Teaching in a Writing Center Spring 2020

I am re-posting my response since I posted about the wrong readings. So, here it goes: When I was reading about Kaplan's project and about "contrastive rhetoric", I somehow got the feeling that it was very English-centered. While this is not a particular critique towards Casanave's chapter, I feel that statements like "cultural patterns inherent in the rhetorics of different languages cause L2 students to write in ways that are not "English"-like" (27) make me wonder whether or not it is possible to consider English speakers as L2 learners as well in the field. Perhaps this is because I am teaching English speakers a foreign language. After reading the chapter, I think Casanave does a good job at looking at the language used to discuss CR and IR. While older language from the the time of Kaplan (1966) states that a language prefers X, Casanave points out that nowadays such a language does not make sense because "languages and cultures cann...

I find that the distinctions between reading types lend themselves well to what we see on a daily basis in the writing center. Often, students are more accustomed to skimming a text, and are challenged when asked to do a "deep" reading. The subsequent lack of understanding is evident when said students attempt to write a paper. Additionally, students who are majoring in fields that require more rote memorization (ie engineering, nursing, etc) have a much harder time when asked to conduct a deep reading. I think a large part of this is that they are simply not asked to do this in their major classes. I wonder to what extent this skill will go on to benefit them in their "real life" careers, or whether we are simply training them to pass Rhetoric. Obviously to me there is innate value in being able to read a text well and understand it on a deeper level, and to then construct a coherent argument in a well-written paper, but I don't know that we can expect every ...

I find myself engaging with this discussion of cultural distinctions (and the many parts in between) in my native discipline. In music, we tend to shy away from broad characteristics of particular cultural or geographic music. History teaches that almost always ends in clumsy appropriation or destructive generalizations. I can't say I've often thought about what other cultures would consider "good writing" like the Li study that pits U.S. against Chinese aesthetics. Yet a good deal of Li's observations ring true to my own experience: Chinese composers tend to write music that "expresses sentiment, natural scenes, and a moral message." What to do with this information? I wonder what my tutoring students ask of me when they bring writing to the center. Regardless of what differences might occur between our rhetorical tendencies, at the end of the day I think the assumption is that my students would like to practice Western rhetoric. This makes sense fo...

In the Casanave article, the Whorfian principle discussion reminded me somewhat of things we teach in Rhetoric on persuasion and the function of language used to influence people, but the newer model of intercultural rhetoric expands and clarifies some of the issues in contrastive rhetoric, particularly in bringing in cultural context as an important element. I think this can be useful in certain contexts; understanding that narrative styles and conventions vary across the board will help instructors to be more specific and mindful about assuming everyone in the class is on the same page. On the other hand, thinking back to our discussion last week in connection with this article, intercultural rhetoric in the classroom setting while engaging with students can potentially be hazardous, not only because it may not be directly fruitful but more specifically because other factors prevent a clear understanding, like the danger of taking the students' beliefs about their culture as an u...

Beam's article seemed to highlight issues with close and critical reading that felt pretty well-trodden, especially to those who have already been teaching. The distinction between surface, rote learning (quizzes, multiple choice, etc) and deep "powerful" reading (the kind one may need in writing a paper) makes the clear case for the latter, and I think is unsurprising given recent pedagogical theory. The course design for Rhetoric seems developed to "reward deep reading," at least in theory. However, in reality it quickly erodes as students begin to find the limits of their time-on-task requirements. It is difficult to combat the inherent structure of grade-based learning with an approach that centers around unresolved questions, nuanced argument, and time-intensive analysis. I find that reading comprehension can be almost immediately assessed based on the quality of a thesis. Thesis writing is something that I find almost universally to be at issue in Rhetor...

After reading Casanave’s article on contrastive/intercultural rhetoric, I think one of the obvious disadvantages is that Kaplan had a lot of very interesting theories about language, but not enough concrete evidence to support his claims.   Notably, one thing Kaplan should have considered is how the writers’ he was analyzing felt about their own writing.   As we saw in the case-study we read last week, how a person assesses their writing strengths and weaknesses can give insight to how their own opinions affect how they perform while writing.   Unfortunately, Kaplan disregarded the human side of writing, and in turn “the writer’s agency [was] denied” (38).   As the article points out, one advantage to Kaplan’s original research findings is that it simply opened up the conversation about developmental research and pedagogy in L2 writing.   Again, I think Kaplan had some riveting ideas about how the mind processes language, and these ideas have f...

