* * * * *

Woolbright, Meg. "The Politics of Tutoring: Feminism Within the Patriarchy." TheWriting Center Journal 20.1 (1999): 16-30.

        Through the use of her analysis of a conference between a tutor and a student, Woolbright illuminates the conflicts that can arise when trying to advocate the feminist values of respect, trust and shared leadership within the patriarchal system of rhetoric. While the traditional patriarchal system uses the model of knowledge as power, she stresses that the feminist approach of using understanding to represent power would be more beneficial for the student and for the tutor within the context of tutoring. Feminist values of understanding should not be "dichotomized" completely from the patriarchal academy, but rather embedded within the academy, and it is when both of these values are interwoven that "a complex web of conflict arises" (17). The conflict surfaces when the methods behind the feminist perspective of a non-hierarchal and interactive environment are at odds with the tutor's perception of the "right" way of writing a paper or with the teacher's expectations.

        In Woolbright's chosen conference, the tutor is caught between focusing on cooperating with the student through her own emotional and intellectual response to the assignment and teaching her tutee to write in the more "correct" manner in which she herself would carry out the assignment. As the conference progresses, Woolbright demonstrates that as the patriarchal values arise in her methods, they subtly overwhelm her goals of feminist practice. While trying to maintain a hold on her own authority, the tutor begins to get carried away in her own ideas of how the paper should flow and she fails to notice the lack of participation or enthusiasm in her tutee. The conference moves from personal, respectful interaction to dishonesty to defiance and demonstrates the conflict that arises between the feminist and patriarchal models of instructing rhetoric. In dismissing the values of honesty, communication and equality, the tutor is inadvertently advertising a hierarchy and impartiality and teaching the student to ignore her own emotional reactions.

        Woolbright's emphasis on the feministic approach to tutoring writing directly coincides with Alicia Koundakjian's experiences presented in her article "Speaking with the written voice," and with the suggestions presented by Alice G. Brand in "The Why of Cognition: Emotion and the Writing Process." Both Koundakjian and Woolbright emphasize the importance of establishing a mutually respectful relationship throughout the tutoring process in the attempt to help students to realize that they have authority over their own work. Both of these articles are relevant in the writing center because they reveal a key step to making the tutoring session progress in a more smooth and beneficial manner for both the tutor and the student. By establishing the writing center as "a place for conversation among equals where knowledge is constructed, not transmitted," the tutee does not need to suppress any emotion or idea related to the assignment and the tutor should not feel the need to enforce the hierarchal structure of the patriarchal model (Woolbright 18). Woolbright would also agree with Brand on her assertion that emotion is a necessary and ever-present part of the writing process. Part of the feminist philosophy of writing is the inclusion of emotion into intellectual ideas and the non-neutral approach to a topic. Woolbright explains even further that in order for the student to feel comfortable with his or her authority over the validity of those emotions as a valid part of their assignment, equality between the tutor and tutee must be established. The methods established in Woolbright's article are especially helpful to writing tutors because they present the foundation on which to base the relationship with the student and how that foundation will benefit the outcome for both the tutor and the tutee.

9-20-01 Ralee Miller

Taylor, David. "A Counseling Approach to Writing Conferences." Dynamics of theWriting Conference: Social and Cognitive Interaction. Ed. Thomas Flynn and Mary King. Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993. 24-33.

        The author of this article examines the similarities between a therapy session and a writing conference. He states that the conference should be student oriented and the tutor/teacher should not take on the role of an authority figure but rather a growth facilitator. The three similarities that he cites between a therapy session and a writing conference are that the writing conference is a way to put the student back in control of his writing, which will enable him to move forward in the task. That the writing assignment at hand, once completed, will give the student skills that will help him once he is faced with another writing assignment. The third similarity is that the conference is a collaborative process, in which the tutor helps the student to write effectively. It is not based on the tutor being an authority figure but rather a growth facilitator/collaborator. These characteristics develop a helping relationship with the goal that the next time the student needs to write a paper, he will be able to do so independently.

