents’ reports, it can be hard to tellwhat, of all possible writing issues, aninstructor thinks is a priority for agiven student, or if the instructor hasany specific expectations about whatthe student will get from the visit.

One key problem, that no-one had re-ally noticed until we went looking forit, is that the tutors and faculty don’tactually know each other. Everyonehas assumed that Center-faculty com-munication has been sufficient, whenin fact there has been none, exceptthrough the indirect medium of talkingto the Center’s director (that’s me).The Writing Center is, of course, in thebasement, two to three floors awayfrom the Arts and Sciences offices, andso tutors and faculty rarely cross paths,and almost never communicate; fewtutors and faculty members have met.Although faculty are invited to providethe Center with copies of assignmentsand syllabi, the levels of compliancewith this request are fair to middling.From the tutors’ point of view, theyhave been assuming that inquiriesabout faculty assignments and criteriawould be unwelcome, that it might beseen as an infringement of territory, aquestioning of the instructors’ meth-ods. They feel it is up to the faculty tomake the first move—or the Center’sdirector, who has made overtures to thefaculty which have not been taken up(although everyone thinks it’s a goodidea). And of course, under our presentpolicies, confidentiality rules preventrandom discussion of individual stu-dent work anyway, unless the studentrequests a written report from the ses-sion. Instructors almost never makefollow-up inquiries of tutors aboutthese reports.

From the point of view of the fac-ulty though, my interviews with themreveal further potentially misleadingassumptions. These faculty memberstend to assume that their students(should) understand their assign-ments—given orally or on paper—wellenough to explain the criteria suc-

cinctly to the tutors, when both tutorsand students find this is not the case.The faculty also assume that the tutorswill give the students the same kind ofadvice about writing, revision, use ofsources, synthesis, etc.—and the tutorsdo, but again, without being sure whatthe faculty want, the tutors respond tostudent writing somewhat conserva-tively and generally. Faculty have toldme that they see the tutors providingthe same service to students that theywould themselves if they had thetime—but both tutors and at least onefaculty member believe that the stu-dents may be reluctant to take toomuch advice from someone who doesnot have the power of the grade to lendauthority to their comments. The in-structors like the idea of conferringwith tutors, but aren’t sure how orwhether to contact them (and again,concerns about student confidentialityinterfere here as well). Faculty opin-ions of the tutors vary, from seeingthem as providing a service, to beingcolleagues: tutors themselves aren’tsure how any of the faculty view them,but do report that some faculty seem tosee them as a fix-it service, and not asequals. And again, these are only per-ceptions, since each party assumes thatthe other knows what each is up to, andthat the other wouldn’t welcome com-munication anyway.

For this particular project, I inter-viewed my own first-year compositionstudents—a small, but outspokensample of about forty-five. Their com-ments were revealing, confirming mysuspicions of just how much we’ve allbeen off in our assumptions about whatwe’re doing in our efforts to teach ourstudents writing. From my conversa-tions with other faculty, and my ownclassroom practice, I know we all put alot of effort into explaining our writingassignments and the writing process it-self, including the value of feedbackfrom other readers like those in theCenter. We all mean very well. Andyet, as the tutors have reported, and Idiscovered in talking to my students

about this, there is something getting inthe way of students believing us.

I found that relatively few of my stu-dents had actually visited the WritingCenter, native speakers far less so thannon-native speakers. Of those who hadnot gone, some weren’t even sure wherethe Center was (though it was on the tourat orientation); some felt they didn’tneed the help, and many didn’t want any-one, peer or professional, to see theirwork because they were so insecureabout it. Most were reluctant to get helpfrom people who were not me; theywanted to meet my expectations, notthose of others. Which suggests that thestudents’ understanding of the writingprocess is not the same as their instruc-tors’ or tutors: we all understand thatfeedback from varying sources can behelpful, while at the same time, whatmatters is for the student to find her ownvoice, her own ideas. But our students,so worried about GPA, and so steeped inan outcomes-oriented culture, may feelthey can’t afford to mess around withideals: they want to do it “right” or not atall, and right is what the instructor—theone with the A’s and the F’s—says.

This attitude is no doubt reinforced bythe problem that students, both thosewho have not been to the Center andthose who have, have no idea who orwhat the tutors are; they’re pretty surethey’re not students—“they look tooold”—but aren’t sure what else theycould be. They assume they must be pro-fessionals of some kind, and were reas-sured when I said they were—but somestudents seemed hurt when I tried to ex-plain the part-time, temporary nature ofthe tutors’ position: “You mean, helpingstudents is not their career? You mean,they might not be coming back?” Mostof the students assumed the tutors werepart of the faculty in some way, althoughthey weren’t sure how; but they figuredthat surely, tutors and instructors must bein frequent communication—or shouldbe. However, without being certain ofthe tutors’ status in the community, thestudents were again skeptical of taking achance on what they might have to say.

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For the much smaller number of stu-dents who had actually obeyed my ex-hortations to “just go!!”—almost all re-ported that the experience was not whatthey had expected. Some had gone as-suming they would get help with gram-mar—despite the fact that I had tried toshape my own comments on their papersto emphasize ideas and structure ratherthan mechanics—assuming the latter isnot as important as the former. When thetutors did exactly what so many of ushave been trained to do, and focused onthe content rather than the grammar, thestudents felt they were not getting thehelp they asked for. However, the stu-dents were not aware that they could infact set up regular appointments to workon grammar separately, although I as-sumed they knew, having told them atleast once (!). Other students reportedthat they had gone to the Center expect-ing to be told what to do to get an A—and again, were frustrated when the tu-tors seemed to sidestep this question.Many students assumed the tutors hadbeen fully briefed on all assignments bythe faculty. Their general sense was thatwhether or not they felt—assumed—thatthey understood the assignment fairlywell, the tutors did not. As a result, thestudents felt they had to “waste” timeexplaining the assignment, answeringtutors’ questions about the criteria.Then, some felt the tutors were givingthem generic advice, rather than advicespecific to their papers (have you donean outline? Have you checked your the-sis?)—again, not understanding howthere could be a writing process, atheory of writing that supplies generalprinciples that can be applied to specificwriters’ work. Other students were frus-trated, as the tutors sensed, by the tutors’questions about the student’s ideas: theywanted answers, not more questions,and not more revision. Students werewary of doing too much revision basedon the tutors’ suggestions, because theywere not convinced the tutors knewenough about what I wanted to offerfeedback that would get them bettergrades (even when they had drafts withthem that I had marked). And if students

had been to the Center but had notgone back, it was for this reason—theywould rather follow my commentsalone than risk doing something Iwouldn’t want.

So, the only person who has had cor-rect assumptions in this whole tangleof relationships is me, insofar as I hada fear, and made assumptions based onit, that everyone else had incorrect as-sumptions about what everyone elsewas supposed to be doing, and whyand how. We could easily solve thisproblem by following E.M. Forster’sfamous dictum, “Only connect!” (147)and yet it’s precisely because wehaven’t been connecting—but haveimagined we were—that we’ve endedup assuming more about our effective-ness in teaching writing than is reallythe case. On the one hand, the WritingCenter tutors have a pretty good senseof how the students respond to theirvisits, and sympathize, but can’t domore because of their sense of discon-nection from faculty. They need toknow more about the faculty’s assign-ments, and criteria, and would find itreally helpful to feel welcome to com-municate with faculty, if not about spe-cific students, then at least about gen-eral pedagogical expectations. On theother hand, faculty like the idea of theWriting Center but are not making op-timal use of it. Faculty teach the writ-ing process, explain it, give assign-ments designed to get students toengage in it; but for many students,what we assume should be enough in-struction is not. We tell them what theWriting Center does, where it is, thatthey should go—for some faculty, thatthey must go—but many students stilldon’t know what the Center is for (letalone where it is!) and how they canmake use of it.

