Pondering Equilibrium:

1
Pondering Equilibrium

• Seeking Balance Through Alternative Tutoring
  Practices

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Balance

• Balance, in this presentation, should be loosely
  thought of as a state of equilibrium,
  characterized by the parity of equal, but
  opposing forces, ultimately restoring proportion
  or harmony.

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In order to provide the individualized
instruction free from the constraints of the
traditional classroom, tutors must balance many
variables.

• Personality
• Learning style
• Assumptions about writing
• Assumptions about writing centers
• Anxieties
• Diverse frame of reference
• Motivations
• Cultural/Linguistic background
• Teachers expectations
• and many others

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Minimalist Tutoring

• Via Stephen North Jeff Brooks
• Writer Process, not Product
• Empower client
• Become critical of ones own work
• Create active learning environment
• Free from power hierarchy of institution

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Minimalist tutoring

• Sit beside the client rather than across from him
  or her, paying attention to body language.

• This person is sitting really close to me, like,
  whoa. Uh, creepy.

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Minimalist Tutoring

• Use questioning to deal with problem areas
  requests for clarity, more information, purpose,
  depth, new perspectives, etc.

• I thought I was the one with the questions? This
  is
• (a) benighted
• (b) ridiculous
• (c) sad
• (d) all of the above

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Minimalist Tutoring

• Which sentence did you say that comma splice was
  in? Im glad we have both decided not to pinpoint
  the problem.

• Do not mark on the clients work.

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Minimalist Tutoring

• To critically view their own work, have the
  client read their writing aloud to the tutor.

• I weally hope my tutoe doesnt ask me to wead
  aloud. Its embawwassing when people hyea that I
  cant pwonounce my Rs.

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Responding To Brooks

• Many scholars, however, are starting to believe
  that Brooks claim suggests the existence of a
  single, ideal pedagogy for writing centersan
  idea that runs contrary to individualized
  instruction.
• Also, others have pointed out that this type of
  pedagogy is meant more to assuage the concerns of
  writing program administrators.

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Directive Tutoring As An Answer?

• In another essay by Linda Shamoon and Deborah
  Burns, A Critique of Pure Tutoring, the
  minimalist approach of past writing centers is
  labeled as an orthodoxy of process-based,
  Socratic, private, a-disciplinary tutoring.
• Shamoon and Burns question whether a more
  directive approach could be effective in many
  tutoring situations.

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Consider

• Agenda-setting Is it non-directive simply
  because its in the form of a question?
• Helping with very minor editorial issues can be
  extremely slow and inefficient (and patronizing)
  if directiveness is strictly avoided.
• In light of writing centers core truths, are
  minimalist practices the only way to help the
  client, or is it supported only by writing center
  lore?

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Directive Tutoring

• Read the clients work, marking places where the
  writer could add depth, fix phrasing
  complications, or be clearer.

• What is all this scribblely chicken scratch on
  my paper?

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Directive Tutoring

• So, do I put a semi-colon before the word
  however in every instance as a rule, or is that
  something I do because the sentence calls for it?

• Directly providing instruction on minor editorial
  issues.

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Directive Tutoring

• Model simple and complex sentence structures that
  mimic academic discourse.

• Could you repeat that one more time? I like my
  essay better when we write in your voice!

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Directive Tutoring

• Directing clients toward specific ideas for
  organization and development.

• Is this, like, my work or yours? After were
  through, my essay is going to sound like you
  wrote it!

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Imitation and Directive Methods

• Shamoon and Burns turned to research in social
  and cognitive development and academic literacy.
• They found that modeling and imitation, directive
  methods, are often very useful techniques in
  tutoring situations.
• And thus, they assert that directive methods do
  what writers that visit the writing center want
  them to do model a process, then produce
  results.

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Other Useful Directive Methods

• To look up formats for bibliographies, comma
  rules, or alternative meanings of a word.
• Directly answering a question about the students
  writing
• Providing a variety of sample options that might
  work
• Modeling the writerly habit of brainstorming
  options and thinking them through to determine
  how each might shape the paper

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What Directive Tutoring Does

• Displays rhetorical processes in action.
• Improves the connection to the current
  conversation in the discipline.
• Provides interpretive options for the tutee when
  none seem available.
• Unmasks the system of argumentation at work
  within the discipline.

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Directive Tutors Still Struggle with

• Empowering writers
• Homogeneity vs. Creative Variation
• Plagiarism
• The writer and the writing
• Negotiating needs and wants
• Reader Reaction

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Problems With Choosing Sides

• Shamoon and Burns do not believe a directive
  approach should be used uniformly.
• Instead, they argue that writing center practices
  should be broadened to include both directive and
  non-directive tutoring.
• The results, according to Shamoon and Burns
  should be an enrichment of tutoring repertoires,
  stronger connections between the writing center
  and writers in other disciplines, and increased
  attention to the cognitive, social, and
  rhetorical needs of writers at all stages of
  development (239).