        This helping relationship that Taylor writes about is comprised of three characteristics that the tutor should exhibit, empathy, warmth and caring, regard and respect. Along with these Taylor also mentions the importance of active listening because it helps to create an environment where the student feels comfortable, and isn't afraid of being judged - unconditional positive regard. The student feels that the tutor cares about his writing. The better the student feels about the distribution of power between the tutor and himself, the better the conference will proceed and the better the student will feel about his writing.

        Taylor hits on an aspect of the revision/evaluation process that sometimes gets forgotten. The emotions that the student goes in with into a conference are usually ones of anxiety, frustration, nervousness, and even perhaps anger. It is highly unlikely that someone who likes his writing will go to someone else to get help. Emotions will be a determinant in how the paper turns out in the end, and the revision/evaluation process is a step to that goal. In some instances students may not yet be at the revision process but emotion is an important aspect of the entire process from the first thoughts to the end product. Therefore it is really important to create an environment, as Taylor states, that makes the student feel at ease, and hopefully have them forget all those negative emotions and be able to focus on getting his ideas out on paper. Just starting a conversation about the topic of the writing can reveal that the student's emotions had been inhibiting his ability to think clearly and to write. Sometimes it helps to have someone to talk things out with, and that way realize where the holes are in the ideas. People talk to others about their everyday problems, dilemmas, and triumphs so it is normal that people should talk about their writing. However this may not be a natural or comfortable process. Another important aspect of creating a comfortable environment and a helping relationship is that writing is a very personal thing. It takes a lot out of a person and for many people it is something that they don't like to share. So by creating trust, the student will be less likely to hold back ideas, questions, concerns and will be more willing to engage in a conversation and critique with the tutor. Emotions play a very important role in the process of writing, as we examined in class through a revision of the Flower and Hayes' model, and the tutor can help to control the intensity and the variety of the emotions expressed by the student by the atmosphere that they make and the personality characteristics that they exhibit. Olga Wartenberg, 09-19-01

Peterson, Alice. "My Paper." Working With Student Writers. Ed. Leonard Podis and JoAnne Podis. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. 261-266.

        Peterson's essay is built upon her frustrations with the restrictions that her academic assignments place on her ability to write well. She refers to papers as "games of assembly," at which she is a "skilled assembler" (261). She develops her theses, creates outlines, writes coherent sentences, and still finds her writing to be undeveloped and boring. No matter what she is writing, Peterson is not able to see a direct connection between the words on the page and the person inside of her. She finds weaknesses in her writing, which can undoubtedly be blamed on the pressure she feels to write about something that she doesn't really care about. Peterson complains of being weary of the "flow" of her essays - she just wants to argue her point and express her views without fear of the teacher punishing her for not using academic language or a proper format. She is even trying to get away from her own preconceived notions of what an essay should be, and to the reader, she is successful.

        Peterson also briefly addresses the issue that many students face with assignments that are very open-ended, and therefore the specific subject matter is up to the students' discretion. The example that she uses for this is an essay she wrote in her junior year of high school, in a class where she was assigned to construct an essay out of a simple quotation. She chose to respond to the quotation out of personal experience, while other students may have decided to make up a short story, or write an analytical composition on the nature of the quotation. This example raises an interesting question for those who study the nature of writing: Why do we choose to write the things we do? Where do the topics come from? Where do the words themselves come from? Peterson may respond that they are based on personal experience - what we write about comes from our knowledge, and our knowledge is based on our experience.

        Peterson continues to analyze this one particular essay, recognizing that at the time, she was stifling a lot of how she really felt about this personal experience. Even though the assignment gave her a lot of freedom to choose what she wanted to write about and whom she wanted to write to, she still choose to see it "as an assembly game, sanitizing the events of my life to make them palatable for the artificial situation in which I knew I was operating" (265). Even though she had all the freedom in the world, she still aimed her paper at an audience; she made sure she didn't include too much information that would make anybody feel uncomfortable or disinterested. She knew she was writing in an academic situation, and that knowledge influenced not only the words that she chose, but the information she chose to include.

