August 19, 2004
Opinion: Students need individual help with writing
International students struggling to make sense of our language and culture; returning students, rich in personal history, but perhaps slightly under-prepared to negotiate cryptic academic conventions; freshmen or community college transfers getting a head start in their studies, curious, but also apprehensive. What do all these diverse students have in common? They all need to write for their classes, so they, like all writers, need writing tutors.
The belief that students need more one-to-one help with their writing is not just a passing fancy. Increasingly at our University, program administrators are investigating and implementing writing center theory and practice into their departments. There is an evening writing center attached to the Center for Learning and Undergraduate Enrichment; the Office of Minority Affair’s Instructional Center, which services the needs of underrepresented and economically challenged students, has one; large and small writing centers housed in various departments like English and Political Science exist; and there’s a planning committee I sit on for a tentatively titled College of Arts and Sciences Writing Center, which would provide one-to-one instruction across the disciplines, and may even take on a much-needed leading role in organizing the various centers across campus.
But why all this fuss about one-to-one teaching, and why now? The reason, simply, is that writing centers work, and their pedagogical theories and practice make sense to administrators and faculty.
After eight years in writing centers, as a tutor, tutor mentor, and founder/director, I have come to honestly believe (and I am by no means alone) that writing centers function, primarily, as an important complement to classroom instruction. Often, students are sent to centers to improve their papers. And student papers often do improve. But, more importantly, what many students (and subsequently teachers) end up realizing is that a good center will focus more on the writer and his her writing process than on the paper or product.
Often, students come to centers unsure of themselves and their writing. Maybe they’ve been told misleading things in the past by instructors: Don’t use I, your thesis must be in one sentence, you can’t use opinion. Much of what a tutor does, then, involves demystifying academic conventions so that students can get down to writing with some confidence. Because confidence in writing is crucial, sometimes tutors learn from fellow students what sort of writing apprehension issues they have been dealing with for years. (And of course, tutors and directors learn more about their own.)
I’ve worked with students who said they could not talk with their teachers. And with the power to issue grades that classroom teachers must wield, who could blame them? I’ve had students share intimate stories about how scary writing is to them. Many students think of a “writer” as a sort of mythical being who possesses some super-human power of the mind. But students begin to learn that even people vested with certain amounts of academic authority do not always know everything when it comes to writing. In our Center, a banner greets new students, new tutors, veteran tutors, instructors, and faculty alike: “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one becomes a master” (Hemingway).
In the upcoming year(s), I encourage faculty to keep a watchful eye on writing centers. If you’ve never sent a student to a center, give them a try. Talk to the director of the center you believe is closest to your department, find out how they operate, what they do, what their teaching philosophy is. As we begin to focus our lenses on why one-to-one teaching is important, we will, perhaps, also begin to move closer to a mutual vision of one-to-one writing — across the curriculum.
Steven Corbett has been the director of the English Department Writing Center during summer quarters since 2001.
