Problems in the writing center.

Abstract

This article discusses a problem in the writing center: for a variety of reasons, tutors are unable to help students with discipline-specific writing as much as they--and students and professors--would like. After examining the reasons for this problem, this article proposes that professors in the disciplines do the following to address the problem: (1) include tutors as part of the audience for their assignments, and (2) expand their definition of what constitutes an effective assignment.

Background

One of the most important insights spurring the Writing (or Communications) Across the Curriculum movement is this: what is considered to be effective communication varies from discipline to discipline. A professor in the humanities, for instance, might tell a student to avoid the passive voice, while that same student might be urged by her chemistry professor to--by all means--please use the passive voice. Even matters as important as what counts as evidence may vary by discipline. The end result is often, in the best case scenario, confusion on the student's part and, in the worst case scenario, a dispiriting sense that academic standards are arbitrary and that college is just a hoop to jump through--an often hopelessly-inaccessible hoop that the student may not, after all, succeed in squeezing through.

Many students turn to the writing center for guidance in navigating these complex waters. Unfortunately, writing center tutors are often put in a position where they cannot help as much as they would like--or as much as the student or the faculty member would like. Reviewing commonly-accepted knowledge in composition studies and related fields, this article will explain why tutors are frequently unable to provide optimal help, and it will go on to propose two ways to address the problem. It will propose, first, that writing center tutors could better serve students if faculty saw not only students but also tutors as part of the audience for the assignment. Tutors generally begin a writing center conference by asking to see the professor's prompt, so including enough detail for the tutor would help the student-tutor conversation to be even more effective. Second, this article proposes that professors expand their definition of what constitutes an effective assignment, broadening it to include the multiple layers of scaffolding that allow students and the tutors helping them to better meet professors' expectations.

Why Tutors Cannot Always Help as Much as They Would Like

Reviewing commonly-accepted knowledge in composition studies and related fields, this section will explain why tutors cannot always help students as much as they would like. First, of course, it is unrealistic to expect a tutor to be familiar with all the conventions in all the disciplines (not to mention, of course, the subtleties of when to adapt conventions within a discipline). A professor has spent not only years of a graduate career but also post-graduate years developing a nuanced understanding of the conventions of one discipline (along with the assumptions and habits of inquiry that such conventions index); a tutor, unlike a professor, deals not with one but with many disciplines and is thus unlikely to have a nuanced understanding of all--or even most--disciplinary conventions in her usually-far-shorter career. There are, of course, conventions and rhetorical strategies common to most disciplines that tutors can draw on to help students--tutors can, for instance, help students understand the conventions of Standard English and help them learn strategies for sustaining an argument as opposed to making unsupported claims or merely summarizing. It is important for students to learn to avoid such common problems, and if that were all writing center tutors did, then students' time--and a university's money--would still be very Well-spent.

However, it is important that tutors do more than help students learn commonly-applicable conventions and strategies. Teaching only these conventions and strategies is just half the story--just half of what students need to know to succeed in writing across the disciplines. Without knowledge of writing in a particular discipline, students often lose persuasive power, for their language "marks" them as an outsider in the field and thus undermines their credibility. Moreover, without at least a rudimentary command of discipline-specific conventions, students may be less likely to acquire the habits of mind that would allow them to think like an expert in that discipline--they may be less likely, for instance, to be able to identify problems or develop important ideas. We know, for instance, that form can be generative--that "following" a particular form of writing can help us generate ideas that we may not otherwise have generated. Thus, when we are aware of certain disciplinary forms and try to "follow" them, we are more likely to generate ideas considered to be worthy in that discipline. [1]

But there is another reason that tutors should help students become aware of both general and discipline-specific conventions: when we teach only general conventions, we unintentionally reinforce students' commonly-held misconception that knowing general conventions equals good writing. This misconception is problematic not just because it is only half the story but also because treating situation-specific conventions as generalizable can lead to ineffective writing. One student that I tutored in a writing center, for instance, believed that she should never use "I" in her writing; like many other students, she didn't realize that this was just a convention in some disciplines. Unaware of the discipline-specific nature of the convention, she blindly adhered to it in all of her writing, and the result was some very convoluted prose. Rather than saying "I believe" in situations in which it would have been appropriate, she had cast several sentences in the passive voice and omitted the human agent; as a result, I as a reader was genuinely quite confused about who believed the thoughts she was discussing. Many students, like this one, are sucked into ineffective writing by their belief that discipline-specific conventions hold for all rhetorical situations. Because tutors are frequently also unaware of the myriad discipline-specific conventions shaping communication in different corners of the university, they are predictably unable to help solve this problem.

