Case Study: Karen

Marisa Tirado Case Study - April 21st, 2020

For the purpose of this study I will refer to my tutee as Karen. Karen is a native English speaker from Chicago. I believe she is involved in some diversity and inclusion student leadership groups. She also holds a job as a student tutor in the chemistry department. Karen’s major is Environmental Policy & Planning. She is a very disciplined and hard-working student, and enrolled in the Writing Center to simply dedicate time each week to her Environmental Policy & Planning class’s major assignment. The assignment is a 4,000-word research report on textile chemicals, policies, and production. The paper is due at the end of the semester, but every few weeks, 1,000 words are due.

As I started working with Karen, it became apparent that her major's discipline, Environmental Policy & Planning, required a massive amount of context and background knowledge in order to compose a well-written paper. I have worked on the same project with Karen every week, a 4,000-word research essay that has 1,000-word milestone increments due every few weeks. From jargon to policy history, navigating organization and flow of logic grew difficult. Even interpreting the assignment description grew difficult, as the wording almost felt from another language. I found myself constantly Googling words and have been able to learn a bit of the language throughout our months together. However it does not always fully suffice. So my question remains, how do I advise a student on elements such as “flow of logic” and “relevancy” without any knowledge of the discipline’s context? This is one of the two main hurdles I encounter while working with Karen.

My second and main pedological hurdle surrounds the issue of student-to-tutor communications. Karen has the strength of always getting her work done on time. She reaches her word count goals every week, and brings to me decently polished products to discuss. However, Karen struggles with articulating what she wants additionally strengthened in her papers. She is prone to using vague language, such as “I just want to sort of wrap up this thought” or “Can you look for slip ups and tricky areas?” Although I can infer directions to go in from vague language like this, it can also make Karen’s time less growth-inducing and valuable if we are not focusing on some specific goals during our time together. With my other students’ Writing Center appointments, I always try to establish concrete goals even if they are small and brief.

I have already tried starting discussions with Karen such as, “Can you be more specific with what you are looking for?” or “When you say, ‘wrap it up’ do you mean that you would like to construct conclusive statements?” But despite these efforts, Karen usually answers in just as vague a manner. She is a very driven student, so either her lack of articulation stems from a genuine lack of this type of editing language, or sometimes I even wonder if she is trying to make me just fix all her mistakes for her.

My question to the class is, is there a rubric or some sort of formal editing list I should create or search for? What does the class recommend for perhaps reestablishing roles or trouble-shooting? Thank you for reading, and for consideration some solutions!

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