I’ve also begun to suspect that per-haps our students are simply sufferingfrom information overload, especiallyat the beginning of the year. The Writ-ing Center’s promotional efforts are fo-cused on the orientation period and

first weeks of class; our instruction inthe concept of the “writing process”tends to be most intense at the start ofthe semester—then we all assume thatsince we’ve told the students, they’vegot it. Nope. I think our timing is asmuch an unlooked-for culprit as ourother assumptions.

The point of this study has not beento discover new methods and tricks toget students to make more or better useof the Writing Center as part of theirinitiation to academic writing and lifein the academy. In fact, I have allalong been consulting my trusty Allynand Bacon Guide to Writing CenterTheory and Practice, my IWCA Writ-ing Center Resource Manual, my col-lection of Writing Lab Newsletters andWriting Center Journals, and have ear-nestly followed the experts’ tried andtrue advice, attempting to involve bothtutoring and faculty colleagues asmuch as possible—and have subse-quently been bemused when first-yearvisiting rates have stubbornly refusedto budge upwards. Here was my big,unexamined assumption: that doing“right” things automatically compelsothers to provide desired outcomes.This epiphany is what led me to won-der to what extent other unexaminedassumptions, especially my own, weregetting in our way—and once I wentlooking for them, there they were.What I, the tutors, and the compositionfaculty have to do to improve our stu-dents’ engagement in the writing com-munity we had assumed we had estab-lished—is to do everything we’ve beendoing, with one fundamental change.We can see places where we need todo some things differently, somethings more, some things on a differentschedule; but most importantly, wehave to make sure that the only as-sumption we operate on is that takingthings for granted is no substitute fortaking action.

Carol-Ann FarkasMassachusetts College of Pharmacy

and Health SciencesBoston, MA

April 2006

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Works Cited:

Barnett, Robert W. and Jacob S.Blumner, eds. The Allyn andBacon Guide to Writing CenterTheory and Practice. Boston:Allyn and Bacon, 2001.

Forster, EM. Howard’s End. NewYork: Bantam Books, 1985.

Silk, Bobbie Bayless, ed. The WritingCenter Resource Manual.Emmitsburg MD: NWCA Press,1999.

Myers, Sharon A. “Reassessing ‘theProofreading Trap’: ESL Tutoringand Writing Instruction.” WritingCenter Journal 24: 1 (Fall/Winter,2003): 51-70.

chapter, “Recent Developments inHelping ESL Writers,” for instance,suggests strategies for tutors to ensureESL writers’ ownership of their papers,and explains how to negotiate directiveand non-directive approaches to tutor-ing ESL students. Ritter grounds hersuggestions in theory and offers furtherreadings that will introduce tutors towriting center theory regarding ESLstudents. Similarly useful to my tutorswill be Carol Briam’s chapter, “ShiftingGears: Business and Technical Writ-ing,” and Beth Rapp Young’s chapter,“Can You Proofread This?” (a perennialconcern for all writing tutors).

The range of contributors to this vol-ume, from seasoned writing center theo-rists to current writing center workersand recent peer tutors, contributes to theaccessibility of the articles as well. Stu-dent tutors will likely welcome chapterssuch as “Tutoring in EmotionallyCharged Situations” written by formertutors Corinne Agostinelli, Helena Poch,and Elizabeth Santoro both for its topicand authorship. A Tutor’s Guide will bea particularly apt addition to our tutortraining materials— one that will, I hope,inspire our tutors to incorporate moretheory into their already admirablepractice.

Review of Tutoring Guide(continued from page 13)

• New to directing a writing center?• Starting up a new center?• Looking for new directions for your writing center?• Planning a writing center career?• Interested in learning and sharing with writing-center colleagues?• Ready for more sustained writing-center discussions thanconferences offer?• $500 tuition + travel & lodging

Join us for an intensive week of stimulating presentations, discus-sions, mentoring, and fun with writing center colleagues from aroundthe world. The institute will provide a mentoring network of profes-sional contacts, including both new directors and a range of veteranwriting center professionals. Leaders are drawn from both large andsmall colleges and universities, community colleges, and secondaryschools, with specialties that range from technology in the writingcenter to peer tutoring and writing across the curriculum.

IWCA Summer Institute, July 23-28, 2006Co-ChairsMichele Eodice, University of Kansas(mailto:meodice@ku.edu)Clyde Moneyhun, Stanford University(mailto:moneyhun@stanford.edu)

Workshop LeadersAl DeCiccio (Rivier College)Lisa Ede (Oregon State University)Michele Eodice (University of Kansas)Scott Miller (Sonoma State University)Clyde Moneyhun (Stanford University)Janet Swenson (Michigan State University)Sherri Winans (Whatcom Community CollegeLisa Lebduska (Wheaton College)Jenny Jordan (Glenbrook North High School)

Online registration at: http://swc.stanford.edu/iwcasi2006/

Stanford University

April 7-8, 2006: NorthEast Writing Centers Association, inNashua and Amherst, NHContact: Leslie Van Wagner, e-mail:lvanwagner@rivier.edu.

April 8, 2006: Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association, inAnnapolis, MDContact: Chip Crane, e-mail: cecrane@usna.edu; LeighRyan, e-mail: lr@umd.edu: and Lisa Zimmerellli, e-mail:lzimmerelli@umuc.edu. Conference Web site: <http://www2.mcdaniel.edu/mawca/conf_2006.htm>.

April 29, 2006: Pacific Northwest Writing Center Association,in Corvallis, OR

Calendar for Writing Center AssociationsContact: Conference Web site: <http://www.acadweb.wwu.edu/writepro/PNWCA.htm>.

June 24-26, 2006. European Writing Centers Association,in Istanbul, Turkey Contact: Dilek Tokay, email: dilekt@sabanciuniv.edu.Conference website: <http://ewca.sabanciuniv.edu/ewca2006>.

October 25-29, 2006: Midwest Writing Centers Association,in St. Louis, MOContact: Susan Mueller at smueller@stlcop.edu or DawnFels at dfels@earthlink.net. Conference Web site:<http://www.ku.edu/~mwca/>.

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Classical rhetoric and the professional peer tutor

“Writing sucks. Yeah, we know, butwe can help.”

My Provost was reading to me overthe phone. “Lisa, I have a writing cen-ter poster in front of me that I was hop-ing you could explain.”

So much to say, really.

About tutor autonomy. About cre-ativity. About keeping my untenuredposition as director of Worcester Poly-technic Institute’s Center for Commu-nication across the Curriculum.

After explaining that I hadn’t seenthe poster before it was circulated, as-suring the Provost that others would beremoved, and sharing a brief laughwith him, I began considering how tu-tor training might includeprofessionalization that did not trans-form tutors into automatons.

A shared challenge faced by those ofus who work with tutors is the issue ofongoing development. Once tutorshave completed their initial training—whether through workshops, pre-se-mester meetings or an entire course—the question of how to continue tutordevelopment remains. While some on-going training necessarily addressesadministrative issues such as schedul-ing, record-keeping and even roomprotocol, and other training rightfullyconsists of pedagogical exchangessuch as tutorial debriefings and cre-ative play exercises, we need not thinkof training in binary terms: administra-tion versus pedagogy. Rather, certainadministrative artifacts from the tutors’professional roles—namely, texts ofintroduction and tutorial reports—maybe used as a way to combine profes-sionalism with pedagogy, and, in doingso, enhance tutors’ development asboth tutors and writers.

