By Kurt Simonds, Director of the Learning Center

Introduction

It seems to me we have—or might have, if we begin to think about it this way—three kinds of students who come to the Learning Center for writing help:

1. the first time student—often looking for a "quick fix" in the form of "checking" or "proofreading""—whom, if we handle properly, we can teach something about identifying, finding, and fixing their own error patterns and introduce to some basic proofreading techniques;
2. the returning student—whom, because he or she felt helped with a specific problem or assignment, comes back for further work on structure, development, brainstorming, etc., as well as editing and proofreading; and
3. the referred student—referred by a faculty member who feels the student needs work with a particular problem or difficulty.

We need to have effective ways of working with—and documenting our work with—each of these students.

The First Time Student

A student walks into the Learning Center and signs up for the first available appointment with a writing tutor. She asks the tutor to proofread her paper, or "just check it for me before I turn it in." The paper is due that same day, maybe in less than an hour. The tutor begins by asking, "What is the assignment?" "What are you concerned about?" "Do you have any particular questions?"

The situation described above is typical of many first contacts with students who come to the Learning Center for help with writing. Students are often rushed, anxious, preoccupied with mechanics (or "grammar"), and impatient with questions about the assignment, their own writing process, or anything they perceive as not having a direct impact on correcting or improving their paper and thus their grade. What is the writing tutor to do?

Jeff Brooks, in "Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work," asserts that the tutor's job is to improve the writer, not the paper. Brooks goes on to say that, "When you 'improve' a student's paper, you haven't been a tutor at all; you've been an editor." Brooks recommends some specific strategies for the tutor to employ in trying to avoid becoming a mere editor of student's work, as do the chapters "Being Professional" and "Inside the Tutoring Session" from the Bedford Handbook for Writing Tutors (see the back section of this "Resource Manual"). But while we struggle to avoid being turned into editors or proofreaders, what help can we offer the frustrated student in order to 1) teach them something useful, and 2) encourage them to return and make better use of our services? Here are some suggestions:

1. ask if the student has proofread the paper himself, then show him some proofreading techniques, like reading aloud, circling the nouns or verbs in each sentence, or using a ruler to read line-by-line, slowing and focusing one's attention.
2. read a small portion of a paper‹say, the opening paragraph‹identify particular errors or error patterns (fragments, run-ons, problems with verb tense or inflection), then encourage the student to continue proofreading the rest of the paper himself, concentrating on those one or two particular problems.
3. say, "I will look at your paper for you this one time, but in the future you should make an appointment farther in advance, proofread the paper yourself before the appointment, and come prepared with particular questions." Then, even if you do read and identify errors in the paper, you can still involve the student in the process by pointing out error patterns (the two or three most frequently repeated errors) and explaining how to make corrections.

Each of these methods allows you provide immediate help while making clear to the student his own responsibility for and ownership of the paper. In subsequent tutoring sessions, you can introduce the student to more of the resources we make available, like our handouts, handbooks, and dictionaries, and online resources such as word processing (including grammar check and spell check), the Guide to Grammar and Writing (including the Powerpoint Presentations and Interactive Quizzes), the Archive of Student Sample Papers, and the Library's Guide to Academic Resources on the Web.

In conclusion, Do not become a personal editor for any student! Use the first session to educate the student about your role and his own responsibility, and begin to steer the student toward appropriate resources that he can begin to make good use of himself. Make sure you are dealing with larger structural issues as well as sentence-level problems.

The Returning Student

A student came to the Learning Center once and was helped with a specific problem with a specific paper. The student got the message about making an appointment in advance, bringing the assignment, notes, and draft, proofreading her own work, and coming prepared with particular questions. The student is working on writing an effective introduction with a clear thesis, integrating and citing quotations, developing paragraphs and transitions. You discuss these things, give feedback, and perhaps refer to our handouts or handbooks to clarify certain points. Great job: you have not gotten bogged down in sentence mechanics, but have been able to attend to higher level writing issues. But you notice that the student is still making certain persistent errors, such as run-on sentences, or fragments, or problems with subject verb agreement, or verb tenses and inflections‹or whatever. What do you do?

