Twenty Guidelines for Conferencing
Rapport. Establish and maintain rapport with student. Try to help the student feel relaxed and comfortable. If consulting with someone you don't know, take a minute to find out something about the individual. It often helps to talk about the subject with the student before jumping into the paper. You can usually be more helpful if you discover what the writer wants to say before you read the paper.
Understand Assignment. Make sure the student and you both understand the assignment. Ask for written directions if any exist. Clarify such issues as the paper's purpose, the choice of subjects, the preferred length, the audience, the criteria for evaluation, the format guidelines. If important issues are not clear, perhaps you or the student should contact the instructor for clarification on these guidelines.
See the Person; Hear the Person. Listen to the people seeking assistance. Don't feel you must immediately jump to the text. Take your time at the beginning of the conferences to talk with the students. Offer some coffee or hot chocolate. Find out what they are studying and how they like their classes. Learn some things about their subjects and how they feel about these topics. Don't waste the student's time, but do demonstrate that you are interested in this person, that you see this person.
Don't Rush. Most conferences last 15-20 minutes, but they can last an hour or more. Regardless of your other commitments, take the time necessary to do a good job. If your hour is up, arrange for the student to meet with another consultant. Provide the necessary introductions and background.
Ask Questions. You don't have to be the expert. Don't be afraid to use your lack of knowledge as a strength. Ignorance allows you to ask real questions. Don't hesitate to seek help from another staff member. Sometimes conferences which involve everyone in the CWC are the most fun and effective.
The Dumb Reader. It's okay to be the dumb reader. Dumb readers are invaluable because they don't fill in the gaps for the writer. When you encounter a gap, find out what is missing. Maybe the gap needs filling, maybe not, but at least the writer will know that for one reader, there was an absence present at that moment in the text. Perhaps the major task of the writing center consultant is to identify gaps in the paper and help the writer determine which ones need filling. Remember: All papers are incomplete.
The Suggester. A Writing Consultant acts as a suggester: a monitor, stimulator, guide, reference source, friend. It is not your job to tell the student what to do with the paper. You can certainly make suggestions, but it's best if the selection of a final solution comes from a student, not from us. When suggestions are offered, try to explain why you suggested what you did. And it's most helpful to give more than one option for a problem so the writer makes the final choices.
The Researcher. Approach a writing conference as a research exercise--an opportunity to learn more about writing or about the topic at hand. You are a student of the writing process. Your first task is not to solve any problems. Your first task is to understand. What is the history of this paper? How did the paper get started? What revising has already occurred? What is the writer trying to accomplish? How does this draft match with the writer's vision? How does this paper work? How is it organized? What are the transitions like? What patterns do you see in the writing? [Questions again.]
Playing movies of the mind. According to author and teacher Peter Elbow, the reader in a writing conference provides the writer with a recording (a "movie") of impressions while reading the paper. Indicate passages that worked for you and explain why they worked. Identify confusing passages and attempt to explain why you were confused. Encourage the student to take notes during the discussion--or you can become a model, jotting down notes as you discuss your responses to the manuscript.
Be aware of your body language. Think about your body language and the physical arrangement of the tutoring session. Be aware of how bodies are situated. Are you and the student working on the same plane? Who holds the pen? Who is closer to the paper? Who is leaning forward? How does a conference on the sofa compare with a conference at a table?
Shut up and listen. Don't feel you must do all the talking. In most instances, the more talking the student-writer does, the more successful the conference. Take your time, ask questions, show interest in the ideas of the paper, search for ways to enable the student-writers to tell you what they want to do with the paper. When working with ESL students, give them time to respond. Silence is not a sin.
Concentrate on higher-order concerns. Help the student tackle major issues first. Try to adhere to the following hierarchy of questions and concerns:
What is the assignment and does the writing meet the assignment?
Does this writing make sense? Where are the passages you do not understand? Where does the writing need better examples and stronger evidence? How does this writing need to be filled out or condensed?
How is the organization? Do the parts of the paper fit together? Are the parts tied together by convincing and understandable transitions?
Does the writing have problems with sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, usage, style?
Four rules of thumb when working with editing issues (level 4 concern from previous list):
If possible, discuss any problems with sentence structure, spelling, punctuation, etc. after the major issues in the other three levels have been covered.
When dealing with problems in level 4, concentrate first on those items where there is a pattern or a repetition in errors.
When dealing with problems in level 4, deal with the difficulties in terms of meaning whenever possible.
When you see a paper "at the last minute," you often have no choice but to deal with mechanical, grammatical issues. You may wish to point out some larger problems, but in these cases indicate the time factor necessitates only discussion of easily correctable items.
Do not overload the student with suggestions. Most writers can only work with 2-3 major issues in any one stage of revision. If you are giving multiple suggestions, encourage the student to take notes.
Do not write on a student's paper. If any revisions are made on the student's paper, they must be made by the student. It is okay for a consultant to make small marginal notes in pencil, reminders of spots to discuss later, but you should never make any corrections, additions, or deletions on a student's text. It is permissible for you to serve as a note taker for the student, writing down ideas that arise during the conference (though, ideally, it is more valuable for the students if they become the note takers, listing ideas or improvements that can be integrated into their texts).
Do not criticize faculty teaching. While we will encounter many lousy assignments and inadequate or incomplete responses by instructors to student papers, the Writing Center staff must maintain a professional courtesy in dealing with these instances. We do not denigrate a faculty member's assignment, commentary, grades, etc. It is our job to help the students understand the rhetorical situation they find themselves in. It is not our job to change that situation or turn the student against the instructor. If you find practices or attitudes you dislike, complain to the Director. He's a coward and probably won't do anything, but getting if off your chest may make you feel better. Encourage students to clarify things with the professor. Opening channels of communication can have surprising benefits.
Do not grade a paper. Avoid evaluative comments on an entire paper, comments which students inevitably translate into grades. Even vague niceties such as "this is a really good paper" can profoundly mislead students in their expectations and understanding their own work. When making a positive comment about a paper, direct the observation to a specific part of the paper or the student's writing process. One other procedure for affirming a student's work is to cast your remarks in terms of how you respond as a reader: talk about your feelings and not necessarily claim that you have identified qualities inherent in the writing.
[Bob's personal addendum: When students ask about what grade "I think" a paper would receive, I often tell them that they will never receive a grade on a paper. What is graded is the transaction that occurred between the reader and the paper. Each instructor will have a unique response, and thus the same paper will be graded differently by different instructors. College faculty are queer ducks and they all have different assumptions, different expectations, different ways of reading, different ideas about right and wrong. Also, each course provides a unique context for the reading of a paper: that context profoundly affects the grade a paper can receive. As outsiders, we never fully understand that context.]
Ask questions, ask questions, ask questions. Ask questions before you start reading the paper, ask questions while reading the paper, ask questions when you have finished with the paper. Ask questions about the writing process, about the research, about the ideas, etc. Demonstrate that you are interested in the content and meat of the paper.
No student should leave empty-handed. Never simply read a paper, hand it back, and say, "Nice job, I don't see any problems." If you can't find anything to talk about, then you didn't read the paper. You aren't required to find problems in all papers, but you are required to take students' writing and ideas seriously and talk with them about the text, the subtext, and the context. Any paper raises hundreds of issues. Your task is to get the student to thinking further about one or two of those issues.
Seek Follow-up. Whenever possible, try to reschedule students for return visits to the Writing Center. Or ask them to let you know how the paper turned out (and how well it was received by the teacher). Return visits are an important means for us to discover how effective our consulting really is. Let the students know that you care about their work.
"Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words." --Mark Twain