If we take it as a given that it is better to teach both generalizable and discipline-specific writing strategies, the problem remains that tutors cannot possibly be aware of the myriad discipline-specific strategies that characterize writing in all corners of the university. A standard approach to addressing this problem has been for writing instructors and writing tutors to (1) help students become aware that effective writing is situation-specific, and (2) help students learn strategies they can use to educate themselves about discipline-specific conventions. "Analyze the rhetorical situation," a cynical student might translate, "to gain insight into the conventions shaping the discipline of this week's paper." After spending years working in a writing center, it has become apparent to me that, as valuable as this approach is, it is an incomplete solution.

Indeed, students often have trouble inferring the conventions shaping disciplinary writing--largely because professors themselves are frequently unable to articulate what the conventions are. As Polanyi (1958/1974) has noted in his seminal work, much expert knowledge is tacit. The tacit nature of expert knowledge is apparent in research examining professors' assignments; often, for instance, professors do not explicitly enumerate discipline-specific conventions, thus making it difficult for students to fulfill professors' expectations. Notably, Higgins, Hartley, and Skelton (2002) found that only 33% of the students they studied said they understood professors' criteria. The inexplicitness of assignments likewise poses problems for writing center tutors, who typically begin a conference by asking to look at the assignment sheet written by the professor. Looking at the assignment is important, for well-written assignments guide the tutor in helping students meet the professor's expectations. A good tutor working with a well-written assignment will often refer the student back to the assignment sheet, not only pointing out strengths of the work vis-a-vis the criteria but also brainstorming with the student ways in which the work could better meet the criteria. If the assignment is not well-designed, however, it is impossible to take this approach, and the student and tutor are forced work in a vacuum.

One of the most common problems with assignments is that they fail to provide students with the support they need to be able to successfully complete the work, largely because the criteria are tacit and unarticulated (e.g., Bartholomae, 1986; Herrington, 1992; Prior, 1991; Walvoord and McCarthy, 1990). Even worse, it is not uncommon for assignments to actually set students up for failure. As Bean (1996) notes, for instance, many assignments ask students a series of interrelated questions rather than a single focusing question; the result, he tells us, is that students often feel overwhelmed and are "apt to produce a series of short answers, addressing each question in turn, rather than a unified essay" (p. 89). Yet another example of how assignments can unwittingly set students up for failure is illustrated by my own research (Evans, 2003), a naturalistic study of a writing course and an introduction to film course in a large public research university. The film instructor, Rick, held a Ph.D. in his field and had published widely; he was clearly very knowledgeable about the conventions of writing about film. Like many professors, however, he wrote assignments that did not articulate these conventions. The following assignment, quoted here in its entirety, illustrates this problem:

   For one of the following: Vertigo, Jaws, Rush, Alien, Reality Bites,
   or The Player, do an essay of 500 words (two typed pages) in which
   you (1) precisely describe the graphic design of the film's title
   (opening credits) sequence and the events of its first story
   sequence, and (2) indicate how the story sequence, in its visual
   style and storytelling features, introduces some of the principal
   concerns which will figure in the film. Devote approximately equal
   space to each of the two topics. Type or computer print (double
   spaced) the paper and hand it in with this sheet on Thursday, Sept.
   14. Most of the films should be available in the Undergraduate Media
   Center, and the rest at Rentertainment, Blockbuster, and other video
   stores around town.

