Teaching in a Writing Center Spring 2020

For this case study I will write about one of the students that made a habit of coming to the writing center. We'll call her Casey. This student was majoring in Spanish, if I remember correctly, but had at the same time important difficulties in understanding and writing in the language. This should point to a sort of inner discrepancy in the student's experience of her academic life, but I was, of course, in no position to recommend more careful consideration on this matter. It seems evident that she should focus on a different major. Casey came a total of 4 or 5 times for help with either reading a text that she had been assigned, or with the writing of an assignment related to a text. Both of these were somewhat challenging, because the student seemed to be uninvested in the work, and to want it done for her. She brought in the letters of Cortés, a key text in colonial literature, with which I was not fully acquainted at the time. Furthermore, she didn't have any speci...

Hi everyone! Here is my case study: From English to Spanish Since I don’t have students that I work with throughout the semester, I have decided to write about one student that I worked a few times in the semester. Let’s call her Lily. I am actually familiar with Lily because I was her TA during my first year teaching at the University of Iowa. Back then, I taught an intermediate level course. When I was her TA, I remember that she was a good student who would participate often in class and does her online assignments regularly. Sure, her Spanish was not perfect, but it was above average; I also remember that she wants to minor in Spanish. When she made an appointment at the center, I discovered she is in the writing class (2000 level) that I am teaching now, but with another TA. So, I was familiar with the class material and the assignments that she had to do. When Lily came to see me, she wanted to work on her draft for a chapter essay that was about 600 words. Wh...

Hi Class: Here are Ashlyn's Case Studies Ashlyn Kershner RHET 5375 May 2020 Case Study: Two Similar Students             For this case study, I’d actually like to discuss both of the students I have been working with each week. The reasons for this are that both students bring similar problems and strengths to the table, both are in the same program (albeit doing rather different research), both are working on projects of a similar scale and for similar purposes, and both have had very similar issues come up with regards to their processes. Both, also, are international students bringing some of the writing struggles we’ve talked about at length to the table: confusions about tense, number, pronouns, and occasionally general word choice. However, both are PhD students who have had many years of figuring out such translation issues, such that they often catch them even before I do. Since both of these students are w...

"Where academic writing requires intricate argumentation, creative writing demands risk and finesse." I felt that this conclusive statement to Lorraine's story well-encompassed the struggle I see in both my rhetoric students and writing center students when it comes to individual strengths and weaknesses in specific writing genres. I believe that if I were to instill an awareness of this quote's idea deeper into my teaching mindset, it would help inform my methods during tutoring. For example, I have a student in my rhetoric class who is phenomenal at filing out a research paper outline to great detail. But any creative elements of the paper itself -- from including personal anecdotes in a conclusion paragraph to choosing an original topic to write on -- is incredibly overwhelming to her. She has even requested office hours for every paper or speech topic selection because she feels crippled by, what I can now identify as the "risk and finesse" that cre...

Hello! I know I have already posted once for this week, but I believe I am missing a post, and thought it wouldn't hurt either way to do another one! I have taken writing classes in other languages - Spanish, for example - but never in a language so convoluted. Having to consider each word for tense, gender, number, declension, or conjugation is bad enough, but when you start to look at phrases, sentences, and finally style, it becomes so incredibly dense as to be almost impossible. Trying to write a speech in the style of Cicero or a narrative in the style of Livy is impossible if you cannot work through your first tricky clause. You can't consider the bigger picture, or learn anything from your work, if you spend all your time fighting through each sentence. In other words, if you can't see the forest for the trees, you certainly can't learn anything from observing the forest (I know it's a tortured metaphor, go with me - it's the Livy).  I've been thi...

I have said before, and I will say again, that a problem with academia in general is its division of interest and expertise into the most specific niche fields. This implies that a person has only one interest or one thing they are good at and can speak to: as we all know, this is absolutely not the case. We don't see many classics students in the writing center, aside from the occasional reluctant student writing for a gen-ed mythology class. I therefore almost never end up tutoring in my own field. But I have had the opportunity to read papers in biology, public health, poetry, sociology, nursing, and film studies. My interests and breadth of knowledge certainly don't stop at the fall of the Roman empire, and I have really enjoyed getting to interact with disciplines and themes I would never otherwise be reading. This doesn't mean that I feel 100% comfortable with every student's field or the specific problems that come with them. I do, however, really like having...

Working with students who are not in my field, and this is mostly the case since I study Spanish Literature, has been challenging and rewarding at the same time. This is particularly true when students are in Spanish classes that are specific to their majors, such as business Spanish. I once had a student who came in with his assignment, which was creating a mock website for his company. Having no business background at all, I struggled a little with the instructions and different vocabulary that he had to use because the were quite technical. However, I think the overall session went well as I was able to help with things that are more universal, such as the organization of sentences and grammar issues. I was actually able to learn a great deal from that student about a field that I was not familiar with. The same issue happened when a student brought in his resume because he wanted to apply for an internship in Spain; his major was engineering. He had his resume in Spanish, but sin...