I've been thinking a lot about what Chris and others said regarding students' appreciation of their own "ideas" rather than "structure." I think that students are often confident in what they know, but are afraid to make it "real" by writing it down. There is something about putting knowledge or ideas into words that can be very daunting, and it understandably makes students very anxious. I have heard from several of my students that the hardest part of writing an essay is just beginning the process - it's so daunting to think about the final work that they lose sight of the process and grow too intimidated to do anything at all. I think framing rough drafts as just that - rough - is more important than it appears. In my experience, it seems to stress students out far less to refer to even a fairly completed draft as a work in progress. It allows them to feel comfortable acknowledging problems and making edits. It also reduces the intimidatio...

I thought the chapter "The Writers You Tutor" was very helpful, because it made me think about the language that I use around students and the conditions that students (or writers are in). The idea of not labeling a rough draft as 'good' or 'bad' and stating that it is a work in progress is very important. Usually, I also say that it is a "good start", which would imply that the project is to be continued.  I also appreciated the learning strategies that was mentioned. As tutors we tend to want to work fast, so there is the tendency to want to work on the computer. However, having the students print out the work does help even though it takes a few minutes out of the tutoring time. Another part of the chapter that I appreciated was the section that talks about the condition of writing, which I haven't given much thought. I think it would be great to always ask about the student's writing process so that we know what the student thinks about p...

I really like what Bri wrote about a rough draft —"treating it always as a work-in-progress brimming with potential," and giving the paper some leeway to talk about it in terms of what's "effective" rather than "inadequate or wrong." In my experience I find students are much more open to the process of workshopping their drafts when they can feel my acknowledgment of the "rough draft" as a work-in-progress, as a starting point, as something that by definition is, well, rough. Sometimes I pepper in my own anecdotes or experiences as I chat with them about their writing, assuring them that the difficulties they're facing in organizing their ideas effectively are universal, and that writing is a laborious process for basically everyone. I like the discussion in someone else's post (couldn't find the author on the blog site) about a student's ability to recognize the strength in their own "ideas" but not always in th...

The reading about multilingual writers as well as our class discussions were really helpful, specifically the point the Bedford guide makes on Pg 65 about serving a scribe, "jotting down key words or phrases in the writer's words." I found this useful in general, as a tool for my science student, who often spoke quite eloquently but wasn't always able to or confident enough to translate that onto the page. The section about adult learners was also useful as I have a student who works at the Center for Teaching. For my work with her her, setting agenda, spending time on closing down the session, summarizing, and "takeaways" have been really useful. With another adult learner, I've been helping her gain confidence in using her real world experience (as a nurse in the Special Forces, and army in general) when appropriate to round out her papers, as Bedford suggest on pg 70. (To be continued)

I agree with chapter four’s take on the rough draft —treating it always as a work-in-progress brimming with potential, and therefore, allowing for the paper to be discussed with regards to “what might be more effective instead of what is inadequate or wrong .”   I also appreciated this section’s suggestion to be sensitive with regards to how we deliver critique, since when we are discussing our student’s work, we are also commenting on their “authorial” choices.   Something else I plan to incorporate is asking my students at the end of our session to paraphrase what we accomplished together and what they plan to do next.   In the Fei case study, I was especially drawn to Fei’s self-assessment and consider it to be one strength in this case study.   It seems obvious to state that our personal lives impact how we “show up” to our work, but the fact that this study takes her personal feelings about her writing into account, to me is more a holisti...