That this assignment reflected Rick's inability to articulate his tacit knowledge--and that it unwittingly set students up for failure--can be seen most powerfully in the case of Joel, one of the many students who had trouble fulfilling the assignment. As requested in the assignment, Joel "precisely describe[d]" The Player's opening sequence. His description was fairly long, which is not surprising given that Rick told students to devote as much space to the description as to the second part of the assignment. However, when Joel took Rick up on his offer to read an early draft of the paper, Rick was dissatisfied with the paper in at least two respects. First, Rick informed Joel, the description was too long; second, he said, the description needed to be tied to an "argument" or "thesis." In response to Rick's assessment of the paper, Joel said "I read the handout," conveying his sense that these expectations were not specified in the assignment. Apparently this response did not register, because Rick then replied that Joel should just give a one- or two-sentence summary--advice that contradicted the assignment's guideline to "devote approximately equal space" to description and analysis. This is not an atypical example of how a writing prompt can lead students astray (see Sommers, 1982; Freedman, 1987; and Walvoord and McCarthy, 1990 for teachers' tendency to give mixed messages). Given that it is standard practice in writing centers for tutors to ask to see the assignment before even reading students' papers, it is not hard to see why tutors would have difficulty helping students like Joel produce a paper that met their professors' expectations.

Indeed, important research suggests that student-tutor conferences are more successful when participants explicitly articulate criteria for effective writing and evaluate students' work against those criteria (Walker, 1992; Walker and Elias, 1987). In my own practice, I have indeed found that this "articulate criteria and then evaluate" approach can make or break the success of a conference; merely evaluating students' work in a vacuum--without referencing criteria--tends to send students away with the sense that their paper is better, not that they have become better writers. Students should make connections between abstract goals (the criteria) and particular performances; when they examine a performance alone, without the context of the goals, they cannot connect their performance to goals--and it is the connection-making activity that allows students to write more effectively in the future. Unfortunately, given the current state of assignments that most students bring to the writing center, this connection-making activity is not possible, because the criteria for what would be effective writing in the discipline are not stated in the assignment. This is not the "fault" of professors, of course; it is simply normal given the tacit nature of expert knowledge.

The good news is that experts can make their tacit knowledge explicit. Professors who want to better serve their students--and the writing center--can. To help students arrive at the writing center with better work--and to help tutors have access to the criteria that will help the conference be more successful--professors may find it useful to reconceptualize their assignments along the following lines.

Re-thinking the Audience for Assignments: Clarifying Criteria for Both Tutors and Students

Because the success of a writing conference can depend largely on the clarity of the writing prompt, this section proposes that professors see not only students but also tutors as the audience for their writing prompts. As previously suggested, it is important to spell out criteria in writing assignments (see also Bean, 1996; Murray, 2004; Walvoord, 1986; Walvoord and Anderson, 1998); doing so can help both students and tutors. Professors may not realize, however, that simply enumerating criteria is far from sufficient. Many students will not understand the criteria for an assignment based on the initial explanation, and tutors can often have trouble as well. If we take the criterion "support claims with evidence," for example, tutors may have trouble guiding the student because what counts as evidence varies from discipline to discipline. Students typically have even more trouble with this criterion, often, for instance, thinking they can fulfill it merely by adding several additional sub-claims, which they see as evidence. Such is the case with many criteria: students' and tutors' interpretations will often--through no fault of their own--differ from what the professor intended.

Rather than simply enumerating criteria, we also need to illustrate what we mean by them. Providing such illustration can be time-consuming, but the results are well worth it, for the difference in the quality of student work can be significant. When explaining criteria, I have generally found that taking the following steps helps both students and tutors:

* Label each criterion (e.g., "support claims with evidence").

* Explain why it's in the writer's interests to fulfill each criterion (e.g., "the more evidence you have to support your claims, the more likely you are to persuade readers"). When students and tutors understand why a criterion is important, they are often more motivated to meet that criterion.

* Illustrate each criterion with contrasting examples (e.g., give a sample of a paragraph that doesn't provide evidence--or a paragraph that provides evidence inappropriate to the disciplinary context--followed by a revision that illustrates evidence appropriate to the disciplinary context). The contrast between the "before" and "after" examples illustrates the point in ways that a mere description cannot.

The pointers above represent only one way to explain criteria to students and tutors; other professors may find different means of doing so. However professors choose to do so, it is not uncommon for a well-illustrated assignment to be quite long. Professors who wish to avoid lengthy assignment descriptions may prefer instead to merely list criteria and explain why they are important, opting to illustrate individual criteria in a series of separate handouts or mini-lessons. Alternatively, an assignment may be put on a website, where students and tutors can click on a criterion if they want to see contrasting examples.

