Writing Program

Sign-up and Notification:

When we assign a student to work with you, you will receive a call notifying you of the date and time of that appointment; if we leave a message with this information, please call back as soon as possible to confirm. Once you begin tutoring, you should check your mailbox regularly for notices that additional students have been assigned to you. Students are signed up with a tutor for five sessions, and then have the option to renew to the end of the semester. Thus, once you are "on" for a period, you should expect to work that period for at least the next five weeks, and probably to the end of the semester. Tutors work with two students during an eighty-minute class period. When you first begin you may have only one student, but this will change as things get busier. Please make sure you are on time for your tutoring sessions and ask students to do the same.

If you are meeting a student for the first time, it is your responsibility to locate the student and introduce yourself.  Please keep an eye out for students who seem to be 'waiting' and help every student find his or her tutor.

First tutoring session:

When you meet students for the first time, introduce yourself and take a few moments to review Writing Center policies and explain our approach. Here are the policies you should review with new students:

1. In signing up for the Writing Center, each student makes a commitment to attend five (5) consecutive sessions at the Writing Center.

2. Upon signing up, students are registered for 1.5 E credits of 355:096. (Part-time students who wish to receive the 1.5 E credits for the course should let the desk staff know they wish to register for the credits). This course will appear on the transcript before the end of the semester. It does not count toward credit for graduation or affect the GPA. It does count toward full-time status. The grade for this course is "Pass" or "Fail."

3. For both pedagogical and practical purposes, it is important that students not miss any sessions. If any student misses two sessions, that student will be dropped from the Writing Center schedule and will receive an “F” for 096. Please do not tell students that they are excused from a particular session and please do not reschedule sessions under any circumstances. We cannot pay you for these sessions and it is disruptive for students.

4. The Writing Center is NOT a proofreading service; tutors will neither "go over" students’ drafts, "give them ideas for their paper," nor correct grammatical errors for the students.

5. The Writing Center is a place where a student will work with a tutor to develop ideas, draft and revise papers, find ways of moving back into the text to develop complex ideas, identify and correct pattern(s) of error, develop reading strategies that open up a text, and choose and use relevant and difficult passages in assigned papers. We take a "workshop" approach to tutoring; our emphasis is on the improvement of the writer over five or more weeks.

6. Tell students that they should prepare before they come to their tutoring session and should expect to continue working on their papers after the session.

7. Students should ALWAYS come to their tutoring appointment with their books, old papers (graded and drafts), class notes, assignments, and the draft of the paper on which they are currently working. Ask students to bring two copies of their current drafts so that you can read one copy while they work on the other.
   

Each tutor will work with two students during a class period. These two students are likely to be in different classes or courses, and thus to be working on different readings or assignments. Even two students with the same assignment will be at different stages in the writing process. Negotiating two students simultaneously in eighty minutes may seem difficult, but is in fact quite manageable because each student will spend at least half of the session writing. In the eighty-minute session each student should work alone on two or more clearly defined writing tasks for a total of at least forty minutes. Because each student is writing for forty to sixty minutes, you will spend ten to twenty minutes talking to each student to agree on tasks, make suggestions, and review the work each has done during the session. Please do not "work with" both students at the same time. No two students are ever at exactly the same stage of the reading/ thinking/ writing process; thus, in order to serve every student fully, it is crucial that you interact with each student individually. In order to provide a productive working environment without distractions, please have your two students sit at different tables.

Session Notes:

Begin each session by asking each student to write about his current writing project on the "Session Notes" form. You should use the student’s comments to shape the session. Early in the semester students may be vague or unsure about what they want to work on, but as the semester progresses, and with your help, students will become more confident about articulating specific problems, issues, and projects.

Making Session Notes Productive:

If necessary, spend a few minutes encouraging the student, through conversation, to answer the Session Notes questions more fully. This will help her begin thinking about the various tasks and strategies that are part of the writing process, so that she can begin to develop her own methodology for approaching writing projects. Once the student has made a sincere effort to articulate a starting point, have a brief conversation with her to help her define the task with which she will begin.

Start-Up Task:

Depending on what the student writes, and what the two of you decide in conversation, agree on a "start-up task" that is related to the difficulties she is experiencing or the stage in her writing process at which she has arrived. Agree on a time frame for completing the task (usually 5 or 10 minutes, but longer if it seems appropriate), and leave the student alone to work.