        Peterson's essay is a well-written rant on the difficulties of writing in an academic atmosphere, while still trying to maintain some teeny aspect of her personality. The essay is a fantastic example of feelings that all writers experience, especially in an academic atmosphere, where they are trying to develop their personalities and opinions and express them on paper. Peterson succeeds in making the reader feel free to be proud of their frustrations, and to dare to craft a paper the way they feel it should be. The essay is thoughtful and inspiring, and is a great resource to read for any student who feels the inner conflict between student and human being, academic and writer. Amy Bartlow 9/19/01

Axel-Lute, Miriam. "Consciousness, Frustration, and Power: The Making of Contextual Writer's Block." Working With Student Writers. Ed. Leonard and Joanne Podis. Peter Lang: New York, 1999. 151-168.

        In Axel-Lute's essay, she looks at the contextual Writer's Block, where a student can not bring themselves to write a paper for a class. The essay stemmed from her own inability to compose an essay for a class that she was not particularly fond of (Podis and Podis 152 ). She analyzes the Writer's Blocks of both students and professors at Oberlin College in Ohio, where Axel-Lute was a student. The reason for the blocks stemmed ranged from assignment limitations to feelings of alienation from the course. Eventually, the writers work through their blocks and the essay concludes with tips on how tutors can work with students who have contextual Writer's Block. A characteristic that Axel-Lute found of the people she studied was that they had a tendency to wait until the last minute to produce the paper for the course, which was not the usual method (163). The subject for the paper or the course did not hold their interest to where they could put an effort into writing the essay.

        One of Axel-Lute's examples, Judy, a student in a poetry writing class, was interesting in the fact that her professor had stripped her of her creative voice because of his restrictions and the classroom atmosphere. The course affected Judy's writing during and after the course, where she became more self-conscious about what she wrote (162). She could not write about the things that interested her, causing her abilities as a creative writer not to suffer because she could not develop her own personal style. In comparison to the other students in the study, the effects of the professor on Judy were more severe because the writing was personalized. In my experiences with creative writing, the writer's personality and soul go into their work. Judy became inhibited because she could not find the proper way to express herself that would satisfy her professor.

        As the essay later describes, the people Axel-Lute interviewed were able to break through their blocks. The student writers, including Judy, gained the confidence to write what they wanted to write. When the students were the most upset or frustrated over a class, the only solution could have appeared to be writing against the professor. How come the writers only were able to break through when their frustrations with the class or assignment were high? The excitement was that they experienced the thrill of ignoring the professor's standards. There is a release from all their pent-up aggression in that one act of defiance, which helped the students to infuse their work with the excitement that was lacking in that course during the semester. Louis Standish, 9/20/2001

Breen, Jennifer. "How Much to Tell? The Role of the Teacher in the Politicized Classroom." Working With Student Writers: Essays on Tutoring and Teaching. Ed. Leonard A. Podis and Joanne M. Podis. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, 1999. 243-250.

        Breen's article tackles the question of how much - if any - personal information or ideology teachers should share in the classroom or work into lectures. She presents two arguments: one promoting the inclusion of ideologies, the other claiming that they hinder student development. On the pro side she quotes Patricia Bizzell, who believes that responsibility lies with teachers to spread "'beliefs conducive to the common good'" that "' displace the repressive ideologies an unjust social order would inscribe.'" After hearing of the "'ideologies that motivate [her] teaching,'" students will be "'better people'" than the apparently unenlightened ones who entered. Conversely, Maxine Hairston contends that teachers' sharing of political views "'violate[s] all academic traditions'" regarding "' the free exchange of ideas.'" Instead, teachers should "'encourage diversity,'" necessarily to the exclusion of ideology. The two only agree that through writing classes, students should learn to articulate their ideas (243). How much, then, should teachers influence what those ideas are?

