Spring 2019 Writing Center Class

I had a wonderful time reading Goedde's "Lorraine's Story" this week. In college I was an English major (and an Italian minor) and I have always loved reading fiction, so I found this article particularly interesting and refreshing. I would argue that many of the suggestions Lorraine's tutor makes are perfectly applicable to academic papers as well, not just to creative essays. Of course, the two genres differ in many ways, but I believe that academic writers would derive great benefits from an enhanced awareness of the ways in which creative writers use language to bring a scene to life. For instance, academic papers often run the risk of sounding too abstract. Dry, jargon-filled paragraphs leave few traces in readers' memories. In contrast, the tutor in the article urges Lorraine to start her paper by telling a story in vivid, concrete language. Of course, this strategy will not work for all academic papers (although it works beautifully for many!), but ...

I was very interested in this week's reading. The crossover from academic to creative writing is a more difficult one than I'd ever considered--I have mainly worked on crossing over to academic writing from creative writing. I would venture to say that my transition was easier than the one described in this paper. Aspects of creative writing--such as attention to sound, as the author attempts to explain to the student--can easily be incorporated into academic writing. All writing, really, is improved by attention to sound and detail. The virtues of academic writing, however, don't always shine in creative writing. I'm currently working on a creative paper via online tutoring and it's proving to be tricky. For one thing, it's quite long, rendering line-by-line comments somewhat impossible. But it's also, I'm finding, difficult to convincingly advise a student on a creative paper outside of the workshop setting. I anticipate the author presenting an argume...

Post #8 Consuelo In broader terms both the non-fiction case study and the more academic ones can be seen as processes of discovery of different subjects with distinct levels of personal involvement,, and expectations. The non-fiction case study seems to be more difficult to the author as it carries the potential risk of eliciting profound contradictions, shameful thoughts, behaviors, and unwanted experiences. The elicitation process that appears to be plagued with uncertainty as the deeply human process of evocating, feeling and writing seems to run without control. A learning process imbedded in the non-fiction case comes across as unexpected full of requirements, conventions, and attention to detail. On the other hand, more academic writing processes may give the appearance of impersonal, objective, somehow remote from the intimate personal experiences of the writer. In this sense, they look as having more controllable results on what and how it is conveyed. Expected prescriptio...

My response considers the advantages and disadvantages of tutoring from a “creative writing perspective” vs. an “academic writing perspective.” I hope I am interpreting the blog post question correctly. It seems to me that both tutoring perspectives are valid, and both utilize useful tutoring methodologies; however, the goals of each methodology are different. Lin and Fei want to tutor students on common and practical academic writing conventions. They want to make sure that students can properly structure a paper, construct a strong thesis statement, and clearly articulate an argument. The advantage to this tutoring method is that it provides students with a set template for constructing an academic essay. Goedde on the other hand is focused on the “sonorous” aspects of words and sentences. He does not just want the sentences on the page to be accurate and meaningful. He wants the sentences to roll off the tongue. The advantage to Goedde’s method is that it gets s...

Goedde's case study is remarkable--and maybe this is too easy--because it enacts form and content so that each is inextricable from the other and therefore helps to steer the point he is making. Sure, his study could have used a more academic structure to argue how one might facilitate creative nonfiction writing, but what would that look like, and especially if Goedde's central idea is kept intact. For me, it seems the advantage of this type of study--that is the advantage it holds stylistically --is that it opens up discussions concerning how these case studies should be written in the first place, and for whom. This is also a concern that is central to Goedde's and Lorraine's point of contention: academic versus creative writing. What do we, the readers, glean from Goedde's style that we might not otherwise glean from a (presumably) traditional model that is, say, the Len and Fei model? This is a question that was brought up in a Cultural Studies course last seme...

Interesting take on that timeless grudge match been academic and creative nonfiction, but cringed at Goedde's frequent use of what I'll call The Other B-Word, which raised its own separate set of questions for me about how we (as tutors) shape the way our students write about racism... Though the use of this word felt central to Loraine's story - and was further complicated by Loraine's own Mexican-American heritage - it was also impossible for me to imagine Goedde parroting it with the same zeal if, say, this had been a story about Loraine using the N-word, or any number of other xenophobic slurs. Not sure if others reacted similarly, but felt noteworthy given the particular necessity (and thorniness) of having students write about race at a place as overwhelmingly white as the University of Iowa. As for comparing this nonfiction case study to the more academic studies we've previously consulted, I feel like the pros and cons basically mirror those raised by Goed...

I really enjoyed reading about online tutoring this week. I have not done any online tutoring so far, but I have taught online courses multiple times, and I would say that there are many benefits to online teaching (and, most likely, to online tutoring, as well). In my experience, online education gives non-traditional students the opportunity to study. Many of these students work, raise children, care for elderly relatives, and live far from campus. Their busy lives make their college experience more difficult and, thus, put them at a disadvantage compared to their younger peers. Online teaching can offer these students the flexibility they need to complete their studies. I would imagine that the same goes for online tutoring. Students who have limited time outside of regular classes have few incentives to come to the Writing Center and ask for help. Online tutoring seems to be the answer to their problem, and I would be curious to know whether online tutoring does indeed attract mor...