Several years ago, I interviewed for an adjunct position. I was not a trained educator by any means; I'd taken no pedagogy or practical education courses in my undergraduate degree. But there I was, sitting across a wood-paneled folding desk from a stern trio of professors. They asked about my experience in teaching diverse students, and my mind raced. I worked and taught in small central Illinois towns. My students had been almost exclusively white-- not by choice, but rather by circumstance. But there is a clarity achieved by any adjunct applicant as they drive away from campus in their faded 1998 Ford Taurus. Of course I had engaged with diversity! I've taught fifth graders, and I've taught retired band directors, and everything in between. I've been overpaid for lessons, and later that week negotiated deals with parents who couldn't quite afford a 30 minute lesson for their child. If there were racial tendencies, perhaps that spoke more to the privilege to ...

I noticed a lot of parallels in the case study with Fei to my own work with a Chinese International Student in the Writing Center. Namely, the way both students identify "ideas" as strengths of theirs and "grammar and structure" as weaknesses. The student I work with told me she often feels frustrated by this discrepancy, and feels that her ideas are often more nuanced and developed than her peers, but this is lost in execution. When asked how structure is taught where she comes from (i.e. what were the conventions of the academic essay in her high school) she responded that it wasn't necessarily too different, but it was more formulaic. Straying from a template was discouraged and there was not much room for creativity (she had never written anything about herself before college). I noticed that my student was not particularly interested in talking about how she wrote in her home country. I was the one driving the conversation and asking leading questions wit...

The language shifts suggested in the "The Writers You Tutor" chapter was particularly helpful for me in both my tutoring and teaching. By re-framing work-in-progress as not "bad" or "good", as my students in both the Writing Center and my classroom tend to see it, but simply in need of further development as a draft, has been helpful in shifting the conversation away from the stagnation of "this is wrong" to a more active engagement in evolving a draft as part of a larger process. Helping students to recognize that in crafting a college paper in a second language/differently from how they did it in high school, etc., there is a process that doesn't necessarily end up looking the way it started out, has been useful in generating confidence in the students. The Fei case study had three areas of particular interest for me: the student's self-evaluation, the variety of papers Fei wrote, and the description of Fei's experience over the c...

I found Crossing Cultures a very useful article. Being "baffled and disempowered" by the US based curriculum has been my personal experience as an international student, albeit one who came here speaking English fluently. I don't recall us having a WC at my college so I had to navigate the cultural gaps myself, which wasn't easy, especially as I was hesitant to ask my peers or speak up in class in the beginning.  In my last semester's rhetoric class, I had a Chinese ESL student. She definitely struggled with inverted word order, not knowing when to use "a" or "the" and a difficulty distinguishing between l and r. Lack of knowledge of US norms and customs, as remarked on above, also made her reticent to speak in class.  As far as what is easier or more difficult for second language writers, I think it depends enormously on the person, and the culture of the country they primarily identify with. There isn't just one common mistake or d...

Experiences as a second-language writer. I have found that my ESL experiences is personal because of my upbringing in a predominantly white culture. You're expected to fit in, know cultural things, and experience the same perspectives and emotions of life events that others experience. My experience of ESL since I was young was negative. My parents speak Spanish fluently, but when we moved to a predominantly-white school and neighborhood, my parents were strongly discouraged from teaching us Spanish so as not to "confuse the kids and make it hard of them in school." When I think of this and ESL second-language students, it goes beyond having compassion and confidence in those who are unfamiliar with a culture and trying to perform at a high, collegiate level in another language. For me some lack of resources or classroom inclusion comes down to lack of education for teachers and lack of ESL representative in higher education.

Hi everyone! Sorry I’ve been behind on keeping up with this blog. Here are some belated responses to all three of the first prompts. Response to #1 (“About Me”) : I earned my Bachelors in Psychology and Philosophy at BYU in Provo Utah in 2013, and worked in mental health (specifically in residential treatment centers for troubled adolescents) for several years, as a mentor and a teacher and eventually as a program director, before ultimately getting burned out and feeling like I needed a career change. So I moved to Allston Massachusetts to do a Masters in Film/TV Studies at BU (which I finished in 2019). Now I’m here—a first-year PhD student in UIowa’s Film Studies program. My academic writing is all over the place. I’ve edited and co-written a book about film’s intersection with religion; I’ve written about queer activist films; I’ve written about experimental animation; I’ve written about Breaking Bad as liberation theology; I’ve written about yakuza masculinity; etc. Mo...