A treasure hunt in the writing lab: training new and returning consultants.

Both directors and consultants strive to show clients that a lab is a place of discovery, not just a warehouse of information (Lunsford). It has to be admitted, though, that a prime reason clients knock on our doors is to ask for quick answers to such questions as, "How do I cite a videotape using Turabian?" or "What is a comma splice?" or "What is a thesis statement anyway?" No lab plays a storehouse role exclusively, but providing answers is, undeniably, part of being a writing lab.

Providing information is no easy task. Consultants (or directors, for that matter) cannot carry all the information in their heads. Nor should they try. As Samuel Johnson said, "Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it"(Boswell).

How, then, can a director train consultants--especially newly hired ones--in what a lab offers so they can readily secure the resources for answering clients' questions? A director's walking consultants around the lab like a tour guide, pointing out the sources (the most used, the most beloved) is not sufficient. New consultants often forget which book helps with Turabian footnotes and which handout is useful for clients writing history papers; after all, as new workers, they must absorb myriad details about a lab.

The treasure hunt concept

A possible solution to helping new workers locate as well as know key resources (books, dictionaries, thesauri, handbooks, and handouts) is to use a treasure hunt. Lab directors probably experienced such an exercise during their MA or PhD course work when they had to explore their university's library by locating a rather inconsequential detail. (How long, for example, is the 1975 edition of J. H. Freese's translation of Aristotle's 'Art' of Rhetoric-Loeb Classical Library? The answer, by the way, is 493 pages, counting the index.)

The treasure hunt for a lab, though, eschews such minutiae. Instead, a treasure hunt focuses on any part of the writing process (invention, editing, transitions, paragraphs) and with any types of students (students writing personal statements for graduate school, history students using Turabian, or international students worried about a, an, or the). Best of all, it is not a director but the veteran consultants who create the exercise.

Creating a treasure hunt exercise

* To create a treasure hunt, experienced consultants write both the questions and answers

* On a piece of paper, they write a question using a client's phrasing. For instance, "I have trouble with transitions, and my paper doesn't make sense? How can I make my writing flow? My professor said my writing is too choppy?"

* On a separate sheet of paper, veterans provide the answer, telling where to go in the lab to locate help (on what desk? in what file drawer?), what source(s) to look at (thesaurus? Harbrace Handbook?) and what possible answer(s) to tell clients.

Only after new consultants complete the Treasure Hunt do they, then, look at the answers provided by their experienced colleagues.

Samples from a Treasure Hunt

Typical questions, with possible answers, include:

Sample One

" A student whose second language

is English enters the lab and asks, "I don't understand the difference between 'sitting around the house' versus 'sitting in the house.' Can you explain the correct usage to me?"

Go to: the bookshelf labeled "Helping International Students." Sources:

1) NTC's English Idiom Dictionary

2) Longman Dictionary of American English 

3) Harbrace Handbook (most recent edition)

Answer(s): My advice is to show the client how our idiomatic phrases are used in the first source (NTC's English Idiom Dictionary). Certain prepositional phrases simply must be accepted. The Longman can show the various uses of a specific preposition in English, however. Harbrace can show the rules governing general usage of prepositions (See 1c and 22a.).

Sample Two

Question posed by the client:

"My professor says that I can't just make a quote its own sentence. What do I have to do with it?"

Go to: the Writing Lab's file drawer on rhetorical concerns. Source(s): See Question posed by the client: the file folders "Quotation Framing" and "Quotations: How to Handle Them"

Answer(s): Have the client do the following:

* write a passage that identifies the source, the position it takes, and the quotation itself.

* write a sentence offering one reason for your position.

* write a sentence explaining how your position and that of your source are related.

* combine the above to create a rough paragraph and then revise and organize the paragraph, adding transitions.

Sample Three

Question posed by the client:

"I really don't know what my professor is looking for in a paper. I have the assignment, but I wish I could see a paper he has already graded."