Regardless of how criteria are illustrated, most professors find that additional illustration can make a significant difference in the quality of student work--not only because tutors can better help students but also because, regardless of whether a student goes to the writing center, the student is able to do better work on her own. I have found that once I provide this level of illustration, the difference in the papers I get is significant. This level of illustration has helped students so much that, years after a course is over, I have had students come to my office to ask for another copy of the criteria handout. (They apparently presumed that the criteria for my assignments could help them write effectively in similar disciplinary contexts.)

Even this level of illustration, however, may not be extensive enough to give students and tutors the level of support they would like. Learners, as we know, often need multiple exposures to concepts, and it is also useful for them to encounter concepts in different contexts. It is all too easy to fall into the trap of groaning "I already told students that; they didn't listen," but it's important to remember that even intelligent and motivated students may (1) have trouble remembering criteria while they are wrestling with their own new and complex ideas, and (2) have trouble applying or adapting those criteria to the at-least-slightly-different rhetorical situation that each response to an assignment represents. Because of the complex nature of writing and learning, students--and the tutors who help them--need even more. Other than describing and illustrating criteria, then, what can we do to help students and tutors? In addition to reconceptualizing the audience for our assignments to include both students and tutors, we should also broaden our definition of what constitutes an assignment.

Reconceptualizing Assignments

Rather than thinking of an assignment as a stand-alone explanation of what students should do, this section proposes that we reconceptualize assignments as sets of activities and materials that help students (and the tutors helping them) to produce work that more fully reflects students' potential. A useful concept towards this end is "scaffolding," a term referring to the ways in which those who are more knowledgeable can provide sets of activities, strategies, and models to help those who are less knowledgeable succeed in tasks they could otherwise not accomplish. Scaffolding is an invaluable concept to anyone involved in education.

Unfortunately, those of us working with college-age people do not always provide enough scaffolding for students to succeed. Instead of providing scaffolding, many of us simply ask students to do a task and are disappointed when they cannot do it well. Murray explains:

   Too often we expect the students to demonstrate a skill simply
   because the assignment, in our minds, calls for the skill. For
   example, we ask our students to describe, but do not instruct
   them in the skills of awareness or the skills of presenting
   description to the reader in such a way that the reader will
   see what the writer intends the reader to see. (98)

Because we are unaware that the problem might be lack of scaffolding, we attribute it to student laziness or some other apparently unsolvable problem that lies within the student. Ball, Dice, and Bartholomae (1990), for instance, note that teacher response to student writing often locates problems in the students and their writing rather than students' unfamiliarity with the discipline, which stems from the "hidden" nature of the conventions of the disciplines. Fortunately, once professors make their tacit knowledge of the discipline explicit--and once they realize that the problem may be lack of scaffolding--they can provide additional scaffolding and more students can succeed at their assignments. Students, then, have the satisfaction of doing work they are proud of, and professors have the satisfaction of both reading good work and knowing that they have genuinely helped students.

There are many ways professors can provide the layers of scaffolding that students need to succeed. These activities--which should directly or indirectly help students and tutors have more successful conferences--include the following:

Consider providing sample papers for students and tutors to use as models. "Provide models" is perhaps the advice most frequently given to instructors who want to read better student work. Murray advises teachers to provide three or more models that "present a range within the genre" so that students "do not think that they just have to fill in the blanks of a writing formula" (p. 97). I also find it useful, after providing students with criteria and discrete illustrations of each criterion (ideally in the form of "before and after" examples), to follow up with "before and after" examples of entire papers. Students could be shown, for instance, a "B" paper that has been revised into an "A" paper. Also useful are norming sessions in which the professor distributes anonymous essays from previous classes and asks students, in groups, to rank the essays and justify their rankings (see Bean, 1996, p. 86 and p. 158). When the class reconvenes, the professor reveals his or her own rankings and often discovers that "students have erroneous notions about what teachers look for in a formal essay, particularly when they are learning the thinking processes and stylistic conventions of a new discipline" (Bean, p. 158). Providing both a list of criteria and entire papers exemplifying degrees of success in meeting the criteria is key to helping students--and tutors--see distinctions between effective and less effective work.