Confession: I had only attended a Writer's Workshop once, in my masters. I brought my music research paper in, hoping to meet a Chicago Style expert who would strike down my footnotes with a quick flick of a quill. Obviously, I found no such arbiter. However, since then I've been waiting to be that Chicago Style expert for someone in or near my field, but to no avail. Instead I've had the distinct pleasure to work with many science and medical students, and I've found that our experiences often compliment each other. I, for one, get an insight into scientific processes and the genre of the "abstract." I've eagerly built many of these things into my music papers, and I'm looking forward to crossing both styles for my dissertation. Similarly, I tend to be the voice for the uninitiated who are so often the audience of grants, applications, and public abstracts. I'm happy to be the Watson to their Holmes, a foil to their interesting research. I...

I find that working with a student from a very different discipline than mine is some of the most rewarding work I do at the Writing Center. One field that I particularly enjoy is medicine. On a personal level, I happen to get along with physicians and have several friends in that profession. And even though I am acquainted with some of the basic tenets of the science, my knowledge is nowhere near sufficient to engage academically with the problems I was presented by students. Nevertheless, it is always interesting and rewarding to ask the student about the subject they bring, and being receptive, I suppose, helps the student feel confident and assertive about what they want. One particular tutee was a nursing student who brought in various forms for a clinical study that she was translating into spanish. Since these forms were aimed at non-technical readers or participants, I had little trouble interpreting what she wanted to have the form say at various points. As some of my classm...

Getting to work with students who are studying vastly different disciplines than you is both a challenging and rewarding aspect of working in the Writing Center. I have been fortunate to have one student who is expressly interested in my poetry and creative writing, and I have found working with her to be a truly enjoyable and mutually beneficial experience. However, the majority of the students I work with have interests and academic focuses that span way out of my personal scope. Last week, I helped a student on a paper about sexual dimorphism in apes and then moved on to help another student write a personal statement about her experience and interest in Public Health. While approaching a paper on which the terms themselves are uncertain is a difficult task, I have found it a helpful tool in reminding myself of the basics of writing and how to give instruction on writing itself without feeling the push to interfere with my own personal styles, interest, sentiments, etc. We can focus...

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 pr...

How important do you think it is for writing center staff to pursue writing center research? Why? I think writing center research/scholarship can be productive and insightful, but I don't think it's particularly necessary for all writing center staff to participate in. Doing is more important than meta-doing , and the best way for writing center staff to improve their craft (of teaching and tutoring) is to practice it. Theory is helpful, to be sure--I won't discount its merits entirely--but I think actual experience with students is what makes the real difference. Given the right circumstances, which topics, issues, or questions would you like to research?  How would you go about it? I think if I were given the circumstances to research a writing center topic I would dig into the relationship between expectations and outcomes. First: what kind of expectations do tutors bring to their work, and what kind of expectations do students bring to their tutors? Do folk...

For the purposes of this case study I will refer to my student as Midge. Midge is a non-native speaker of English. She is from a small town in Iran. She is not a student but works at the University, and has recently enrolled in a writing course. She enrolled in the Writing center because her professional capacity, she needs to write several emails a day, sometimes to her superiors, other times to faculty members, students, etc. She also needs to conduct surveys and studies, and solicit data for the same, all of which rely on a fairly precise grasp of the nuances of the language. Some pedagogical issues that recur during my time with Midge (although she’s shown remarkable progress in a short amount of time, due to her energy, enthusiasm and willingness to learn) are: (a) She writes in a very formal tone, which in this country could be interpreted as obsequious, and (b) she uses lots of words, so that sometimes the meaning or intent gets confused.   For these reas...

One of the things I have really enjoyed during this semester of Writing Center tutoring has been working with students who are in totally different fields from my own. This difference has proven to be its own teaching tool, as I often read aloud from a sentence that is a little vague and then ask the student to explain that paragraph’s topic to me, as I am unfamiliar with it. Engaging with a topic in conversation makes it less abstract--I like to write a little outline of some interesting things the student says during the explanation, things that potentially could be useful for them in their assignment—and the student gets confidence and enthusiasm in recitation of their knowledge/getting to be the teacher. Often the student discovers, in the course of our discussion that there is something new or important to write about. One example is my student who studies classical mythology; I find the topic interesting as a layperson and have some vague understanding of it....

In my program I only have to write poems.   I would categorize this as both “learning to write” and “writing to learn.”   Inevitably, when working on a poem I learn something about the given topic I’m writing about and/or the inner-workings of language.   However, when my poems are workshopped, I learn about what’s not working in my pieces and why something was or wasn’t effective, and so this would be the “learning to write” side.     As a Rhetoric instructor, I obviously do not have my students write poems, though I have had us perform rhetorical analysis on a few.   Each week my students are required to do a Writers’ Resource Notebook entry.   I would categorize these entries as “writing to learn.” I really love these assignments because it allows the students an opportunity to synthesize our class material in one place.   For example, this week they’re watching a John Oliver video that breaks down America’s voting system....