Peer tutors who compose writing

center materials share a struggle withdirectors who must write annual re-ports. As Andrea Zachary notes, direc-tors “sometimes are at a loss on how towrite for our professional audiences”(1). According to Zachary, “Applyingbasic strategies of technical writing canbe beneficial for writing center admin-istrators who write professional andtechnical documents” (1). While thesame approach might be used by peertutors who are developing writing cen-ter publicity and completing tutorial re-ports, I wish to suggest that directorscomplicate this strategy during tutortraining, infusing it with an introduc-tion to classical rhetorical principlesthat allow tutors to consider the com-municative contexts in which theyoperate.

Kenneth Bruffee’s oft-cited cautionagainst constructing peer tutors as“little teachers” has perhaps led manyin the writing center community toback away from notions of peer profes-sionalism as we struggle to keep tutorsin that liminal space in which they areneither entirely pure student nor mini-teacher and are, as Muriel Harris put it,“in the middle” (“Talking”). Whileproducing proscribed documents orfilling out tutorial forms threatens toconstruct tutors as “little administra-tors” (a notion even more frightful than“little teachers”), working through therhetorical issues surrounding writingcenter professional documents allowstutors to maintain the precious liminalquality described by Harris. Addition-ally, composing “professionalized”materials can provide tutors with thetime and space in which to explore, re-flect and collaborate about who theyand their peers are and are becoming.

Much of the writing-center opposi-tion to certain forms of professionalismstems from Harvey Kail’s and JohnTrimbur’s 1987 “The Politics of PeerTutoring,” in which they contrast the

“educational consciousness” of twomodels of peer tutoring: writing-centerand “curriculum-based” (5). The writ-ing-centered approach employed “pub-licity and word of mouth”—talk ofsuccessful tutorials, student-to-stu-dent—to attract tutees (6), whereas thecurriculum-based model, in which tu-tors were attached to a specific course(also known as designated or dedicatedtutoring) with guaranteed clientele, of-fering, in Kail and Trimbur’s words“operational efficiency” (7). Kail andTrimbur rejected this curriculummodel, asserting that it “installed” tu-tors in a power grid as transmitters ofreceived knowledge, thereby prevent-ing them from collaborating as peers(8). Kail and Trimbur concluded thatthe curriculum-based approach was“administratively more efficient” butthat the writing-center model was ulti-mately more educationally effective,better at developing students and al-lowing them to “probe the traditionalrelationships of teaching and learning”(10).

Although I support the need for tu-tors to explore the traditional relation-ships of teaching and learning, I wouldnevertheless argue that the instrumentsof administrative efficiency—writingcenter publicity and tutorial reports—need not exist exclusively as conduitsof hierarchical power. Indeed, when in-corporated into tutor training sessionsrather than positioned as necessaryevils—the analysis of such documentsmay actually enhance the explorationof the traditional relationships that theywould seem to reify.

Including tutors regularly in theanalysis and/or design of outreach ma-terials can do more than simply keepthe center running. Indeed, when pre-sented as issues to be debated and ex-plored rather than as fact-based rules tobe followed without question, consid-

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erations of professional communica-tion can contribute to the robust devel-opment of the tutors and the life of thecenter itself.

While most writing tutors receiveample guidance in meeting their tuteesface to face (see, for example, Meyerand Smith; Gillespie and Lerner;Capossela; and Clark), few seem to re-ceive similar guidance about writtenintroductions. In my experience,though, inviting tutors to craft indi-vidual statements of introduction forwriting center Web sites or to classesfor whom they would tutor proved tobe infinitely valuable. JamesKinneavy’s translation of kairos forcomposition provides an especiallyuseful frame for approaching suchstatements. As Kinneavy explains it,kairos is “the appropriateness of thediscourse to the particular circum-stances of the time, place, speaker, andaudience involved” (84). One kairoticmoment for tutors, then, would be themoment at which they meet potentialtutees—through Web sites, flyers,posters and introductory e-mails.

Because writing center outreach ma-terials are both informative and persua-sive, I have found it helpful to combinetechnical writing strategies with classi-cal rhetorical principles in tutor train-ing, an approach that allows tutors torecognize professional contexts andconnect with the broader education inacademic writing that they have al-ready received. At the same time,working through the rhetorical issuesraised by the composition of profes-sional documents allows tutors tomaintain their individual approaches totutoring.

During our tutor training workshops,I asked designated tutors to composeletters of introduction to their respec-tive classes. We began with a modi-fied version of John M. Lannon’s “Au-dience and Use Profile,” which adviseswriters to answer a range of questionsabout their audience, from their priorknowledge about their topic, to their

probable attitudes toward the writerand the intended effect of the docu-ment (33). The tutors, who were at-tached to an interdisciplinary courseasking students to write about social/technological issues, developed a richdiscussion as they engaged the follow-ing questions.

Who were the students in the coursewith whom the tutors would be work-ing? What did they know about writingin general and about their writing forthis course in particular? What mightbe some of their fears, concerns, andpre-dispositions about writing?

While potential tutees were whatLannon refers to as the “primary” read-ers of the introductory letters, the tu-tors were well aware that there weresecondary readers—faculty and admin-istrators—as well. The knowledge andunderstanding of these secondary read-ers further informed our discussions ofaudience. What, for example, was theinstructor’s attitudes toward tutoring?What needs did this faculty memberhave? Did the needs of these variousreaders ever conflict? And, if they did,in what way?

By using the concept of an audienceprofile to compose their individual let-ters of introduction, the tutors wereable to begin identifying the complexi-ties surrounding tutoring itself. How-ever, the primary purpose of technicalwriting is usually to convey informa-tion, whereas the tutor introductory let-ter has a distinct persuasive compo-nent, so our approach to the audienceprofile had to be modified somewhat.The readers of an introductory letter—potential tutees—are not always con-vinced of tutoring’s usefulness, even if(sometimes especially if) they havebeen required to visit the writing cen-ter. And, even if they are convinced oftutoring’s benefits, they might have amuch narrower understanding than thetutors of what those benefits entail.Some, for example, might be thinkingsolely in terms of raising their grade orplacating their instructor. The introduc-

tory tutoring letter or e-mail, then,should persuade as well as inform. Tofacilitate this idea of persuasive profes-sional materials, I also introduced (orin some cases reintroduced) tutors tothe Aristotelian concepts of ethos,logos, and pathos—persuasive appealsto shared values, reason, and emotion.

We continued with a group brain-storm about constructing an ethos in aletter of introduction. How would theycreate a credible persona for their read-ers? What elements of their characterand experience would make them cred-ible in this particular context? Thesequestions, to which we returned eachtime a tutor composed a new introduc-tion, allowed us to see the dynamics oftutoring in general and their own evo-lution in particular. Several of the tu-tors immediately offered their studentcredentials: their majors, classes theyhad taken; one student wanted to in-clude his G.P.A. (a notion the other tu-tors quickly rejected). Others startedtalking about qualities they possessed:an interest in writing, an ability to lis-ten. When I pointed out that “ethos”also included the ability to connectwith one’s audience, the discussionturned more empathetic and tutors con-sidered ways of identifying with thestruggles their potential tutees faced.

Of course, how to identify with anaudience is another issue. Although theethos of the “writing sucks” postercertainly connected with some readers,empathizing through what Trimbur re-fers to as “unionizing” (23), the tutorsin this instance had broader audiences.Once it appeared on a public poster,the communication between tutor andpotential tutee mushroomed to includelarger and more diverse audiences, in-cluding those who would not wish to“unionize” in quite the same way.

After we had brainstormed the vari-ous possibilities for creating an ethos,we turned to discuss the possibilitiesfor logos. Would an appeal to theirpeers’ logic work in this kind of letter?Was there, in other words, a logical

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reason for working with a peer?