Consider giving students the opportunity to engage in a whole-class workshop before the assignment is due. One or two students could complete an assignment or part of an assignment early, and the entire class could discuss the strengths of the work and ideas for revision. If guided by the list of criteria and the analysis of previous samples, this whole-class discussion can be invaluable in further clarifying how to meet the criteria. (One caveat: for whole-class workshops to be effective, teachers should be sure to thoroughly discuss the strengths of the work and to be diplomatic when discussing the limitations; otherwise, this approach can backfire and end up demoralizing the authors. If done well, however, it can help both the authors and their classmates fine-tune writing strategies; some students, I have found, need this additional round of reinforcement to write successfully.) If students engage in a whole-class workshop before going to the writing center, the work coming into the writing center is likely be to better--and thus the work leaving the writing center may be even one level above that.

Give students the chance to participate in peer response that is effective--and to revise based on the feedback from their peers. Peer response tends to be more effective when students have been given the vocabulary to analyze writing in particular disciplinary contexts and taught how to apply that vocabulary, e.g., through lists of criteria and online or face-to-face discussions of sample papers. Peer response may be done in class or outside of class (with students giving each other feedback in an electronic environment or in person at a mutually-arranged time.) As with whole-class workshops, peer response done before a visit to the writing center can mean that the work coming into the writing center is even better--and thus the work leaving the writing center may be even one level above that.

Finally, if you can afford the class time, consider asking students to revise a brief passage (perhaps from a previous semester's paper) that does not meet a criterion, and then ask for some volunteers to share their revisions with the class. (This activity is more successful if students have previously seen "before and after" examples illustrating the target criterion.) After volunteers share their revisions with the class, the class then discusses how effectively these revisions meet the criterion and, based on the degree of understanding reflected in students' revisions and in the discussion, the instructor knows to either move on to the next criterion or to keep reinforcing the current one. When professors actively assess how well students have understood each criterion, students can produce more effective writing [2]. Students, then, come to the writing center even better prepared.

There are two ways in which activities like these can help the writing center do its job more effectively. First, as previously suggested, such activities can help students come to the writing center with better work, so that instead of helping transform a barely adequate paper into an adequate paper, the writing conference may help transform a good paper into a very good paper. (Although the goal of writing centers is to transform writers rather than any given piece of their work, nonetheless the growth of a writer can be reflected in a revision of a particular work.) Second, activities such as those above can help students become better equipped to discuss their work with a tutor. Such activities can teach students both rhetorical strategies and a richer vocabulary to analyze writing--both of which they can then take to the writing center. There is a big difference between telling a tutor "Here's my assignment; I don't know how to make it better" and "In this assignment, I want to persuade readers by providing enough evidence--and that's the main thing my professor is looking for too--but I'm not sure if the type of evidence I'm giving is appropriate for this discipline." Students who have had enough scaffolding to be able to articulate the latter statement are more likely to have a successful writing conference.

Admittedly, it is a lot of work for professors to develop the multiple layers of scaffolding needed to give most students this critical framework. Assignments--and the scaffolding activities that should be considered a part of them--often require extensive revision before they provide adequate guidance for students and tutors. Many professors find that it takes several semesters' revision of assignments and scaffolding activities before students (with or without the help of the writing center) are able to produce excellent work. After reading each round of student papers, these professors note the most common problems and revise the assignment and scaffolding activities to help future students avoid these problems. While sometimes this revision involves adding criteria or refining contrasting examples, other times it involves adding even more scaffolding activities. Professors know they are done revising an assignment--and done adding more scaffolding activities--when most students successfully meet the criteria. In my own experience, I find that I generally need to revise an assignment (including all the scaffolding activities) about five times before it generates excellent papers. This hard work, however, pays off, for it saves much time and frustration when responding to student work. Instead of despairing over the quality of student work, then, we can give students--and their tutors--the tools they will need to be more successful.