If the student has not yet written a draft, spend a few moments determining the reason—did he just get the assignment, or is he having difficulty understanding the assignment, or having difficulty understanding the reading well enough to start brainstorming or drafting, or is there some other obstacle? Then ask him to try one of these following start-up approaches (or another approach that seems appropriate given the student’s situation):

• Free-write about the assignment itself—what does it seem to be asking the writer to do, and why is it confusing?

• Re-write the assignment question in her own words; then find two passages in the text(s) that can help her begin to address the question as she has rewritten it.

• Choose a quotation from the text and free write in response to the quotation, or write about it in light of one of the questions in the assignment.

• Re-read the essay backwards, starting with the last paragraph and summarizing each paragraph; this is a good strategy for students who say that they don’t understand the reading.

• Locate a passage that seems particularly difficult, and write as many questions as possible about the confusing ideas in that passage—at least 10 questions.

• Locate a problematic passage, circle the words that seem most important to the idea in that passage, and then free-write about the meanings of those words and the connections between them.

If the student has written a draft (or partial draft), you will probably want to define a start-up task that focuses on the student’s writing. Here are a few suggestions:

• Re-read the draft, as if it were written by another student, and highlight the best idea(s). (This is a good preliminary exercise for working on argument, or for discovering that there are not enough ideas yet to move toward argument.)

• If the student says that the draft is "done"or "almost done," start with the task above (highlighting best ideas), and then ask the student to free-write for a few minutes about how the 3 (or 4 or 5) best ideas in the paper are related to one another. (If the paper really IS "almost done," this is a good way to begin revising and refining the argument.)

• Re-read the assignment, mark every part of the assignment that the draft does not address, and write informally about how to extend the draft to address these aspects of the assignment.

• Find a quotation that could be inserted into the paper, or look at places where the paper already cites textual evidence and see whether the student uses that "evidence" to make a point toward an argument of his own.

• Read through the paper and underline all the quotation, and then assess the balance between quotation and analysis in each paragraph.

• Re-read the current draft after re-reading the teacher’s comments on the previous paper. Write informally about the issues that the teacher has pinpointed, and then formulate a written plan for addressing those issues in the revision process.

Later in the semester, you can ask the student to write informally about which strategies he found most useful in the work he did on his own.

Assessing the Situation:

Once you have started both students working, you should briefly read their drafts or, if they have not written drafts, their assignments. Having students re-read or work on the draft (or assignment) while you are doing the same ensures that they too will have some ideas about the work that can be accomplished during the session. Students should never sit and wait while you are assessing their drafts or considering their assignments—they should be at work on the start-up task determined through the Session Notes and a brief conversation.

Working with one student’s paper at a time, make provisional decisions about what you would like the student to accomplish in the session. Here are a few guidelines for reading students’ work:

• It is important that you read papers quickly, so that you can get back to the student and suggest the next task. Don’t set yourself twenty to thirty minutes to read a paper carefully in order to respond to it. Not only does this waste precious time when the student could be revising or re-working ideas, but it also positions you as the final arbiter who will judge the paper and tell the student how to "fix" it.

• Please do not spend lots of time on introductory paragraphs, particularly at the beginning of the semester. Most students will need to produce more moments of strong analysis before articulating and introducing a central idea or argument. Similarly, your students’ time is not well-spent "revising" conclusions to papers whose ideas are not yet fully explored. Skim the 1st paragraph quickly, then read the rest of the paper more carefully looking for the kinds of work the student might want to address.

• Teachers’ comments are an excellent guide for the direction in which to work with the student. You might want to ask the student for the last graded paper, and use those comments as a guide for revision tasks for the current draft.

• Write little or nothing on the student’s draft. If you do write on the draft, confine your comments to suggestions for the writing process (for example, "can you find a quotation to support this claim?") or substantive questions that engage the student’s ideas but do not introduce your ideas (for example, "how is this idea about cloning connected to your claim about free will on page 3?"). It’s a good idea to jot down some notes for yourself about the kinds of writing issues the student needs to address, but these should not be on the student’s draft.

It is important to remember that you will see each of your students for at least five sessions, and that you cannot and should not try to address all their writing issues in one session. Rather, using the teacher’s comments and the student’s own writing (both in the paper and on the session notes) as your guidelines, you should make a decision as to what issue(s) you will focus upon in this session.