Finally, we began discussing pathosand to what extent an appeal to theirreaders’ emotions would be effectiveand ethical. Would they, for example,appeal to humor: “I write good. Comework with me,” as someone suggested?Or would they appeal to fear: “Workwith a tutor or risk getting the gradeyou dread.” The discussion turnedlively as we sifted through the possi-bilities, recognizing that effective ap-peals in commercial advertising werenot necessarily the approach for a writ-ing center. Although no one arguedthat we should frighten students intovisiting the writing center, the reasonswhy we shouldn’t do so provided uswith a rich exchange of who we were,why people write, and why they writecollaboratively.

Engaging issues of classical rhetoricand professional communication is anequally effective approach to teachingtutors about tutorial reports. AlthoughKail and Trimbur propose that thewriting-center model, relatively devoidof administrative influence, is a meansof “demystifying the authority ofknowledge and its institutions” (11),the tutorial report, when presented asan artifact of authority, may actually bea means of demystifying that authority.To a certain extent, of course, tutorialreports conduct authority. As Boquetobserves, “They prove our usefulnessinstitutionally. They compose us.”(23).And in many cases, the “forms” thatBoquet describes can counter the gen-erative, thoughtful environment that di-rectors strive to create. These forms,Boquet explains, “write the studentsthat we tutor, reducing a dynamic in-terpersonal exchange to a mimeo-graphed sheet full of circles andchecks” (23). Particularly in an era oftutorial management software, inwhich the record-keeping process isbecoming increasing automated—lessthoughtful, less seemingly complex,more hurried—the tutorial report hasmore reductive power than ever before.It is still possible, however, to resist

this inscription somewhat by using tu-tor training to analyze the form withinits rhetorical context. Such momentsallow us to slow down the documenta-tion process, to enter what Anne Gellercharacterizes as “epochal time in thewriting center” whenever possible.

The tutorial report is a hybrid genre,attempting to serve multiple purposesand often written for multiple audi-ences. In some writing centers, tutorscomplete tutorial reports, and, if theyhave received the tutee’s permission,send them to the instructor. Sometimesthe tutees receive a copy and some-times a copy is kept on file. In thesecases the report has multiple audiencesincluding the instructor, the tutee, thedirector, and the tutors who work withthe tutee in the future. The decisionabout what the tutorial report shoulddo is an example of the “tradeoff” thatHarris outlines, noting that writingcenter administrators must often makechoices and that such choices are al-ways inevitably context-specific (“So-lutions” 167). Ultimately, however, thetutorial report offers yet another ve-hicle for tutor socialization.

Tom Hemmeter emphasizes the im-portance of tutorial reports, despite thepotential risk of turning the tutorialinto a classroom service (42). ForHemmeter, the report provides an op-portunity to demonstrate the quality ofpeer tutoring, particularly when the re-port is written with “objectivity, tact,completeness, and mechanical correct-ness” (43). Hemmeter recommendsworking with tutors to avoid evaluativestatements that could cause a conflictwith the instructor while also alteringthe tutor’s role into something intoshould not be (44). As with writing let-ters of introduction, tutors might againwork through an audience analysis pro-file as a way of understanding the fac-tors surrounding the tutorial report it-self. Why do we keep tutorial reports?Who reads the reports? Why? Howhave tutorial reports been used in thepast? How might they be used in thefuture?

Tutorial reports, like letters of intro-duction, are nevertheless artifacts ofpersuasion, designed to convince fac-ulty and administrators that the centeris indeed doing good, responsiblework. They also, as Boquet notes, pro-tect the tutor, serving to document ses-sions that “stray from the norm” (23).Analyzing the ethos of such documen-tation can again prove to be an espe-cially rich discussion. What elementsof the report construct the tutor’sethos, making him or her a crediblewriter in this instance?

What are the considerations of pa-thos? Tutors sometimes, for example,wish to appeal to an instructor’s sym-pathy, using the tutorial report to dis-cuss a peer’s efforts (“Jessica workedvery hard on this paper.”) While thedesire to empathize with the writer is adesirable trait, expressing that desire asan evaluation of the writer’s effortagain puts the tutor and the center in anawkward position. And, as a rhetoricalappeal, an appeal to sympathy mightbe questioned for its effectiveness, par-ticularly as tutors return to the purposeof the tutorial report. Ideally, the reportis not designed to win sympathy forany particular student but stands in-stead as a means of describing the ef-forts made during the tutorial.

Finally, a tutorial report presents anopportunity to unfold the logos of thetutorial itself. A tutorial report canmake visible the hidden logic of a tuto-rial session—why, for example, a tutorchose to work on a particular aspect ofa paper, or how it is possible to devotean entire session to the discussion of athesis statement. So, while on the onehand the tutorial report represents a re-lationship between learning and au-thority that education should continu-ally question, at the same time itpresents an opportunity to scrutinizethat relationship.

On a practical level, then, profes-sional documents such as outreach ma-terials and tutorial reports are an insti-

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tutional necessity that keep writingcenters accountable and viable, butthey need not be regarded as a neces-sary evil. They can, by contrast, be po-sitioned as professional artifacts, docu-ments of an organic literacy that mustbe continuously re-evaluated and re-considered in light of the changing rhe-torical contexts in which we all takepart.

Lisa LebduskaWheaton College

Norton, MA

Works CitedBoquet, Elizabeth. “Intellectual Tug-of-

War: Snapshots of Life in theCenter.” Stories from the Center:Connecting Narrative and Theoryin the Writing Center. Eds. LynnCraigue Briggs and MegWoolbright. Urbana: NCTE, 1999.17-31.

Capossela, Toni-Lee. Harcourt BraceGuide to Peer Tutoring. Orlando,Florida: Harcourt Brace, 1998.

Clark, Beverly Lyon. Talking aboutWriting: A Guide for Tutor andTeacher Conferences. Ann Arbor:University of Michigan, 1985.

Geller, Anne Ellen. “Tick-Tock, Next:Finding Epochal Time in theWriting Center.” The WritingCenter Journal 25.1 (2005): 5-24.

Gillespie, Paula and Neal Lerner. TheAllyn and Bacon Guide to PeerTutoring. Needham Heights, MA:2000.

Harris, Muriel. “Talking in the Middle:Why Writers Need WritingTutors.” College English 57(1995): 27-43.

- - - . “Solutions and Trade-Offs inWriting Center Administration.”The Allyn and Bacon Guide toWriting Center Theory andPractice. Ed. Robert W. Barnetand Jacob S. Blumner. Boston:Allyn & Bacon, 2001. 155-167.

Hemmeter, Thomas. “Spreading theGood Word: The Peer-TutoringReport and the Public Image of the

Writing Center.” WPA 9.1 (1985):41-50.

Kail, Harvey and John Trimbur. “ThePolitics of Peer Tutoring.” WPA11.1 (1987): 5-12.

Kinneavy, James L. “Kairos: ANeglected Concept in ClassicalRhetoric.” Rhetoric and Praxis:The Contribution of ClassicalRhetoric to Practical Reasoning.Ed. Jean Dietz Moss. Washington,D.C: Catholic University ofAmerica P, 1986.79-107.

Lannon, Richard. Technical Communi-cation. New York: Longman,2003.

Meyer, Emily and Louise Z. Smith.The Practical Tutor. New York:Oxford UP, 1987.

Trimbur, John. “Peer Tutoring: AContradiction in Terms?” WritingCenter Journal 7.2 (1987): 21-28.

Zachary, Andrea. “Writing BetterAnnual Reports.” Writing LabNewsletter. 30.3 (2005): 1-6.

When writers return to the writingcenter and demonstrate gradualimprovement, we see the positiveeffects of our mentoring strategies. Asfuture teachers, we recognize the valueof these techniques within the writingclassroom and will implement themfrequently, practicing student-centeredteaching.

