Blog Post (2/13)

                The only category of “diverse” writer (to my knowledge) that I have encountering in the Writing Center so far is multilingual writers. The Bedford suggests approaching a piece of writing from a multi-lingual writer in much the same way as you would any other writer – by focusing on content, organization, and purpose first, and grammatical problems second.  I’ve only had two weeks of working with multilingual writers, and already I am concerned that I am layering on way too many directions at once. I get a nervous during the “awkward silence,” instead of giving time for the student to figure out what they want to say on their own. I think taking on the role of the “scribe” (65) will be particularly helpful for working with multilingual writers, as it provides a running list of their own thoughts and words that they can reference later.

                I’m sure I’ve had students from other “diverse” categories without even knowing it. I know I shouldn’t try to diagnose my students, but at the same time it might be helpful to let my students know that they should be comfortable telling me about any accommodations or special needs that might be relevant to our sessions.


                We talked a lot about the shortcomings of the study in Talk About Writing in class (who qualifies as an “arguably” successful tutor? How useful or practical are certain methods within a limited time?). However, I didn’t think the entire exercise of the book was profitless. It might be worth theorizing in class how we could “measure” progress in our students’ work. The purpose of a Writing Center might be to create better writers and not better papers, but a study cataloging changes in drafts overtime could be a concrete way of measuring student progress. I’m not sure what the parameters of such a study would be, or how you would even go about defining standards of improvement. Maybe the class has some ideas?

Comments

  1. Lindsey QuinnFebruary 8, 2018 at 11:35 AM

    I was curious about measuring progress as well. On p. 76 the authors mention a study where tutors were told to limit feedback and explanations. Results indicate that the students learned just as much. How did they quantify how much the students learned?

    ReplyDelete

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