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But

• Although these connections do seem to bring
  opposing positions together, directive and
  non-directive tutoring methodologies still seem
  to confuse beginning tutors.
• Directive Minimalist
• There are still major issues with applying it to
  writing center orthodoxy.

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Problems With Applying Both Perspectives

• Tutors newly introduced to writing center theory
  may feel pressured to choose between two camps.
• Tutors become confused by a theoretical rationale
  for specific tutoring practices that embrace two
  contrasting approaches.
• When applying both approaches to the theoretical
  rationale of the center, instead of more informed
  tutoring, tutors begin to develop a relativistic
  approach.
• Not wholly convinced by either approach, tutors
  revert to basic writing truisms and less
  applicable strategies.

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Useful Techniques

• Open and Close ended questioning
• Mapping and Matrices
• Review the Textbook
• Focused Free-writing
• Paired Problem Solving
• One minute paper
• Outlining
• Focused Listing
• Pro and Con grids
• Concept Maps
• Word Journals

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Scribing

• Scribing is an experimental method that sets
  tutors up for using directive and non-directive
  techniques.
• It attempts to identify the purpose of the
  session and the writers situation.
• It also attempts to maintain a balanced focus on
  the writer and the writing, as a means of
  post-process tutoring.

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Where Did Scribing Come From?

• In 2005, in the EKU writing center, an ESL
  student complained that during her sessions she
  got wonderful advice however, once she left the
  writing center, most of it slipped her mind.
• She told us that the tutoring sheets handed back
  at the end of the session usually only had 2-3
  comments.
• Most of these comments were prescriptive, as to
  diagnose a problem and offer a quick fix.
• Tutors were encouraged to write more, and be more
  descriptive on tutoring sheets.

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Collaboration Is Collaboration

• A couple of tutors noticed that when clients read
  their own work, they often recognized their own
  errors.
• To that end, we began to model other parts of the
  writing process by having tutoring sessions where
  tutees did a lot of re-reading, while we recorded
  more of the session.
• Scribing for the clientoutlining, listing, and
  taking notes for thembecame common.
• And at the end of the session, the writer left,
  not just with the fading memory of a
  collaborative conversation, but the outline of
  one, a new context, and a space in which to
  position their ideas.

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ESL Issues

• Via Jennifer Staben and Kathryn Dempsey Nordhaus
• Stephen Krashen- Affective filter hypothesis
• Behaviorism- quality of language input
• Cultural difference/assumptions regarding
  education

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Bakhtin And Scribing

• From a Bakhtinian perspective scribing was
  effective because of the nature of language the
  fact that the word is in a constant process of
  description and re-description in the world.
• Scribing helps to illuminate context and
  therefore, also illustrates and models a process,
  not only for idea development, but logical
  interpretation and critical thinking.

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The Conversation Of Mankind

• Kenneth Bruffee in Peer Tutoring and the
  Conversation of Mankind also points out that
  many scholarsOakenshott and Vygotskyposit that
  reflective thought is an internalized
  conversation, situating conversation as the locus
  of knowledge.
• Thought, then, works the same way as conversation
  yet is more limited because of the confines of a
  single experience or perspective.
• Writing, to Bruffee, was internalized thought
  brought back to the public sphere, and scribing
  then is illuminating that social process through
  seeing and re-seeing, working with a text
  collaboratively.

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When to Scribe?

• Scribing can work when writers are struggling
  with
• Critical thinking
• Idea development
• Organizational issues
• Support and Evidence
• Poor phrasing or word choice
• Sentence construction
• Basic grammatical issues
• Identifying audience in academic writing

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How Do We Scribe A General DescriptionPart 1

• Scribing begins with the writer or tutor reading
  or discussing the assignment.
• The tutor writes down important criteria for the
  assignment on a sheet of paper.
• It progresses to a reading of the clients
  writing (if there is something to read)
  preferably done by the tutee.
• Next, the non-directive method of active
  listening and note-taking is emphasized the
  tutor becomes the clients scribe, taking notes
  on the tutees work.
• What follows is reader response, formed from an
  outline of the tutors note taking.

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Restoring Balance?

• This process models the organization of the
  writers work.
• It shows the logical progression from one idea to
  the next.
• It allows the writer to re-see connections, and
  thoughtfully question them.
• It gives the writer a true academic audience to
  enter into conversation with.
• It allows clients more comfortable speaking than
  writing, to see their ideas transferred to the
  page.