ConclusionThere is a difference between hands-onmentoring experience and the artificialrole-playing that occurs in methodscourses. All three of us remember thebored faces in the audience duringmicroteaching simulations, since otherstudents cared little about the ideas wewere presenting. Microteaching showsus how to make lesson plans but oftenfails to teach us how to adapt to ourstudents. Tutoring, on the other hand,provides real experience because thestudent involvement is, for the mostpart, voluntary. We are tutoring for aspecific purpose; both the tutor and thewriter want to improve the writer’s

skills. Experience in the writing centeroffers unique benefits that may not beavailable for education students who donot have the opportunity to tutorwriting before teaching writing.Oftentimes, English education majorsfail to consider writing center employ-ment, or as Robert Frost would say,they fail to take the road “less traveledby.” And as we consider our futurecareers as English teachers, our writingcenter experience “has made all thedifference.”

Maggie Hammerbacher, Jodi Phillips,and Shannon Tucker

Saginaw Valley State UniversityUniversity Center, MI

Works CitedClark, Irene Lurkis. “Preparing Future

Composition Teachers in theWriting Center.” College Compo-sition and Communication 39.3(Oct. 1988): 347-350.JSTOR.Saginaw Valley StateUniversity Zahnow Lib., Saginaw,

MI. 31 August 2005.Gillespie, Paula and Neal Lerner. The

Allyn and Bacon Guide to PeerTutoring. New York: Allyn andBacon, 2004.

Harris, Muriel. “Talking in the Middle:Why Writers Need WritingTutors.” College English 57.1(January 1995): 27-42. Proquest.Retrieved from Saginaw ValleyState University Zanhow Lib.,Saginaw, MI. 22 March 2005.

Jones, Casey. “The RelationshipBetween Writing Centers andImprovement in Writing Ability:An Assessment of the Literature.”Education. 122.1 (Fall 2001): 2-20. Wilson Select Plus. Retrievedfrom Saginaw Valley StateUniversity Zanhow Lib., Saginaw,MI. 13 March 2005.

Kirby, Dan, Dawn Latta Kirby, andTom Liner. Inside Out: Strategiesfor Teaching Writing. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann, 2004.

(continued from page 16)

Road less traveled

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UTORS COLUMNT’

“Where’s our teacher?” Reflecting onpeer tutoring and teaching

I arrived dressed in khakis, a whiteblouse, and a scarf. I remember delib-erating a long time about what to wearbecause I knew that it was the first dayand I worried about making an impres-sion as “the teacher.” Now, you wouldhave thought that the scarf would havegiven me away since most first yearstudents don’t wear them. I came indeliberately late (about 5 minutes orso) and took a seat in the only emptychair available—right in the front. Ididn’t have to pretend to be flusteredor nervous—I really was because do-ing this “activity” was definitely a riskfor me, given my usual introvertedself. Although I have since forgottenhis name, I’ll never forget the smile onthe face of the young man sitting to myleft. It seemed to say: yeah, it’s beena rough day for me as well. It’s allright that you’re late. It’s going to beokay.” I sat for a few minutes and no-ticed that the class began to rustle andbustle with nervous energy. Oneburly, athletic-looking student in theback of the room (who I would havetrouble with later in the semester whenhe made a paper airplane and threw itacross the room the day my assignedmentor came to observe my teachingskills) said out loud—“Where’s ourteacher”? Wouldn’t it be funny if hedidn’t show up?!

At that moment, I stood up, walkedto the front of the room, picked up apiece of chalk and wrote: “Welcome toEnglish 15. Ms. Aesha Adams.” Youcould have heard a pin drop—I cer-tainly thought I heard every jaw dropas I stared at a classroom full of blankfaces. I could only assume they wereshocked because first of all, I lookedso young (how else could I have pulledit off?); secondly, I was female;

thirdly, I was African American andfourthly, I was a young, AfricanAmerican woman!

After introducing them to PennState’s Introductory Rhetoric andComposition Course, I proceeded totell these eager yet baffled studentswhy I engaged them in that activity.I said, “I want to blur the lines of dis-tinction between me, the teacher andyou, the students. I want you to realizethat I don’t hold all of the knowledgeabout writing and rhetoric. You allhave something to bring, something toteach me as well.”

Thus began my first day of teachingfirst-year composition, a milestoneevent for my tenure as a graduate in-structor at Penn State University. As Ireflect on this first day and the ways inwhich my teaching practices havesince evolved, I have come to realizethat I have been indelibly marked bymy experiences as an undergraduatepeer tutor at Marquette University. Asevidenced by my speech to the class, Istrove to create an environment thatvalued diversity and fostered collabo-rative learning, dialogue, and interac-tion between and among all partici-pants. I thought of myself as a “coach”or a “mentor” to my students, encour-aging them through a variety of assign-ments, readings, and activities, to be-come self-reflexive of their writing, askill I acquired as a peer tutor. Al-though it was my first time teachingcollege students, I gained confidenceand expertise knowing that I at leastknew how to begin to respond to stu-dent writing because of the ways inwhich I was trained to respond as aninterested, engaged reader during tutor-ing sessions. In fact, in the early days

of my teaching I found that my com-ments almost always took the form ofquestions on student drafts. Further-more, I thought of my one-on-one con-ferences with students during officehours as mini-tutorials because I al-ways wanted the student to maintainownership of her writing while helpingher take a step back from her writingand become aware of her rhetoricalchoices.

However, as the aforementioned pa-per airplane incident demonstrates, Iran into problems later in the semesterwith maintaining my “authority” as theteacher and handling student resistancewhen I attempted to “redraw” the linesof distinction between teacher and stu-dent. Perhaps I was overly optimistic(and naïve) in thinking that the writingcenter and the writing classroom wereidentical spaces—there are differentexpectations, different institutionalconstraints, and different power dy-namics in operation in a writing class-room. Muriel Harris makes a similarobservation in “Talking in the Middle:Why Writers Need Writing Tutors.”She claims “tutorial instruction is verydifferent from traditional classroomlearning because it introduces into theeducational setting a middle person,the tutor, who inhabits a world some-where between student and teacher”(28). Students therefore respond differ-ently to tutors than to teachers, accord-ing to Harris, because tutors can oc-cupy a third space, a space outside ofthe evaluative pressures of the class-room (28). Therefore, despite all theblurring of boundaries and distinctions,my students would in some way stillperceive me as “the teacher”—I heldthe grade book; I assigned grades tothe papers; I marked students tardy; I,

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in some ways, was viewed as a repre-sentative of the institution, who withthe slightest stroke of my hand couldmake or break a student’s GPA. Fur-thermore, I believe that there weretimes when my students wanted a“teacher” and not a “tutor”; while myoffice hour conferences were fun, in-teresting, and satisfying (at least tome), to resist being directive and tellstudents what I expected seemed un-ethical. In other words, acknowledg-ing students’ rights to their rhetoricalchoices was fine until I had to assign a“C” or some other grade to thosechoices.

Finally, I struggled with how muchof a “peer” I could or should be to mystudents without losing their respect.Peter Elbow surmises that “eventhough we are not wholly peer with ourstudents, we can still be peer in [the]crucial sense of also being engaged inlearning, seeking, and being incom-plete” (332). For Elbow, it seems,“peerness” is a rhetorical stance orpose that teachers can adopt to demon-strate that they are also lifelong mem-bers of the learning community evenwhile they simultaneously insist on up-holding classroom standards. Elbowcalls this “embracing contraries” andclaims that it embodies the struggle of“good teaching . . . because it calls onskills or mentalities that are actuallycontrary to each other and thus tend tointerfere with each other” (327). As Igrappled with how to blend the exper-tise and confidence I found in mysense of self as a tutor with mynewfound role as a composition in-structor, I also struggled with how toremain student-centered and maintainmy authority within my classroom. Iwanted to eschew the image of theteacher as “the” ultimate authority fig-ure, but I also needed to know how todeal with students throwing paper air-planes across the room.

