Saturday, October 17, 2009
Maybe not "help"
So, I keep encountering tutees who quickly tell me about their paper and then push it across the table to me with "basically, I'm here to get this reviewed for grammar...sentence structure...clarity," and I balk. For a moment I try to gauge the student herself/himself, selecting a way to address an expectation that will not be fulfilled in the way in which the student seems to envision it. I have tried different approaches, but I cannot seem to escape that pang of disappointment, the "I thought this would be easy" sentiment that appears to flutter through them as I try to reason out what I suspect looks like a refusal to provide the help for which they are asking. Meanwhile I keep thinking about our Wednesday conversations early on regarding the image of the Writing Center and the concept of what we do, and particularly about the need to bridge this gap that seems to exist between the ideas of what we do. I wonder if it is not created by the word "help" to some extent. I must aside here: I come to Writing Center conversations now, as in I have little to no prior engagement with them, and I often wonder how far behind intellectual progress already made in these preexisting conversations my thoughts are. In other words, somone probably already has theorized what I am wondering about, namely disposing with the word "help" in association with what we do at the Writing Center. It is a pernicious word as far as I'm concerned, because it comes with a particularly treacherous system of connotations. Maybe instead of we "help," we can "equip," we can "rig," we can "create," "assemble," or some other active verb that escapes me right now, indicating a non-linear movement from tutor to tutee? Does this make sense?
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"Help" does usually seem to imply that the tutor/teacher/friend/study buddy will tell you the answers if you promise to pay attention and listen along. I typed "help" into Microsoft Word and searched for synonyms...my favorite one that came up was "facilitate," I guess because it implies that we will be setting up an environment where they can improvise ideas and test them out without feeling like they're being graded every second. When people do the whole passing-the-paper-over thing to me, I usually pass it back and have them fix it by reading it out loud; I think that follows a more facilitative route. Wow, I just realized I completely fell into the whole facilitative/directive debate.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, Sharon Crowley offers a focused critique of composition's "ethic of service" in _Composition in the University_ (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1998). Perhaps this is can be related to your questions about "help"?
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about students coming in for grammar clean up. I can be hard to be facilitative, too, when students don't feel like they need to contribute to the conversation during the session. That has been one of my biggest challenges so far.
ReplyDeletePart of what has worked for me is to try and be sneaky (I know, not the word we want to use here) and start out by addressing some issues with grammar and clarity, but then turn it into a mini-lesson, so that they hopefully learn from those mistakes. I almost try to become a teacher, and ask more and more questions as the session goes on. If the tutee uses commas incorrectly, I'll go through and show them where the first few mistakes were and why they were wrong, then further into the paper, I'll ask questions that lead them to come to those conclusions on their own. This way, by the end of the session, they've at least hopefully learned something. Every now and then the tutee is just not receptive, and you just have to make a judgment call on the spot. Sometimes appeasement works the best, but sometimes going against the tutee's expectation is actually better for them in the long run.
ReplyDeleteI try and just find the glaring errors and encouraged the student to go back and fix ones similar to the ones i pointed out. In other words, show them how to fix one (coma splices) and encourage them to check over the paper for other coma splices.
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