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How Do We Scribe A General DescriptionPart 2

• Tutors then, directively, hone in on language,
  specifically looking at passages that were
  difficult for them to follow.
• The client and tutor do a role reversal, having
  the tutee scribe an awkward sentence that is read
  back to them, word for word, from their writing.
• In that process, the tutor stops in troubling
  spots and asks questions directly about the text
  Is there a better word for this? Why use a comma
  here and semicolon here? Is there a reason we
  didnt end the sentence here? Is this really what
  we mean? How could we rephrase?
• In certain situations, it is acceptable for the
  tutor to model actual constructions, write sample
  sentences, and have the tutee attempt to emulate
  this behavior.

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Restoring Balance?

• This allows collaborative work with sentence
  structure, awkward phrasing, and basic
  grammatical issues.
• Rather than presenting these issues as rules,
  scribing allows the writer to interact with
  language.
• It also keeps the tutor from using technical
  terms (comma splice, sentence fragment, definite
  and indefinite article) to aid the student in
  learning the conventions of academic writing.
• It emphasizes, too, that each sentence goes
  through a procedure of description and
  re-description, seeing and re-seeing process.

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Problems With Scribing

• Like other tutoring methods, scribing has its
  flaws
• The tutor must be careful to model the writers
  construction instead of forcing an
  interpretation.
• Because of the nature of scribing, sessions
  usually last 45 minutes or longer.
• When recording the ideas of the writer, sometimes
  ideas get left out because of the time it takes
  to physically write.
• Because scribing requires lots of writing, it
  usually requires lots of paper or space on
  writing center forms.
• Clients that come to the writing center without
  assignments, and want other forms of instruction
  seek that specific instruction.

36
Where Do We Go From Here?

• Informing tutors of directive and non-directive
  approaches is useful, but it seems that problems
  occur in conversion, in the gap between theory
  and practice.
• It notable that this gap will always exist.
• And no one technique, method, or tutoring style
  can act as a holistic solution.
• Defining a theoretical rationale for writing
  centers as both directive and non-directive may
  not be realistic.
• Perhaps it would be more effective to train
  tutors in techniques, allowing tutors to develop
  an effective tutoring style and interpret the
  tutees needs situationally, taking full
  advantage of the educational potential of each
  session.

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Trying To Find A Balance

• But that doesnt mean we dont try. Attempting
  to restore balance and prevent division, writing
  centers should
• Be proactive in sharing an ideology concerning
  what writing is.
• Verse tutors in a series of different and diverse
  techniques.
• Give tutors the freedom to combine techniques,
  creatively.
• Allow tutors to interpret the clients needs
  according to the situation.

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References and Resources

• Bartholomae, David. Inventing the University.
  Composition in Four Keys Inquiring into the
  Field. Ed. Mark Wiley, Barbara Gleason, Louise
  Wetherbee Phelps. Toronto Mayfield Publishing
  Company, 1996. 460-479.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Discourse in the Novel.
  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed.
  Vincent B. Leitch. New York W. W. Norton
  Company, 2001. 1186-1190.
• Bruffee, Kenneth A. Peer Tutoring and the
  Conversation of Mankind. Composition in Four
  Keys Inquiring into the Field. Ed. Mark Wiley,
  Barbara Gleason, Louise Wetherbee Phelps.
  Toronto Mayfield Publishing Company, 1996.
  84-97.
• Friere, Paulo. The Banking Concept of
  Education. Teaching Composition Background
  Readings, Second Edition. Ed. T. R. Johnson.
  Boston Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. 91-102.
• Lunsford, Andrea. Collaboration, Control, and
  the Idea of a Writing Center. The Writing Center
  Journal 12.1 (1991) 3-10.
• Newkirk, Thomas. The First Five Minutes Setting
  the Agenda in a Writing Conference. Writing and
  Response Theory, Practice, and Research. Ed.
  Chris Anson Urbana, IL NCTE Press, 1989.
  317-331.
• North, Stephen M. The Idea of a Writing Center.
  College English 46 (1984) 433-46.
• North, Stephen M. Revisiting The Idea of a
  Writing Center. The Writing Center Journal 15.1
  (1994) 7-19.
• Rose, Mike. The Language of Exclusion Writing
  Instruction at the University. Composition in
  Four Keys Inquiring into the Field. Ed. Mark
  Wiley, Barbara Gleason, Louise Wetherbee Phelps.
  Toronto Mayfield Publishing Company, 1996.
  445-459.
• Sommers, Nancy. Responding to Student Writing.
  Teaching Composition Background Readings, Second
  Edition. Ed. T. R. Johnson. Boston Bedford/St.
  Martins, 2005. 383-392.
• Shamoon, Linda K., and Deborah H. Burns. A
  Critique of Pure Tutoring. The Writing Center
  Journal 15.2 (1995) 134-51.