"Formative Assessment and the Paradigms of Writing Center Practice"

I have to admit this article took me a while to wade through. (That's what I get for reading only murder mysteries.) Some of the central ideas I took from it were:

1. Writing centers help change the writer;
2. Real education changes the learner;
3. Social constructionist theory argues that we need to help students not to just fit into an academic paradigm but to challenge it; and
4. It's time to question our traditional standard of literacy, which penalizes nonstandard discourse communities.

Although nos. 3 and 4 are interesting and valid points, I don't know that we're ready to tackle them.

I'm intrigued with the idea that to really have an impact, we need to change the writer/learner. As Ann has said repeatedly, we focus on the writer more than on the paper. One key seems to be promoting reflection on the writing/learning process itself. I was especially struck with the quotation, "Writing centers...focus on another important component of formative assessment: generating in the learner a capacity for introspective evaluation of the writing process and the quality of written work created through that process." This is why we ask our student writers so many questions: We learn to write better by thinking about our writing.

What ideas did you take away from this article?

"Problems in the Writing Center"

Although author Kathryn Evans addresses professors more than writing center personnel in this article, unclear writing assignments have plagued us all as tutors and students. Teachers (including me) are so familiar with certain concepts that we can easily forget that that these concepts are brand new to our students.

For example, in the Writing Center we see students who don't understand what a thesis statement or topic sentence is, or who don't bother with paragraph breaks. Many of our students don't understand that academic writing is almost a separate language, and that generally, slang, curse words, and sentence fragments are frowned upon. We may assume that because students were accepted into Madonna, they have some of these basics, but that's not always the case.

Jeri and I kind of laughed at the prospect of asking Madonna professors to modify their writing assignments to include more detailed criteria as well as many levels of scaffolding. Like so many educators across the country, much of our faculty feels overworked and frazzled--just as we often feel in the Writing Center.

Larger writing centers sometimes have a student liaison to work with a specific department. If we were a larger writing center, for example, John might work with Katie O'Dowd in Humanities and Holly might work with Dan McDougall in Sign Language Studies. This individual may help decode writing assignments or maybe even work with the instructor to create these assignments. Who knows? It may happen yet. (This means, of course, that John and Holly can never graduate.)

-- Frances

"Expand the Audience: Excellence in L2 Writing"

When I read Susan and Marian's excellent article, I was struck again by how much we're asking of our ESL students. Not only are these students struggling with content, organization, and mechanics--we're also inviting them to address a seemingly imaginary audience.

A couple of points really hit home for me:
1. How much a sense of audience can focus a student's (ESL or native speakers) choices concerning subject, content, style, and word choice. In this way, what seems at first like an added complication may offer clarity to student writers.
2. The challenge of moving into reader-based writing. For native speakers, it's often a matter of developing more intellectual sophistication, but it becomes more complicated when reader-based writing is not part of one's cultural background.
3. The importance of Writing Center tutors. Not only are we supportive readers, we also represent that vague audience. By revising text so we can more readily access it, ESL (and other) students are making their work more accessible to all their readers.

We've all been students. What do you remember about moving from writer-based to reader-based writing?

-- Frances

The Third Voice in the Session: Helping Students Interpret Teachers' Comments on Their Papers

As an instructor, I've noticed that students frequently correct minor errors I've commented on and ignore higher order concerns. These include thesis statements, topic sentences, opposing arguments in persuasive essays, and elaboration of interesting but under-developed ideas.

Is this because it's easier to fix grammar and punctuation errors than it is to think more deeply? Or is it because students believe the lower-order concerns (surface errors) are more important than the higher order concerns (big picture)?

Following are a few nuggets of advice in "The Third Voice" that I liked especially:
* We need to translate teacher comments into questions that spark conversation with the student about his or her work;
* We need to break down the steps that the student needs to take so he or she isn't overwhelmed.

When we're not sure what a professor means by a written comment, I believe we all encourage our student writers to confer with their instructors. This is the students' responsibility and part of their taking ownership of their work.

What's your perspective, as tutors, students, and professors?