by Michael Matto

On September 8, 2003, the Adelphi University Writing Center opened its doors for the first time. We saw only nine students that first week, but by the end of the term our tutors had held well over 500 sessions with your students, discussing everything from short summaries to research essays, from lab reports to master's theses.

Surprisingly, in about ninety percent of those sessions, students reported they came to the WC of their own volition rather than because they were prompted by an instructor's recommendation or requirement. While we are thrilled that so many students have sought us out for themselves, we would like very much for the WC to become a resource that students and faculty use collaboratively. In this article I would like to explore the complex relationship that connects a student, an instructor, and a writing center tutor and suggest a few ways faculty might help students make the best use of the WC.

A Triangular Relationship

The Writing Center is by definition a place where process rules over product. While faculty often only read a student's finished project, the WC tutor rarely sees the final product. Instead, we see students at every other stage of the writing process: reading the assignment, deciding on an approach to the project, accumulating information, developing ideas, framing an argument, drafting, revising, and proofreading. Students often flounder during the earlier stages (as we all do when we start an important project), so a tutor's suggestions can carry quite a bit of weight. Tutors, however, often find themselves in the difficult position of trying to interpret a student's understanding of an instructor's desires at critical stages in the development of a project. Because tutors cannot know precisely what a given instructor expects from the student, they must turn many of the student's questions around: "Well, what topics have you discussed in class?" "How much research did your teacher tell you to do?" "Does the assignment tell you whether to write a summary or an analysis?"

While we would like to think that students are perfect couriers of such information, the triangular nature of information exchange in a writing center makes for problematic communication. This triangle has three points (teacher, student, tutor) and three potential lines of connection or communication (teacher-student, student-tutor, teacher-tutor). The sad truth is that because teachers and tutors generally do not talk directly and are largely blind to one another's practices, students find themselves pulled in two directions while trying to negotiate a nearly insurmountable communications gap.
The gap can be overcome, at least in part, if faculty are willing to engage the student's writing process by suggesting specific tasks the student might perform with the help of the Writing Center during the early stages of writing. To that end, we have developed the Referral Letter -- (accessed via link below)

http://students.adelphi.edu/writingcenter/wc_referral.pdf.
Referral Letters are designed to facilitate communication among teacher, student, and tutor. The Referral Letter is a form to be filled out by the teacher, but it is also a letter from the teacher to the student. This letter format is quite purposeful--because it is the student's responsibility to know why he or she is in the WC and to ask for help, the teacher should provide this information directly to the student, not the tutor. But because it is also a referral, the letter can be read by tutors as they plan the tutoring session. And by marking the appropriate box on the form, faculty may request a copy of the tutor's session report if they would like to follow up on the student's progress.

Assuming and Interpreting Desires

The experience of the WC tutors suggests that students have a much easier time following a teacher's instructions when they are written, not oral. The most effective assignments offer detailed explanations of what is expected, suggest methods for proceeding, and explain how the final product will be evaluated, including any specific do's and don'ts. Such detailed assignments are also very helpful during a tutoring session--the more information about the assignment the student brings to the session, the more confident the tutor will be that he or she is helping the student meet the instructor's expectations. Still, even though Referral Letters and written assignments apprise tutors of at least some of the communication between a teacher and a student, interpretive difficulties will arise. The Writing Center has some procedures and policies for helping tutors negotiate this tricky interpretive terrain; I list some of them here so that faculty can see what we are (and are not) telling your students:

I have instructed the WC tutors not to try to resolve ambiguities in a teacher's assignment or instructions. Tutors will help the student follow a written set of instructions, but a tutor will not speculate about a teacher's unstated desires. For example, if a student does not know whether to use secondary sources in a paper, the tutors will not hazard a guess, but will instead refer the student to the teacher.

Tutors will be dogmatic about issues of correctness, but not style. For instance, students are often worried about whether they are permitted to use 'I' in their papers. If asked, a tutor will explain that many instructors allow or even encourage writing in the first person while others feel the first person pronoun is to be avoided in certain kinds of writing. The issue is less about the use of a specific pronoun and more about the stance the student is expected to take--detached observer or subjective investigator. But without specific instruction in an assignment, the tutor will not decide whether the first person is acceptable to a particular teacher for a particular assignment. Many such style questions masquerade as issues of correctness: split infinitives, passive voice, beginning a sentence with 'and' or 'but,' ending a sentence with a preposition, etc. If asked, tutors will explain why some readers object to these constructions, but they are not a high priority in the Writing Center.

Tutors will help a student enact or address a teacher's written comments on a draft or a rewrite, but that help will be based on the student's understanding of those comments. If the student asks "what did my professor mean by this?" the tutor will help the student explore possible readings of the comment, but will not offer a definitive interpretation, particularly if the issue is one of content and not surface-level correctness. Such definitive explanation is best left to the person who wrote the comment.

When tutors work with students on more substantive issues of argument, organization, clarity and the like, tutors have been instructed to help students make the best of what they have, but not to supply what is missing. A student can only write about what he or she has actually read or understood from class. Tutors might question obvious errors of fact ("Are you sure the Russians were the first to reach the moon?"), but in general tutors will simply tell students that that they are not convinced of an argument if evidence seems to be missing or an argument seems illogical. In such situations, tutors have been instructed not to offer alternate lines of argument, interpretations, or evidence. In short, tutors will only tell students what is correct and incorrect when they ask questions with objective answers ("Is a semi-colon correct here?" "What is APA style for citing a website?"). In all other situations, tutors will offer students strategies for deepening their understanding of a topic (including the strategy of visiting the instructor during office hours) but will not provide specific evidence or arguments for the student.

If a student asks if a given paper is "good enough," tutors will not offer evaluative judgments or predict grades. Students must decide for themselves, based on their understanding of a teacher's instructions and stated methods of evaluation, whether their work is satisfactory.

Each of the items above points to a possible area of miscommunication between a teacher and a student. One of the most useful things the WC can offer to faculty, then, is insight into how much students really do know what we want from them. The more information faculty can give to students, preferably in detail and in writing, the better equipped a student will be to perform to expectations, and the more able a tutor will be to help the student. Referral Letters are a handy way to improve this communication, and session reports written by the tutors are always available for teachers curious about what has happened in a session. But the best way to ensure that your students turn in work you will be happy with is to help them along in the process of producing it, and to help the Writing Center help them along as well.

Finally, please feel free to refer any student to the Writing Center, not just those that you feel have significant writing problems. Even good writers benefit from receiving feedback, and the best writers understand the value of having others read their work. (I asked more than one person to read this article, and used their feedback to help me revise, before submitting it for publication in this newsletter.) If we can foster in all our students a habit of approaching an assignment as a process rather than as a single, self-contained, often over-night event, we will find that they both write and learn better, and that we are therefore teaching better.