Go to: the file drawer with sample papers. Source(s): Find the subject and the professor for whom your client is writing a paper. If your client's professor has not provided a sample paper, check the file drawer on rhetorical concerns for any handouts applicable to the client's subject or paper.

Answer(s): Pull a sample paper from the appropriate file. Let the client examine the paper, but do not allow him or her to photocopy or remove the paper from the Writing Lab.

Benefits to experienced consultants

Creating a treasure hunt offers experienced workers numerous benefits. Their walking around the lab to look up answers means they are becoming re-familiar with the resources, thus increasing their efficiency and effectiveness as tutors. As a veteran consultant noted, "Writing up the answers helped me to slow down and reflect on details I had already internalized as a tutor." More importantly, though, hunting for the treasures boosts their egos by showing them how much they have learned as tutors and how much they can share with others.

Besides building confidence, the treasure hunt helps veteran consultants gain new insight into their own learning curve. All too often, experienced consultants, with only a year of tutoring, believe they have "mastered" the fine art of being consultants. When writing up the treasure hunt, though, veteran consultants discover many questions they had yet not figured out. As one veteran consultant said about creating the treasure hunt, "I could think about questions I had not previously solved, such as the proper MLA citation for an InFoTrac article." Another veteran consultant confessed that he had not realized that more than one resource might solve a client's problem. Consultants, who once thought they knew most of the answers, teach themselves more. One experienced consultant used the opportunity to study a grammar issue she herself had always found "disturbing." The client's question was, "My teacher says that I write passive sentences, and they need to be active. What's that mean?" The consultant said she had enjoyed researching the answer. Instead of feeling rushed when a client is sitting next to her, waiting for her to look it up in a handbook, the consultant had the luxury of time to study about voice in verbs. Crafting and then providing the answer, she now feels better prepared when this grammatical issue arises.

Benefits for new consultants and for directors

New consultants do become more familiar with a lab's layout and resources, but a treasure hunt accomplishes more: it also fosters a bond between new and veteran workers. Since experienced colleagues are usually nearby in the lab when new workers are hunting for answers, new consultants readily seek their help with specific concerns, thus promoting a dialogue among them. The questions themselves are also a preview. Since veteran consultants have generated them based on real consultations, these authentic questions give new consultants invaluable experience into what to expect from clients.

And the benefits for a director?

The treasure hunt questions are barometer for what experienced consultants see as the lab's top concerns. The most frequently asked topics focused on writing literature papers; editing for grammar and usage; documenting with APA, MLA, and Turabian; helping international students; preparing for postgraduate tests, (such as GMAT, GRE, or the MCAT). So, I found--at least for my lab--the treasure hunt offered insight into the clients' interests.

Conclusion

The hunt is on. Directors are always searching for novel ways to acclimate new consultants to a lab and to tap into the experience of veteran consultants. Though a treasure hunt takes time to create, it helps directors to train new consultants and--ironically--to retrain returning ones. As one veteran consultant noted, "Although our lab has all these handbooks and handouts, we consultants usually just work with clients and, then, let them go. Now, we know better what is available to help students." Samuel Johnson, then, was right: it's knowing where to find the information that is the true treasure.

Works Cited

Aristotle. 'Art' of Rhetoric. Trans. J. H. Freese. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1975.

Boswell, James. The Life of Johnson. No editor. Vol. 9, v. Chap. ix 1775. London: No publisher. 1835.

Gadsby, Adam, and Della Summers, eds. Longman Dictionary of American English. New ed. NY: Longman, 1997.

Hodges, John C., et al. Hodges' Harbrace Handbook. Orlando: Harcourt, 2001.

Lunsford, Andrea. "Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center." Writing Center Journal 12.1 (1991): 3-10. Rpt. in The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing Center Theory. Ed. Robert W. Barnett and Jacob S. Blumner. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001. 92-99.

Spears, Richard A., and Betty Kirkpatrick. NTC's English Idioms Dictionary. Chicago: NTC, 1993.

Bonnie Devet

College of Charleston 

Charleston, SC