After reading the chapter in the Bedford I see some benefits to online tutors, but I still have a few concerns online tutoring. To be honest, writing feedback on papers for the classes that teach is something that I still struggle with primarily because I don't like it. I find it time-consuming; I wish I could just give student's verbal feedback and have them take notes. I also still struggle with how much feedback to give. Everything we have read, stressed only focusing on global issues, but I am still trying to draw the line between too much or too little feedback. I also wrote, in a response to another classmate I am concerned about students that benefit from talking through their writing verbally. The Bedford chapter talks about instant messaging and video chat which might be a good method to talk through writing with a student, but the Writing Center at Iowa doesn't work that way. I do agree with the Bedford chapter that online tutoring could be great for a pe...

This week's Writing Lab article was fascinating. I haven't done any online tutoring yet but was concerned about how it would go. My first concern regarding online tutoring is that the role of the student is so diminished. The student has much less work to do than if they were to participate in face-to-face tutoring. It's so easy (I imagine) for a student to log on, upload an essay, throw in a couple of comments about grammar, and hit send; to go into the Writing Center and participate in a session takes time, if nothing else. So I worry that students are less invested in what their online tutor has to say. I suppose this shouldn't necessarily alter the way in which we tutor, though--it isn't like I should take my effort down a notch to correspond with this reduction in student effort that I could be completely imagining. But reading this article has actually gotten me somewhat excited for online tutoring. It is in some ways easier--I worry constantly about the...

I appreciate Remington’s positive take on online tutoring; however, I feel compelled to critique many of Remington’s insights. Remington stipulates that he is not attempting to demonstrate that online tutoring is necessarily better than face-to-face tutoring, but only wants to point out some possible benefits to online tutoring. It is strange that he chooses to begin his piece by talking about global writing issues, such as organization, thesis statement, flow, and argument, but then proceeds to mainly address local writing issues in his examples of how to be an effective online tutor. Could it be that it is more difficult to address global writing issues through online tutoring? Furthermore, his anecdotal evidence of students explaining the effectiveness of his online tutoring is probably not the norm or at least is not the norm in my experience. Often feedback is sent off from the tutor to the student with no further communication between the two parties. This makes...

The first time I worked as a writing fellow I provided both written and oral feedback. After receiving a draft from students I'd jot down some notes, shoot them an email, and then we would meet at a coffee shop to go over my comments together. I liked this approach because (as the readings suggest) I think both approaches have their advantages and limitations. When providing written/online feedback, I like that I'm forced to distill my feedback into 2-3 main morsels, which I think is easier for students to digest emotionally and (candidly) more helpful than the accumulation of many little notes over the course of an in-person session. The problem with this approach is that I can't check to see if my student is actually grasping what I'm trying to convey, or perhaps even resistant to my feedback. Selfishly, I also find that written feedback is much more time-consuming, so while I sometimes think it might be of higher quality than the verbal feedback I provide, I also kno...

Blog Post #7 - Consuelo Though I can agree with Ryan and Zimmerelli’s identified advantages of asynchronous online tutoring on the basis of time, collaboration, anonymity, and written record, the case can be made for the unique advantages of personal direct communication with the possibilities  of immediate rapport, feedback, negotiation of aims, reading of non-verbal communication, greater depth in the feedback for the possibilities of asking questions and immediate response.  However, I found striking Remington’s comments when emphasizing some advantages of email tutoring as providing an opportunity for tutors to assume the role of intended audience and with that the opportunity to highlight the idea that writers’ use of language influence readers’ experience with the texts. He notes, “I can say honestly what I as a reader feel is most needed from the author for her to accomplish her goal” (3). I ask: Is it not true that what we, as tutors always strive f...

What seems to me to be one of the most obviously challenging aspects of online tutoring is the hit or miss quality of context with which you, as the tutor, are provided. I have yet to engage in online tutoring through the Writing Center, but I would imagine the appointment process is similar to that for an in-person tutoring session, where the student is asked to list the instructor and give background on the assignment they're requesting help with. Since I've been tutoring enrollment students, I've had limited experience with walk-in or appointment tutoring, but remember that with the one appointment student I did have that we spent a good amount of the half-hour session, as many of you have said, in reading the prompt and figuring out how well the student understood it.  I think this would require more time for back-and-forth messages in an asynchronous environment, which might be a bit clunky, but ultimately wouldn't be horribly off-putting. I was definitely intere...

I have yet to begin online/asynchronous tutoring but my initial impression (prior to the readings this week) was that the non face-to-face methods is an ersatz tutoring style. I was partially convinced by the readings that there are advantages in a more distanced approach to tutoring that are lacking with in-person sessions. Specifically, there is an element of anonymity associated with online tutoring that I can see appealing to students that may not be confident or are embarrassed about their writing, especially students that are more introverted and non-confrontational. As a tutor, asynchronous tutoring would give me the time to really digest the writing and carefully formulate a response. Sometimes after an in-person session I think back about better ways I could have phrased a certain point but by then, too late. A major take-away from the readings is that I will formulate my responses through the comment feature and rarely using track changes, if at all. I believe that carefully ...