For several months now, the students in English 383 have looked at articles on theory and hypothetical problem consultations formulated by previous writing consultants. Some of the problems of these hypothetical papers were incredibly formulaic; certain issues always seemed to come up: organization and the ability to correctly cite and command evidence, among others. When our practical midterm came up, none of the issues I expected to encounter surfaced and I found myself needing to extend beyond the basic theories we had discussed in class. Half a semester of theory still had not really prepared me for a more practical tutorial. Practicing written commentary and discussing hypothetical tutorials did nothing to assuage the stresses of working with an actual writer for one of the first times.
Writing commentary was a drawn-out process. More often than with most of my writing, I stopped and went back to change a single word in a sentence to help to hone the meaning and change the tone slightly. After reading over the assignment sheet, like Anna Kendall recommends all writers and tutors do, and realizing that the paper was a comparison piece, I expected to work with the same kind of two-essay trap that many of the sample papers we have read before fell into (3). My marginal notes were almost nonexistent, except to point out which end note corresponded to a set of underlining or a section of the text. In an attempt to avoid commentary that was too directive and more “authoritarian” than writing center commentary should be, I focused my comments on explanations from a reader’s perspective and questions that hopefully were not too demanding of the writer (Straub 225). Authoritarian commentary that dictated specific changes that could be made may have come across as offensive, and the paper was actually strong enough on its own that a few leading questions would have been enough direction to clarify some of the issues.
Sitting down to conference with another consultant about his paper was slightly intimidating. Even with pre-written commentary in hand, I felt slightly unprepared. I repeatedly had to reference my notes, and I worried that I would not be able to clearly articulate the things I wanted to say. I forced myself to take more time choosing my words before I spoke than I normally would because I did not want to say something that might accidentally derail the friendly tone I tried painstakingly to achieve in my written commentary. I knew that, while I would have time with my written commentary to go back and rethink a sentence or a specific word I chose, in conference I could not have the luxury of editing myself, so I had to be more careful about what I said before I said it. Even so, as we sat in conference, I found myself occasionally slipping up and using words like “good” that we, as consultants, are not supposed to use.
Being on the other side of the consultation further demonstrated the point that the words chosen for written commentary and in conference must be careful and deliberate. Even though the other student acknowledged that my paper was strong, and the details he suggested for revision were smaller things that I could change and conquer easily, I felt slightly threatened, even though his commentary was friendly. This was my paper, a paper I had worked hard on, and any suggestion seemed slightly upsetting. If he had said something in a harsh way, I probably would have become really distressed about the fate of my paper.
Working with the other student, one of the largest issues I identified in his paper was my confusion over the focus of his introductory paragraph. As I read through the paragraph, I noticed that several of the statements within it could have acted as the central focus for both the paragraph and the paper, and I worked with Miles to try to clarify his point. When addressing the issue of unclear focus with in “Focus on Focus,” Bithyah Shaparenko asked her students to explain the focus of each of their paragraphs (11). This is what I attempted to do with the student with whom I worked. He looked over his introduction briefly and then explained the focus of his essay in his own words. I suggested that if he decided to revise his paper, he should write that down and further emphasize that point as his focus, because it had not been clear to me when I had read his draft.
Another important issue that we sat down to address focused on the clarity of certain points to an uninformed reader. This portion of the session stood out for me because both the writer and I identified the same issue as something that needed to be discussed. The class this student was writing for was a film studies class, and the content of the paper was very much focused on specific cinematic and thematic details of the films being studied. There were certain quotes in the paper, then, which did not make sense to me when reading the paper because they referenced points of the films which I did not understand. This led to a discussion about audience and also about expanding on the quotations used. First of all, we discussed the fact that the audience that he was writing for would probably already understand certain references and that, for specific references to scenes in the films or to specific details of the films, it was acceptable to make less general references. There were also some quotations which were presented without any real context, and I suggested that, upon revision, more explanation of the quotations used would be helpful.
In an earlier post to my blog, I explained that my first individual tutorial left me feeling terrified. After this practical midterm, I have begun to wonder if that anxiety over a consultation will ever go away. I think the fear comes from a combination of knowing that a consultant’s input can have serious impact on the final grade that a work earns and the fact that theoretical study can only do so much to prepare a consultant for an actual consultation. I hope that with more practice, this anxiety might go away, but for now, I felt like practical application was only minimally helped by the theory we have studied.
No comments:
Post a Comment