I realized, however, that I had a lim-ited view of what authority is andwhere it should come from. Althoughwriting centers and writing classrooms

are not identical spaces, like the writ-ing center, the writing classroom is aspace where multiple subject positionsconverge and multiple roles are negoti-ated. Brian Street and James Gee referto these multiple positions and roles as“multiple literacies.” Street argues thatrather than think of Literacy (capital“L,” small “y”) as a neutral, technicalskill, we should think of literacy as theideological, social and cultural prac-tices that individuals draw upon tomake meaning of a variety of verbaland extraverbal texts. James Gee dem-onstrates that literacy not only involvesmultiple ways of knowing but alsomultiple ways of being—ways ofthinking, talking, and behaving that areparticular to a discourse community.For me this includes my sense of selfas a “teacher”-“preacher”-“singer”-“sistah”-“scholar”-“student”-“writer”-“tutor.” The list goes on and on. Icould draw upon each of these differ-ent ways of being, knowing and show-ing, to assert my authority to teach.

Indeed, as my teaching has evolved,I have worked to make these literacypractices more explicit in the class-room. For example, I often begin mycomposition courses by soliciting stu-dents to sing a call-and-response gos-pel song in order to illustrate the waysin which their participation is integralto the success of the semester.

My first semester experience as acomposition instructor demonstratesthe multiple subject positions, multiplevoices, and multiple roles we as loversof, users of and practitioners in writingcenters occupy and employ as we enternew spaces. I often wonder if my stu-dents were asking the same question atthe end of the semester: “Where’s ourteacher?” If so, I’d like to think that itwas less because they thought I did apoor job of teaching them about writ-ing and more because they began tothink differently about what it meant tobe a student in a composition class-room taught by a peer tutor. Despitemy encouragement, many of my stu-dents did not visit the writing center

that first semester. But, they didn’thave to because the writing center vis-ited them. In the words of WendyBishop: “You can take the girl out ofthe writing center, but you can’t takethe writing center out of the girl.”

Aesha AdamsThe Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA

Works Cited

Bishop, Wendy. “You Can Take theGirl Out of the Writing Center, ButYou Can’t Take the Writing CenterOut of the Girl: Reflections on theSites We Call Centers. TeachingLives: Essays and Stories. Logan,Utah: Utah State UP, 1997. 157-166.

Elbow, Peter. “Embracing Contrariesin the Teaching Process.” CollegeEnglish 45 (1983): 327-339.

Gee, James Paul. “What is Literacy?”Negotiating Academic Literacies:Teaching and Learning AcrossLanguages and Cultures.Ed.Vivian Zamel and Ruth Spack.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, 1998.

Harris, Muriel. “Talking in the Middle:Why Writers Need WritingTutors.” College English 57(1995): 27-42.

Street, Brian. Social Literacies:Critical Approaches to Literacy inDevelopment, Ethnography andEducation. London: Longman,1995.

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Ben Rafoth, ed. A Tutor’s Guide: Helping Writers One to One. 2nd ed. Boynton/CookHeinemann, 2005. (184 pp., paperback, $21)

I like this book and plan to put a copyof it on every table in my writing centerfor consultants to read during downtimes. There are easy-to-find answersand easy-to-use strategies for dealingwith most of the day-to-day issues thatcome up for them between staff meet-ings.

As with Rafoth and Bruce’s ESL Writ-ers, I appreciate the general absence ofjargon and theoretics that tend to plaguerhet/comp literature. My consultants(none of them students of rhet/comp) caneasily access the plain language discus-sions of issues raised and benefit fromthe practical advice given. References tofurther readings are nicely covered in an-notated bibliographies and endnotes.

Rafoth has smartly directed his con-tributors to reflect on the complexities oftheir topics by taking on counter argu-ments and posing their own reservationsin a separate section of each chapter,“Complications,” which opens the topicto further points of view without muddy-ing it with the ambiguities that typicallyinfiltrate and challenge our understand-ing of the writing process.

Of the 17 topics covered in the book,I’d characterize 40% as in a basic, need-

to-know category for new consultants,40% as beyond-the-basics and illumi-nating for experienced consultants, and20% as neither of the above.

In the first category, I’d includeMacauley (negotiating expectations),Harris (reticent writers), Severino (in-ternational ESL writers), Ritter (ESLand correctness), Zemliansky (ad-vanced writers), Trupe (organizationand reader-based writing), and Young(proofreading).

For consultants with some experi-ence, I like Munday (consultants whoget too confident in their own routine),Agostinelli, Poch, and Santoro (dealingwith emotional consultations), Rafoth(critical thinking and analytical writ-ing), Greiner (consulting on unfamiliarsubjects), Cooper, Bui, and Riker(online tutoring), and Dossin (plagia-rism and techniques for writing up re-search).

Of those I felt ambivalent about,maybe Briam (business and technicalwriting) would head the list, and forreasons that have more to do with thescope of the topic. Blurring importantdifferences between workplace, profes-sional, and technical writing, the dis-

cussion oversimplifies its subject.Meanwhile a missing topic my ownconsultants would benefit from wouldcover the subject of personal state-ments, which they see a lot of.

If I have a quibble, it’s with an issuelarger than this book. It has to do withthe use of gender-sensitive pronouns. Itwould seem to the casual reader of thisbook that writing centers are chieflystaffed by women and used by femalestudents. An obsession, I guess, withgrammatical correctness prevents usfrom using the pronoun “they” in a sin-gular sense, though we are unconfusedby its use in nonacademic writing andspeech.

I raise the concern in the context ofwriting centers because male studentshave to overcome more resistance tovoluntarily seeking or offering help aswriters. Whenever the literature sug-gests that males are infrequent users ofwriting centers, this pattern is indi-rectly reinforced.

Reservations aside, however, I thinkRafoth has put together another useful,readable, essential book that I intend touse extensively in the Writing Centerat USC.

Book Review

Reviewed by Ron Scheer ( University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA)

Ben Rafoth’s A Tutor’s Guide: Help-ing Writers One to One, now in its sec-ond edition, is still an essential text fora well-rounded practicum syllabus ortutor training. I have used the first edi-tion a number of times, and the stu-dents I taught found the articles bothuseful and practical. When asked toexplain, novice tutors say that this

Reviewed by Laurie JC Cella (University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT)

book covers the most important issuesthey face: how to engage reluctantwriters, how to avoid proofreadingwhile still valuing this essential ele-ment of the writing process, how to ef-fectively address ESL concerns, andhow to push students to think moreanalytically as they write.

In response to my informal survey,tutors remarked that they liked MurielHarris’s “Talk to Me: Engaging Reluc-tant Writers” best because Harris cap-tures an essential tutoring dilemma:how to get a shy/reluctant/over-whelmed student to open up. New tu-tors say they often struggle to begin acomfortable dialogue with a student,

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and Harris’s article offers strategies forbreaking the ice and establishing agood rapport.

Tutors also find Jennifer Ritter’s ar-ticle on ESL tutoring strategies particu-larly helpful; her description of globalversus local errors and negotiatedmeaning has become a standard refer-ence at our writing center. The secondedition includes Carol Severino’s ar-ticle “Crossing Cultures with Interna-tional Students,” a thorough examina-tion of the way writing assignments arebased within American culture andrhetorical expectations. Severino sug-gests that tutors allow their interna-tional students to ground their writingin their own cultural experiences. Theaddition of Severino’s article adds anecessary depth to the discussion ofESL and international student writing.

This tutoring handbook is unique inthat its contributors represent a wide

scope of tutoring experiences, fromwell established directors to under-graduate tutors. When my colleagueAnita Duneer and I co-taught the tutorpracticum class, we noticed that ourstudents loved Alexis Greiner’s “Tu-toring in Unfamiliar Subjects,” notonly because she gave them confidenceto approach writing from different dis-ciplines, but also because Greiner wasan undergraduate tutor herself whenshe wrote this piece. Tutors like to seetheir peers in print.