Once you have read the paper and identified a number of possible tasks, return to the student and discuss the start-up work she has already done. Make sure to include in this discussion some pointers about how this strategy can be useful in the future, and remind the student that she can use this strategy on her own. Then suggest a second task. The second task might be a follow-up on the work she has already done, or you might ask the student to turn to other work that you think is more important at this point in the writing process. Alternatively, you can suggest several options and ask the student to choose. Once again, you should agree on a time frame for the task, and then leave the student alone to do the work. The Tutoring Manual discusses ways to address specific reading, thinking, and writing issues. Whatever task you ask the student to address, be careful to discuss not only what he should do, but also why this work will be productive. This helps to demystify the writing process, and helps students to see that they are making progress.

Working With Two Students:

Having set up the first student with a task, you can turn to the second student and follow the same procedure. Check in on each of your students (visually) as they are working. If the work seems to be proceeding well (i.e. the student is actively reading and writing), don’t interrupt; on the other hand, if a student is staring aimlessly out the window or looks extremely frustrated, it might be time to intervene and re-state the task or suggest a different task. Return to each student at the end of the agreed-upon time, or when she has completed the agreed-upon task. Discuss her progress and decide on another task.

Reviewing and Recapping:

Each time you and a student agree on a task, leave the student alone to write. Agree on a time frame (for example, five minutes to locate two important quotations, or twenty minutes to revise a paragraph to include quotation, etc.). After the student has completed the task (or worked for the agreed-upon time), consult with the student about the work she has just done. Ask questions about what she has accomplished, what kinds of obstacles she encountered, and how the work she just did contributes to her progress on the paper. Ask her to name or explain what she did in her own words. Be sure to remind her that she can repeat this strategy at home on her own. Most importantly, coach her to write on the Session Notes, explaining what she has just done in her own words, so that she will have a tangible record to refer back to while working on her own. Then move on to another task.

Balancing the Session:

During the eighty-minute session, you should work evenly with both students, alternating between them. Balance your time according to the specific needs and progress of individual students. You may find that you move back and forth every 20 minutes, alternating 20 minutes of conversation with 20 minutes of writing for each student. It is more likely, however, that your two students will proceed at different paces—you might need to engage one student in a new task every 10 minutes, while the other works on his own for 30 or 40 minutes. Keep track of the time frames you have agreed upon, and after you leave the student alone to work, make a quick visual check every few minutes to make sure that the student is working productively. There may well be times when both of your students are working on tasks you have set them and you have “nothing to do.” Do not be alarmed by this; it is a sign that your students are doing the work of producing and interpreting on their own. Remember that each student should spend at least half of the session—a minimum of forty minutes—writing. It is not merely a recommendation, but Writing Center policy that you leave your students “alone” while they write instead of sitting next to them and watching them work.

Keep Records During and After Each Session:

Take a few minutes here and there during the session, or immediately after the session, to make some notes for yourself about the work each student does during the tutoring session. I recommend that you use the Tutor Notification form for this purpose, so that you will have a complete record of each student’s contact information, attendance, and progress in one place. The purpose of these notes is twofold: they give you something concrete to which you can refer each week as you begin the tutoring session, and they help you to remember the details of your sessions accurately so that you can communicate effectively with teachers. These notes should record in specific, content oriented terms the kinds of work you have asked the student to do. Notes such as "worked on draft," for example, are not going to help you remember what strategies the student practiced during the session. In contrast, a note like "revised paragraph re potato as ‘knowledge worker’ three times; 1st to include quotation, then to explain quotation, then to explain better" reminds you exactly what kinds of work the student has practiced.

At the end of a student’s third session, you will write a "Tutor-Teacher Communication" note:

This note keeps the teacher informed about the work you are doing with the student in the Writing Center; you can also ask for the teacher’s suggestions for future sessions. You should refer to your own records to compose this note, so that you can write specifically about the work the student has done. Feel free to communicate with the teacher before the 3rd session—or any time— if you have any questions or concerns about the student’s work or progress. The teacher’s name is on your tutor notification sheet. Remember that this is an opportunity to get feedback from the teacher, so the more specific your note is, the more productively the teacher can respond. General remarks like "we worked on making an argument" do not inspire teachers to respond to your note; nor do they inspire much confidence in your strengths as a tutor.

If your communication is clear and specific, you should expect to get a response from the teacher within about two weeks. If you receive a response, you should take the teacher’s suggestions seriously. If you do not receive a response, it probably means that the teacher is too busy to respond, and expects you to continue with the work you have described.