In Fall 2018, Dr. Lori Gresham (Psychology) served as a Faculty Fellow for the University Writing Center. She gathered questions from her fellow psychology professors for a conversation with the Director of the Writing Center, Dr. Mary Isbell. The following is the transcript of their conversation:

LORI: Are there special arrangements for international students or students who don’t have English as a first language?

MARY: Those students see the same tutors, and our training for those tutors is designed to prepare them for working with English-language learners.

Often tutors will talk with English-language learners about the kinds of grammatical issues that they have, but the big thing we emphasize in the practicum (the training course all tutors are enrolled in each semester) is that English-Language Learners often need the same big-picture (or “higher-order”) help that native-English speakers need.

When tutors ask writers to read through a paper and identify if/where they notice their own errors, English-Language Learners might not be able to identify where the issues are. A native speaker might say “something sounds wrong there.” And in this case, the tutor would say “Here’s why it’s wrong, and here’s how you would say it correctly.” But that would really be the same process the tutor would follow if it was a native English speaker who just always said something in an awkward way that they shouldn’t.

LORI: Ok. Like “for all intensive purposes” that sort of thing.

MARY: Right, that kind of thing.

LORI: Is there a limit to how many times a student can come to the Writing Center for one assignment?

MARY: There’s a limit for how often they can come in a day (two appointments). But a student could have as many as 12 appointments per week, since they can come every day for two appointments.

LORI: So, their typical appointment is one hour?

MARY: The hour block is what you see on the schedule because that’s the simplest display. The appointments can actually only last up to 45 minutes because at the end of the appointment the tutor writes a report, and they need that time – 15 minutes – to write their report before the next appointment begins on the hour.

LORI: Are the tutors trained to be subject specific?

MARY: Great question. The role of subject-level expertise is an important part of our philosophy. We believe that tutors are actually most effective when they don’t rely on their own subject knowledge to say “oh, you’re doing that totally wrong” or “yes, that is correct.” They learn to ask questions instead of just jumping right into making corrections based on their knowledge. The most important reason we do this is practical: there is often considerable disagreement even among faculty in a single department about the conventions for a memo, lab report, or even the structure of paragraphs within an essay. We want to look first at the assignment to find out if the instructor has given specific instructions on these things.

It turns out that this approach works much better to keep the writer in control of their own work. Tutors are in a really good position to tutor effectively on writing if they have to ask questions of the person writing. “Why do you have to do it that way?“ or “What do you understand of this concept?” “Can you explain it to me?” They will often write down what a writer says as they explain a concept and help them see that they do actually understand the material. When it seems like the writer doesn’t understand, tutors will often ask, “what is the assignment requirement?” look at the assignment sheet, then ask “what does your professor mean by that?”

If the writer doesn’t know and it’s not blatantly obvious to the tutor, we don’t try to interpret what the professor means. The tutor doesn’t really know, they’re not the professor. But they can say, “ok let’s talk about how you could ask your professor that question.” This creates an opportunity for the tutor to say, as a fellow student, that emailing a professor for clarification is totally appropriate.

MARY: I had a tutor tell me about an appointment with a dental hygiene student who was working on a paper the other day and the tutor said she had a really successful appointment and the writer left feeling really confident because she was asked a lot of questions about dental hygiene that she had to explain. By doing this, she realized she knew a lot more than she thought she know, and her confidence in her writing expanded as she realized it.

LORI: So, it’s another layer of learning. Almost like Socratic questioning – asking them to explain what they know. And knowing something is different than explaining it, so that makes a lot of sense.

LORI: As a faculty member can I contact tutors as needed, or give them information about a specific project that I know students will be coming about?

MARY: Probably the best way to do that is to contact me and let me know that you are talking to students about a particular assignment and encouraging them to come. I like helping faculty members brainstorm what kind of incentive they want to give, if they want to give an incentive. We’ve talked about lots of different ways to get students to take advantage of Writing Center appointments. [For a page detailing all of the ways to encourage your students to visit the Writing Center, check out this page]

We are a fully staffed center, we have 2 tutors on from 10am-9pm Monday through Thursday, 10-3pm on Friday and Sunday from 12-9pm and so that’s a lot of hours. The teacher doesn’t need to feel like “Oh gosh I have to make sure that the Writing Center can handle all this.” We probably have the space to accommodate your students.

