Special Conference Situations
ESL Conferences. Some new staff members enter the Writing Center with some trepidation about how to conduct conferences with students who are not native-English speakers. That fear often derives from a consultant's concern of not being able to understand the student's speech, or the student writer will not understand the consultant's speech. While there will often be moments of awkwardness and misunderstanding in these conferences, nearly all consultants will discover (often before the end of the first meeting) that ESL conferences are one of the most gratifying aspects of working in the Writing Center. These conferences are so enjoyable because the students are eager to learn English and relish the opportunity to talk with you. Just keep in mind that you are not responsible for solving all the student's problems with English. All you need to do is help with one or two elements in their writing or speech. Often a critical benefit of the conference is simply the conversation, giving the student a chance to practice speaking and listening in English. But the greatest joy from these conferences is simply the opportunity to meet someone from a foreign country, to learn something about this person's culture and perspective on the world, to acquire a new friend.
Required Conferences. It might surprise new staff members to discover that in the assessments of conferences on the orchid forms, there has historically been virtually no distinction between the evaluations of required conferences and of conferences freely chosen by the student writer. You don't want to enter into a required conference expecting it to be non-productive, simply because it is "required." Keep in mind that most writing conferences with faculty are required. Most students are not inclined to voluntarily seek assistance; however, they don't necessarily resist assistance when they are required to seek it. Most of education in college is driven by requirements: requirements to attend class, to submit papers, to take exams, etc. The requirement to have a conference on a paper is for most students not a particularly attractive aspect of the writing process, but it is not something that many students are determined to undermine. Presented with an opportunity to get some assistance with a writing assignment, most will use the opportunity.
Reading Conferences. In many respects reading is more important than writing in the Writing Center. Staff members are hired to demonstrate to other students various ways to read texts. In the majority of instances, these texts are student-written and we are helping students learn how to read and analyze their own language. But in some instances we have conferences where we are helping students read other class assignments. The key point in these sessions is to help students consider different techniques for opening up a text and making sense of it. One advantage of the reading conference in the Writing Center is the opportunity to talk about the reading assignment with someone else. The more talking we can get the students to do, the more likely they will comprehend the main points in the text, generate some new ideas about the text, and remember what the text was about.
Editing Conferences. As was pointed out elsewhere in the Manual, if someone asks for an editing conference, that is what we should provide. In many instances the conferences may involve into an examination of higher-order concerns, but it's okay to start with editing. Every text offers thousands of doors for entrance; starting with commas is a perfectly acceptable opening. It is also important to keep in mind that the production of cleanly edited products is important; the presence or absence of editing errors can strongly affect a manuscript's grade. Just as importantly, the process of learning how to edit their own papers can help students learn how to see and understand their own writing. Taking away the errors and excess words and faulty constructions, it is like a pruning operation, bringing out the beauty in the text. We can't make the corrections for the students. But we can help them learn to see what is there, and how to make their "there" more powerfully present.
