2/6


The results of the stages and strategies study seemed pretty expected.  Naturally, the student will be more in control of the conference at the beginning when they lay out their purpose for the particular conference. The student wants the tutor’s experienced opinion, so the tutor will be the guide during the teaching stage.  These strategies cognitive, instructional, and motivational also seem expected.  I never really thought to label the different types of topics we discuss, but I definitely use all three. There is some variability in how my conferences go based on the writers’ goals, but I think my tutoring style fits with their descriptions.  I think it would be valuable to compare the stages, the volubility, they frequency of topic episode initiation etc. in the successful conferences to unsuccessful conferences.  They selected the ten “arguably best” (p. 2) conferences, which had received high ratings from the writers.  I couldn’t tell if this was the only criterion for inclusion.  I wonder if there are any notable differences between the successful and unsuccessful conferences that can be quantified through the coding scheme in TAW.  Maybe we’ll see something like that in another chapter.

When I write, my prewriting in minimal.  I usually think things out and plan them when I’m walking, and then at best I’ll scrawl a possible outline more so I don’t forget the ideas than for organization.  Then the drafting and revising stages occur simultaneously.  I write and rewrite until I’ve got something like a finished project.  There’s seldom time for proofreading at this point.  I always have small scaffolding assignments for my writing students to force them to go through a much longer prewriting and drafting process.  Discussion, prewriting, topic selection, discussion, more prewriting, research, outlining, drafting.  There’s a great deal of process behind the final product they submit-I guess I’m a “do as I say not as I do” writing teacher. One thing I’ve noticed with some of my classroom students is that they can be hesitant to make major revisions between drafts.  They’ll make all the quick changes I mark (grammatical problems or word choice issues), but sometimes they won’t rewrite parts that aren’t working even if I carefully explain the problem (like not having a clear thesis, not fully supporting their thesis, paragraphs without a controlling idea, even smaller problems like weak or missing transitions). These students know I’m the one grading their paper, but sometimes they don’t take my suggestions.  I don’t know if it’s because it is too much work or because they’re really attached to what they’ve written, but I’ve been really surprised a few times.

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