As with the first time student, I will offer you three possibilities:

1. encourage proofreading. Many students simply do not proofread their own work. Many times they do not even reread it after printing it out. Often, if they take the time and pay attention, they can find and correct many errors on their own. Encourage this! It is their responsibility. Help them develop good habits. You can also help by identifying particular patterns of error and showing students how to correct the two or three errors they make most often: amazingly, correcting these two or three most frequent errors can fix up to eighty or ninety percent of the mistakes in any given paper! Do not become a proofreader for a student who does not do the work herself.
2. help pay close attention. Often what we are modeling for students is patience with the writing process and close attention to the text. Students often become anxious, impatient, and frustrated: they want the paper to be done already. Often they do not realize that writing and rewriting are time consuming and recursive (that is, they have to return to the text over and over). Help students with their anxiety by being supportive, understanding, and encouraging. Encourage them to talk out what it is they are trying to say. Get them to read aloud sentences that don't quite make sense or convey clear meaning. Yes, writing is hard work, and frustrating, and time consuming. But any writer has got to sit with the text, read it over again and again, and make one small correction at a time.
3. make use of available resources. Our handouts, handbooks, and online resources all have information on recognizing and correcting common problems; in fact, the "Guide to Grammar and Writing" has Powerpoint Presentations and Interactive Quizzes the students can access from any networked computer. Familiarize yourself with these resources and encourage students to make use of them. Student often enjoy the challenge of the online Quizzes because they get instant feedback and the opportunity to correct their own mistakes.

The Referred Student

Instructors from various departments refer students to the Learning Center for writing help for a number of different reasons: sometimes because students have trouble with sentence level mechanics, sometimes because they need help developing an idea or writing an extended essay, and sometimes because they need to master a specific format, such as a research paper, a brochure or newsletter, or a book review (or maybe even because a student needs to open a Hotmail account, make use of the WebBoard, or access the Guide to Grammar and Writing). We need to be able to help the student with all of these tasks. Once again, let's divide these students into three groupings and consider how to serve each one:

1. sentence level problems. Often, instructors get impatient with students who struggle with sentence mechanics or ESL-type problems such as verb tense and agreement. Even instructors of developmental English may refer students who are having persistent difficulties like these. We will work with these students in many of the same ways we work on proofreading and error correction with First-Time and Returning Students: reviewing grammar, showing students how to use handbooks and online resources, and demonstrating proofreading methods. Instructors and students may have unrealistic expectations about the amounts and kinds of help we can provide. Remember, writing is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and to become a good writer takes a lot of time and practice. Do not feel pressured into providing a miracle cure or quick fix!
2. major revisions. Instructors may also refer students whose problems are not with sentence level problems but with larger issues of organization and structure, such as not answering or addressing the assignment question, a vague or non-existent thesis, a weak introduction, poor paragraph development, lack of support and examples, or a general lack of coherence and organization. In these cases, try to help the student understand the assignment and the instructor's comments. You can even help by trying to decipher teachers' handwriting, reading the comments aloud, and asking students to explain to you what they think they mean. Often the students have only the vaguest idea of what they are supposed to be writing about or what the instructor is asking them to do! Read the assignment over with the student and ask them to explain it to you. Help develop an outline of an appropriate response. Ask for examples and citations from the text. Help the students brainstorm, outline, and work toward mastering the larger structures of the academic essay.
3. specific formats. Different courses in different disciplines require different kinds of writing. Early Childhood Education, for example, requires students to produce a newsletter and a brochure, templates for both of which can be found as part of the new Word 2000 software. Similarly, Professor Goldberger in history requires a critical book review, several fine examples of which are linked to the Archive of Writing Assignments and Student Sample Papers (a good place for both tutors and students to look up assignments and exemplary papers). Courses in many departments—from nursing to psychology to art history—require research papers, often following very specific instructions and requiring very specific formats (see the Writing Across the Curriculum section of this Resource Manual). We need to become familiar with all these formats and require-ments so that we can be of maximum use to the students in these classes.

Hotmail, the WebBoard,
Internet Research, and Interactive Quizzes

Increasingly, teaching writing means also teaching the means of written communication, including word processing, email, and the Internet. Word processing programs, in addition to providing a spellchecker, a grammar checker, a dictionary, and a thesaurus, also facilitate revision by making cutting and pasting much easier and more efficient. Many instructors communicate with students using email and make assignments available on the web. In offices and professional settings, much of the written communication now takes place over email and webpages; this electronic communication will only increase in the future. We will need to be skilled in all these methods of communication in order to teach and prepare our students both for school and for future careers. In addition, we will want to be able to assist our students when they come in to word process their papers, open email accounts and email their professors, post drafts on the WebBoard, take interactive grammar quizzes, and access Internet information. We should constantly be upgrading our skills in these areas, and the Learning Center should provide time to learn and experiment as well as formal professional development opportunities for all tutoring staff.