LORI: Is it possible for students to upload their document prior to arrival?

MARY: No, because we want the appointment to begin by asking the writer to read their paper aloud. That moment might be the first time they ever read it aloud. The tutor can take notes at the same time, but the magical thing that happens is that after they read it the tutor says “What did you notice now that you’ve read through the paper?” and then the writer often can list many things that they notice that they didn’t catch before. And so then that gives the tutor a chance to hear what the writer already recognizes they need to work so we can avoid something I call ‘tutor-splaining’ which is where you assume the person doesn’t know and explain why something is wrong, when they could’ve fixed it themselves if they had been given the chance. That is such an important part of our appointments that if the paper was sent in advance it would give the impression also that the tutor was an editing service and students would show up to have a conversation with somebody who had done the work ahead of time. We would rather emphasize that the writer is there to do the work, and the tutor is there to assist them as they do it.

LORI: So the tutors do not engage in any editing of any kind?

MARY: No, that is not their role. We emphasize the difference between editing and tutoring. A tutor will listen to the paper and make notes about things they notice, and will let the writer decide what they want to focus on as the biggest priority. They’ll start with the higher order concerns: “Is this addressing what the assignment is as far as I understand?” “Are there big picture things as far as organization that need to change?” and, if there’s time, (or the writer says they have already thought through the other things) they might move into sentence-level things. And then the tutor is going to point to an error or awkward phrasing they notice and say “Do you notice anything strange? There is something off with this sentence,” and then see what the writer says. If the writer doesn’t notice anything, the tutor might discuss a rule the writer doesn’t understand, or the tutor might just encourage the writer to talk about what they’re trying to say in that moment to come up with another clearer sentence. Tutors are not going to ever write on the paper. We have a policy against doing that. Tutors are going to point out where things are unclear and encourage the writer to revise it themselves.

LORI: Alright, so no editing, but what about pointing out errors such as APA? If the APA formatting is off, is that something that they might question the writer about?

MARY: I can imagine a scenario where the writer would come in and say I want to make sure that my APA is correct, and then the tutor would say “Ok let’s just pull up the style guide, just so that we have it handy” and “let’s go through and you tell me if there are any things that you’re not sure that you did correctly.”

DEVON: Students might come to the Writing Center and say, “I think I used semicolons wrong throughout my entire paper, can we talk about how to use a semicolon?” The tutor and the writer can talk about how to use a semi colon, and maybe through that conversation they might realize they also don’t know how to use commas and all their verb tenses are wrong. That could lead to a conversation that is like editing, but isn’t the tutor sitting down with a red pen and marking all the errors the writer made. Similarly, if they covered the big picture issues that the student came to talk about and along the way the tutor noticed the APA formatting was off, and there’s still 15 minutes left in the appointment, I can imagine the tutor saying “So I know you came to talk about this, but along the way I also noticed that your APA was off, so let’s pull it up and look at it together. We’ll fix this one together, and then you can fix the rest later on.”

MARY: Another way that this could work is that the professor has given specific feedback to the student either on a draft or a final draft of a previous paper, and encouraged the student to take advantage of the Writing Center. The instructor could say to their student, “When you go, make sure that you tell them that you want to work on your APA citations.” This is a good way to nudge in that direction, so the writer has that as a priority and communicates that to the tutor.

LORI: So segueing off of that, what guide do you use for let’s say if someone does get to the point where someone is looking at APA formatting with the tutor, what is your source? Do you have an APA manual?

MARY: Yes, we do have an APA manual in the Writing Center to reference

LORI: Do the tutors know the difference between an APA paper and APA style? So, formatting versus writing and citing? Does that make sense? So if a student comes in and ssays “I need to write an APA paper, does the tutor automatically assume that means APA style?

Basically, what it means is that some papers that students will need to write will not be an “APA Paper.” The citations will be in APA style, but there won’t be a title page, abstract and all that. That would be an APA paper, so basically an empirical article or a research proposal, versus a research paper where they just have to use APA style citations.  