The second edition extends the dis-cussion of generalist tutoring with theaddition of Pavel Zemliansky, who ar-gues that writing center tutors shouldrespect the rhetorical conventions ofdifferent disciplines. However,Zemliansky emphasizes the importanceof writing as a central aspect of thelearning process, no matter what thediscipline. He suggests that tutorshave the capability to assist writers in

advanced classes, as long as tutors rein-force a view of writing as “exploratory,experimental, and adventuresome.”

Finally, I like the addition of CarolEllis’s article “Developing Genre Dis-course: Graduate Student Writing,” be-cause her essay is engaging and honestabout the difficulties of writing success-fully on the graduate level. This essaywould be particularly useful for an under-graduate tutor who might be nervous ap-proaching a session with a graduate stu-dent writer. Ellis makes plain that allwriters need prodding in order to achievetheir writing goals.

On the whole, what I appreciate mostabout these contributors is that they workhard to practice what they preach. Theiressays are self-reflective, thoughtful, andenthusiastic about writing and the teach-ing of writing. Taken together, these es-says represent an important component ofany tutor training class.

Reviewed by Kim Donovan (Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, NH)

Ben Rafoth’s A Tutor’s Guide: Help-ing Writers One to One addresses an is-sue that has perplexed me in my particu-lar professional situation. I am a writingtutoring coordinator housed within a uni-versity learning center that serves a tinyliberal arts school and a larger, well-es-tablished business program. Hence, tu-tors are largely business and hospitalitymajors, with the exceptions of the occa-sional liberal arts student and the rareEnglish major. Such a situation has cre-ated a tension in my recruitment andtraining of undergraduate peer tutors be-tween three points: (1) balancing an en-gagement with writing center/composi-tion theory and practice with (2) mytutors limited time and interests and with(3) other tutoring and training in whichthese Learning Center tutors are oftenengaged. The approachable, pragmaticapproach of the essays in this expandedsecond edition of A Tutor’s Guide willbe immediately useful in helping me ad-dress this gap in my tutor’s training.

Of course, it would have been greatto have used the first edition five yearsago when I started training tutors at myuniversity. However, it was only aftertrial and error that I realized how diffi-cult it was to bring writing center andcomposition literature into training.Stephen North’s seminal “The Idea ofa Writing Center” left tutors con-fused—after all, they didn’t work in awriting center. Other articles likePatrick Hartwell’s important “Gram-mar, Grammars, and the Teaching ofGrammar” did not impress the Englishmajor I gave it to, a diligent and openstudent. Because he was so intimidatedby the piece, he never finished it. Andso on. Without graduate tutors or otherprofessional tutors, I am my tutors’lone liaison to the world of composi-tion. Unlike their willing adoption ofideas from Neal Lerner and PaulaGillespie’s excellent Allyn and BaconGuide to Peer Tutoring and other prag-matic guides, these tutors have resisted

theorizing of their tutoring, which Ithink has truncated their growth.

Both the length and the structure ofthe pieces in “A Tutor’s Guide” prom-ise to create a more accessible experi-ence for my tutors. These articles canbe read before or during training, orduring the inevitable slack times thatoccur in our walk-in tutoring schedule.Chapters all follow a similar organiza-tion, with the subtitle “Some Back-ground,” “What to Do,” and “Compli-cating Matters” setting up the readingusefully for tutors. Each article is ac-companied by an annotated suggestionfor further reading, which will servewell to connect pragmatic concerns totheory in a digestible way.

The subjects as well address tangibleconcerns my tutors have on the job,and promise to help tutors understandthat best practices in tutoring need tobe tied to theory. Jennifer J. Ritter’s

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The Writing Lab Newsletter

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The road less traveled: English education majorsapplying practice and pedagogy

Let’s face the facts—the market forEnglish teachers isn’t exactly what itused to be. Getting by with a teachingcertificate, a passion for Shakespeare,and an ability to quote Frost won’tquite cut it these days. As a trio of En-glish education majors currently em-ployed at our university’s writing cen-ter, we have found there is at least oneway to enhance your resume: tutor inthe writing center. This is not an adver-tisement for writing center employ-ment; instead, it is an in-depth exami-nation of how writing center practicehelps to extend pedagogy in valuableways, making writing center tutors po-tentially stronger teacher candidates.Specifically, we learn valuable andtransferable skills in the writing center,including flexibility, subject knowl-edge development and retention, effec-tive grading practices, communicationskills, and the need for respecting stu-dents’ individuality.

Flexibility: Developing multiplewriting strategies

Our current education methodscourses attempt to shift our strategiesaway from prescriptive practices, theidea that one specific method will al-low all students to achieve a specificgoal. Our professors stress the primarypurpose of the writing teacher: to teachstudents “writerly strategies that willhelp them shape and refine those ideasinto effective texts. Essentially, whatprocess pedagogy would provide forstudents is an ever-expanding reper-toire of strategies for enhancing theirown ways of producing texts” (Kirby,Kirby, and Liner 15). Likewise, we’vediscovered the purpose of tutoring is tohelp writers find out what works forthem—to create options rather thanlimitations. We must “avoid creatingclones of [ourselves] and avoid teach-ing [our] processes as if they are triedand true methods of approaching any

writing task” (Gillespie and Lerner20). Therefore, students can take asuggested strategy, but rather than fix-ating on it, they can adapt the strategyto best meet their unique needs.

In the past, teachers emphasized theuse of specific strategies in their writ-ing instruction. The 6-Trait Scale, forexample, teaches students to evaluate awritten work based on six components:ideas, word choice, conventions, sen-tence fluency, organization, and voice/presentation. While this strategy canbe efficient, many researchers feel thatthe disadvantages highly outweigh theadvantages. The 6-Trait Scale hasgrown “institutionalized” and “indus-trialized” as teachers imply that “6-Trait papers are a genre,” restrictingstudents to writing to the scale or forthe grade (Kirby, Kirby, and Liner229-230). These strategies can encour-age prescriptive teaching. While ourprofessors discourage the use of suchstrategies, they are often still used inthe classroom. For instance, whileJodi completed fieldwork for one ofher methods courses, her field teacherfelt the 6-Trait Scale would provideher students with a checklist when ex-amining their own writing. Whilesimilar strategies have been discour-aged in our education program, teach-ers serving as mentors to student-teachers may still practice thesestrategies to some extent.

As tutors, we stress the need to adaptto varying ability levels and writingprocesses. However, our writing centerexperience has taught us there is nosingle proper strategy that works for allwriters. In the writing center, we seethat writers vary in their ability levels,writing processes, and writing styles.Various students can interpret andtackle the same assignment quite dif-ferently. Jodi recalls tutoring Manuel

and Sheila, two political science stu-dents coming to the writing center withthe same argumentative essay assign-ment. Manuel treated the assignmentlike a checklist, creating a structuredessay with limited personal voice andsystematic paragraph organization.Sheila, on the other hand, demon-strated a creative approach, insertingher own voice effectively and varyingparagraph structure. They wrote com-pletely contrasting essays, reflectingtheir unique systematic or creative ap-proaches, yet Jodi recognized that bothstyles could be effective. A noviceteacher may be tempted to standardizethe writing process for all students. Tu-toring guides often warn against thisdanger of prescriptive tutoring. Ac-cording to Gillespie and Lerner,“Oftentimes, we aren’t even aware ofhow prescriptive and controlling ourteaching behaviors can be” (20). Thisis precisely where the difficulty arisesfor many English teachers.