It is true, of course, that not all students need this level of scaffolding to succeed; some students--particularly those who are most like us--may not need it. After all, we succeeded in college and no one provided this level of scaffolding for us. However, most of our students are not like us; most of them will not go on to become college professors, and many of them are not as privileged as many (not all) of us have been. Some students need the additional scaffolding--they may have a learning disability, speak English as a second language, be a first-generation college student, or come from an under-funded high school where they were not often asked to write. Additional scaffolding doesn't hurt the well-prepared students (and often helps them to articulate their tacit knowledge and thus better leverage it). For other students, multiple layers of scaffolding might mean the difference between scraping by and doing well, or even between graduating and dropping out. To think that we could help these students in two ways--directly through more broadly-conceived assignments and indirectly but still significantly through helping writing center tutor--is a very satisfying thought indeed.

Notes

[1] The scientific report format, for instance, includes several different sections, one of which is typically entitled "Discussion." It is not hard to imagine that a student writing a report for the first time, unaware of this convention, would fail to include this section and thus fail to adequately discuss the implications of what she had just reported. Another student, aware of this convention, would be sure to include this section, and would thus be forced to generate ideas to "fill the space." This second student, merely by brainstorming ideas to put in the "required" section, would be more likely to generate ideas that would be appropriate in a disciplinary conversation. Helping students learn discipline-specific conventions, then, can not only bolster their credibility with readers in that discipline but can also help them to generate ideas--to think more like an expert in the particular discipline. If tutors could better help students write within a discipline, then, there would be much to be gained.

[2] It is also useful to bear in mind that scaffolding, as many have pointed out, is not necessarily a one-way activity; professors may, for instance, decide to refine criteria based on students' input.

References

Ball, C., Dice, L., & Bartholomae, D. (1990). Telling secrets: Student readers and disciplinary authorities. In R. Beach & S. Hynds (Eds.), Developing discourse practices in adolescence and adulthood (pp. 337-357). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Bartholomae, D. (1986). Inventing the university. Journal of Basic Writing, 5, 4-23.

Bean, J. C. (1996). Engaging ideas: The professor's guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Evans, K. (2003). Accounting for conflicting mental models of communication in student-teacher interaction: An activity theory analysis. In C. Bazerman & D. Russell (Eds.), Writing selves/writing societies: Research from activity perspectives. Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse and Mind, Culture, and Activity. (Available at http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies.)

Freedman, S. W. (1987). Response to student writing (Research Report No. 23). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Herrington, A. J. (1992). Assignment and response: Teaching with writing across the disciplines. In S. P. Witte, N. Nakadate, & R. D. Cherry (Eds.), A rhetoric of doing: Essays on written discourse in honor of James L. Kinneavey (pp. 244-260). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Higgins, R., Hartley, P., & Skelton, A. (2002). The conscientious consumer: Reconsidering the role of assessment feedback in student learning. Studies in Higher Education, 27, 53-64.

Murray, D. M. (2004). A writer teaches writing. (Revised 2nd ed.) Boston, MA: Thompson Heinle.

Polanyi, M. (1958/1974). Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Prior, P. (1991). Contextualizing writing and response in a graduate seminar. Written Communication, 8, 267-310.

Sommers, N. (1982). Responding to student writing. College Composition and Communication, 33, 148-156.

Walker, C. (1992). Teacher dominance in the writing conference. Journal of Teaching Writing, 11, 65-88.

Walker, C. & Elias, D. (1987). Writing conference talk: Factors associated with high-and low-rated writing conferences. Research in the Teaching of English, 21,266-285.

Walvoord, B. E. (1986). Helping students write well: A guide for teachers in all disciplines. (2nd ed.) New York: Modern Language Association.

Walvoord, B. E., & Anderson, V. J. (1998). Effective grading: A tool for learning and assessment. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Walvoord, B. E., & McCarthy, L. (1990). Thinking and writing in college: A naturalistic study of students in four disciplines. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Kathryn Evans, University of San Francisco, CA

Evans is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies. She has a Ph.D. in writing studies, and her areas of interest include response to student writing, sociohistoric theory, WAC, and writing centers. She also hosts and edits Revising Teaching (revisingteaching.org), a website providing a forum for instructors to reflect on their teaching practices.