MARY: Ah, I see. If the professor has made it clear to the student, that’s how it’s going to be clear, because the student knows what the difference is between those two things. So, the way tutors are trained, is if they notice that the formatting isn’t what they recognized as APA what they would say is “Is your professor ok with this not being formatted like a paper that’s APA?” and then the student hopefully would know, or they would ask the teacher. That’s how it should work.

LORI: Is it easy for students to make an appointment? Do they make an appointment online or in person?

MARY: The easiest thing is to just show up. You can make an appointment for right then if one’s available, or for the future, so students can just go into the library and talk to the receptionist at the desk. That’s the simplest, and the receptionist can teach the student how to make the appointment on their own in the future. But, it’s also easy to go to the website, register for an account, look at the schedule and book an appointment. If you really want them to do it, but they don’t really want to go, it could be helpful to say “Oh let’s walk over to the library, I’ll introduce you to the receptionist.” [Factulty who want to recommend that a specific student visit the Writing Center can use this form to let us know and we’ll reach out to them!]

LORI: Is there an option, like a guilt free way to get a new tutor, if you’ve worked with a tutor before, and it didn’t really work?

MARY: Tutors are not offended by that at all. Plenty of students make appointments with many different tutors and most tutors wouldn’t even take it personally because most of the time students make appointments based on what their schedule allows, not the tutor that they actually see.

Returning tutors are always telling new tutors in the fall, “your style isn’t going to be for everyone, they’re going to go somewhere else and that’s better for you and better for that person.” So, students should not feel stressed at all about switching tutors.

LORI: How far in advance should students make appointments?

MARY: Before they’ve written anything is a great time to come to the Writing Center—especially for a student who is feeling overwhelmed. In fact, those are the best appointments (tutors agree!). Even if they’re just stressed about the entire process, the tutor can share some strategies that they can use. I mean, it can really start that soon.

DEVON: When we open up the schedule in August and January, we open it up for the whole semester, so in theory if they knew they wanted to come once a week and talk about whatever kind of writing they’re doing, theoretically they could book themselves an appointment every Tuesday at 11:00 for the whole semester.

LORI: So how long is the wait time if the student wants to get an appointment this week? Are they likely to get an appointment this week?

DEVON: it usually isn’t a problem to get an appointment within the week that you’re looking, and frequently there are even appointments within a day. The semester definitely runs in a cycle, so there are certainly times that are busier than others, but usually within a day they are likely to get an appointment.

LORI: Is there any form of communication with faculty after a student meets with the tutor.

MARY: YES and the way we do this is we use a little piece of paper called a “Before we Begin Form” that the receptionist gives the writer to fill out when they arrive for their appointment. That form asks, “Would you like us to send your professor a copy of this report?” It also says, “We encourage you to do this” and the receptions will reinforce that “Your professor will be happy that you are coming to see us.” Some students are nervous, or they think it shows that they are not prepared enough so then they opt not to have that report sent. In those cases, the professor does not get any notification that the student came to the Writing Center. But we also have a little note that says “If your professor requests a report, we will share it with them.” So, if you got a paper, and you say “Gosh how did you make so much improvement?” and they say, “I went to the Writing Center,” you would e-mail writingcenter@newhaven.edu and we would share the report with you at that time.

LORI: So that might be something we add to the syllabus? If the student visits the Writing Center, please share that with me so I can get a report?

MARY: Yeah, especially if you’re incentivizing it in some way, then they’re very happy to have the report sent, because they know that’s how they know they’re going to get the incentive or whatever it is. But the other thing is just to tell your students that you really think it’s a great idea to go, then that will make them less likely to balk at sharing it with you.

LORI: Do the tutors help with any kind of assignment that includes writing? Including reflective writing?

MARY: Any kind of writing including reflective writing, yes.

DEVON: If students are creative writers themselves and are working on a personal project, they can bring their personal projects to the Writing Center. We’ve also had students come with cover letters or personal statements for internships or jobs.

MARY: Yes, scholarship applications, applications for extra-curricular opportunities, all sorts of things.

Writing Center Reception Desk
First floor, Peterson Library
writingcenter@newhaven.edu
203-932-7285

Mary Isbell, Ph.D.
misbell@newhaven.edu
(203) 932-1140
Assistant Professor of English
Director of First-Year Writing & University Writing Center

Devon Moore, M.S.
dmoore@newhaven.edu
(203) 932-7368
Writing Programs Coordinator