When tutors apply knowledge gainedin prior courses, writing center ses-sions are more effective. According toCarol David and Thomas Bubloz,when students who failed freshmancomposition used the writing center toimprove grammar skills, instructors“found a statistically significant im-provement in grammar skills on post-tests after the students in their samplehad received individualized instructionfocusing upon error correction and in-creased understanding of grammarrules” (as qtd. in Jones 5). Withoutfully-skilled tutors (and future teach-ers) who are constantly using and prac-ticing their skills, student writers mayexperience minimal improvement.Many English courses may aim toteach about grammar, such as ouruniversity’s Grammar of Contempo-

Subject knowledge: Retainingand using writing skills

April 2006

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rary English. While this course is cru-cial for English majors, many of theconcepts are likely to be forgotten ifthey are not practiced. Non-tutors arenot regularly using or explaining theskills learned in the class, whereas weare constantly making use of classideas. Shannon remembers one in-stance where she tutored a good writernamed Ashley who had been in hergrammar class about where to placecommas and semicolons. “I knew thisstuff at one point,” Ashley said. “I justforget it because I don’t use it every-day.” Shannon told her she understood.She said, “The only reason I can ex-plain it to you is because I use what Ilearned in that class almost daily.”Like Shannon, teachers with writingcenter experience will be better pre-pared to explain these concepts to theirstudents.

Effective grading: Forming anopen dialogue

In many teacher-preparation pro-grams, grading student work receives areasonable amount of attention. The is-sues of grading are inevitable and mustbe addressed. However, teachers intheir first year often gravitate toward asurface-level assessment of studentwork—grading for shallow errors suchas grammar and spelling mistakes.These mistakes can easily be quantifi-able and transferable into a percentageor letter grade. Novice teachers lackingpractical experience often jump on thebandwagon of the crazy correctors justbecause it’s how they were taught asstudents—and it worked (Clark 348).Teachers who have writing center ex-perience, on the other hand, have akeener instinct about the effectivenessof such surface correction, which usu-ally has two negative outcomes. First,students may think that if they correctthe teacher-identified mistakes, they’vepurged the paper of error and need noother revision. Second, students mayperceive the comments as negative,even if the intent behind the commentswas not. English education major tu-tors in the writing center don’t gradepapers. Instead, tutoring students helps

us see the effectiveness of giving feed-back to grow the writer rather than tojustify the grade.

Picture the average student walkinginto the writing center with a “D” pa-per loaded with red marks. Not onlydoes this student suffer from unwar-ranted stress and anxiety about his/her“writing sins,” but he/she also viewsthe subsequent itemized correction ofthese mistakes as a way to “finish” thepaper (and enjoy a stress-free week-end). After the red-marked errors froma “D” paper are corrected, the studentthinks he/she should receive an “A.”Maggie had an experience with a basiccomposition course student namedAllison who viewed her paper throughthis very lens. She brought in her red-stained draft and requested that Maggiego through each “wrong” area andmake it “right.” This, Allison told her,would give her the “A” she thought shedeserved. Maggie reminded her thatshe was there to comment on her paperas a whole and then discussed some ofher writing issues, but ultimately di-rected her to her professor. This ses-sion taught Maggie how to handle suchstudents, but more importantly, as a fu-ture English teacher, Maggie witnessedwhat happens when teachers evaluateto justify the grade by marking everyminute grammar error. Students maystop enjoying writing and becometeacher-directed writing zombies whocreate error-free drafts with no realmeaning behind the words. Tutors inthe writing center learn that whenteachers systematize their evaluationtechniques, writers, in turn, system-atize their writing techniques. Teachersthereby limit writers’ abilities to em-phasize their own critical thinkingskills and to enjoy the writing process.

In addition, students can also misin-terpret teacher corrections as negativefeedback: “There is a problem of stu-dents’ perceptions of teacher intent be-hind the comments” (Harris 38). Thethought of student response to com-ments doesn’t cross the mind of teach-ers if they have never had the experi-

ence of verbalizing the comment face-to-face. Even though a written commentmight have been very good constructivecriticism, it is challenging for studentsto view it positively. Teachers who’vebeen tutors are used to seeing a visualhuman reaction to feedback and realizeits importance. If Shannon were tocircle a statement during a tutoring ses-sion and question if it was the student’sthesis, she can see immediately if thestudent even knows what a thesis is. Bycontrast, if she were to do this athome—away from the student—and re-turn the paper the next day, she mayhave no idea if the student understoodor not. It is clear that teachers cannotphysically meet with all students tomaintain constant dialogue about writ-ing, but teachers who’ve worked in thewriting center are more apt to recognizethe importance of this open dialogueand may feel more comfortable withconferencing and journaling about writ-ing itself. They will also be more likelyto limit their comments in the marginand write students prose letter re-sponses or explain evaluation in person.

Collaborative skills are developed inthe writing center environment becausewe are encouraged to ask each other forhelp. Shannon remembers an instancewhen she was working with a student inthe writing center whose introductionbegan with a series of open-ended ques-tions. Shannon, unsure if this techniquewas appropriate, asked Maggie for herfeedback. Such collaboration with fel-low employees will be necessary in theschool system because teachers don’thave all the answers, so it is crucial toseek help from other sources.

Furthermore, tutors have the chanceto hone their communication skills, notonly through one-to-one exchangeswith students, but also through publicspeaking opportunities. For instance,our staff of 20 gives over 50 individualclassroom presentations each fall se-mester to all freshman level composi-tion courses, introducing our services.

Communication skills: Workingwith colleagues and students

The Writing Lab Newsletter

Muriel Harris, editorDepartment of EnglishPurdue University500 Oval DriveWest Lafayette, IN 47907-2038

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We also give presentations entitled“Thursday Tutor Talks” in which aspecified subject, such as documenta-tion formats or writing successful es-say exams, is discussed. Additionally,we often present at regional, state, andinternational writing center confer-ences. This experience is valuable topotential teachers since their everydayroutine will consist of public speaking.

Respecting individuality: Under-standing teacher and studentroles

Muriel Harris says, “Classroom syl-labi assume a homogeneity that doesn’texist, a ‘one-size fits all’ situation”(39). Too often, teachers who createwriting courses disregard the greatvariance in the writing capabilities oftheir students. While teachers recog-nize the importance of personalizingwriting through the use of student-cen-tered activities, such as writing work-shop, writing center tutors have the po-tential to further individualize theprocess when they become teachers.We are encouraged to practice SocraticQuestioning, asking the writer ques-

tions rather than offering mere advice(Jones 11). This technique prevents usfrom doing too much of the writer’swork and increases the writer’s self-evaluation tools. Highlighting the textor giving the pencil directly to thewriter also encourages the apprehen-sive writer to actively participate.

Jodi recalls tutoring Jim, a freshmanEnglish student nervous about his firstvisit to the writing center. As Jodi be-gan reading Jim’s paper silently, heshuffled through his class notebook.Sensing his anxiety, Jodi asked if hewould like to read his paper aloud. Hereluctantly agreed, and after readinghis paper he seemed much more at easewhen discussing Jodi’s suggestions.By reading his paper aloud, Jimavoided the awkward moment wherehe “waits for a diagnosis,” equatingbad writing with sickness or disease(Gillespie and Lerner 30).

Using such strategies enables the tu-tor to maintain the peer/peer relation-ship nurtured in the writing center.

This experience serves as an asset tofuture teachers because we understandthe difference between a mentor and anall-the-time authority figure. The com-munication between the mentor teacherand student is often less threateningthan between the authority figureteacher and student. Novice teacherswithout mentoring experience may tryto jump into the authority figure role.

A novice teacher with writing centerexperience will acquire useful toolsthat a teacher without writing centerexperience may not have obtained inmethods courses:

• Asking questions rather thanfeeding answers

• Focusing on organization andthesis rather than lower-levelconcerns

• Desiring improvement in the entirewriting process rather thanimmediate surface improvement

• Utilizing communication strategiesthat mentors use during peer/peersessions

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