        To clarify her own position on the issue, Breen has a three-sided conversation with herself in the three roles she currently embodies: teacher's assistant, student teacher, and student. Interestingly, each side has a slightly different view, and Breen never comes to a concrete conclusion. The more experienced and self-assured teacher's assistant in her believes that leaving politics out of the classroom creates a vacuum, and to leave it empty would be negligent. Instructors, she contends, have a responsibility to teach students what is and is not socially acceptable. The student assistant tends more towards Hairston, claiming that part of education is developing a sense of self, and that students must feel free to write anything without fear of reprisals. The student rests somewhere in the middle of the others: while, being insecure in her own beliefs, teachers' forceful opinions intimidate her, she appreciates them more than neutrality in lectures and evaluations.

        My own views tend towards those of the ST: students' comments or ideas should not be limited, consciously or unconsciously, by those of the teacher. Sharing views is natural, and the teacher should not censor himself; nevertheless, he should not make the student feel that she should either. It is not the teacher's - or tutor's - job to fill any vacuum; they can offer resources and encouragement but not ideology. We as tutors must be sure to keep our own ideologies out of others' papers and, if such sharing makes tutees uncomfortable, out of sessions entirely. We have to respect their right to hold views different from our own, just as we would want teachers to do for us. Sara Brown - 9.19.01

Vygotsky, L. S. "The Prehistory of Written Language." Mind in Society. Ed. Michael Cole, Vera John-Steiner,    Sylvia Scribner, and Ellen Souberman. London: Harvard UP, 1978.

        Vygotsky dissuades educators of children from teaching writing ("a complex cultural activity") as if it were a motor skill (117-118). Mechanical instruction, such as letter and word formation exercises and the copying of teachers' contrived greetings or other simple sentences, Vygotsky finds inutile in aiding children in the mastery of written language. Perceiving a need for the reformation of such a method of teaching written language, he protests, "Writing must be 'relevant to life'- in the same way that we require a 'relevant' arithmetic" (118). A child should write when he or she has a purpose, not when devoid of purpose (118). The other urgency of practical reform arises from his conclusion that "writing should be 'cultivated' rather than 'imposed'" (118).

        He utilizes his empirical studies on children at play, drawing, and writing, as well as similar research conducted by Hetzer, to outline a prehistory of written language (106-13). In the beginning of his scientifically explored prehistory, the seeds of written language are gestures (107). With these gestures, a child will attempt to "indicate" the general qualities of the object in question rather than attempt an accurate representation of the thing (107). A "sign" then often is no more than a "fixed" gesture (107). For example (my example), after fixation of the initial, indicatory, protesting gesture occurs in one's memory, a picture of a raised fist carries the significance of protestation and rage, henceforth independently of the previously mediating gesture (108-12). Therefore, whereas this picture would have been at first a second-order symbol (denoting the gesture, which denotes the concept of rage and protestation), development (a case of involution in that the mediating gesture becomes no longer necessary for the child to perceive the symbolism of the picture) ratifies the string or reference so that the picture falls from a second-order to a first-order symbol (the picture symbolizes now the word "protestation") (108-12). Vygotsky illustrates this process of sign fixation and its inherent metamorphoses ("evolution" and "involution") between "first-order" and "second-order symbolisms" in the context of child development, specifically playing, drawing, and writing, in order to suggest the nature, in which a child progresses from indicatory drawing with gestures to drawing speech (having pictorial or written equivalents of spoken words at one's memory's disposal, after the discovery made by gesturing), now with the capability to address and represent quantity (115). Vygotsky at this point says, "It was the need of recording quantity, perhaps, that historically first gave rise to writing" (115).

        The chapter is especially beneficial and pertinent to anyone, who is interested in the intricacies and difficulties of translation in Flower and Hayes' cognitive theory of the writing process; because one's considering the function and results of what Vygotsky perceived as the indicatory, gesturing stage of development and discovery of written language among children may even shed new light on the distinct, college dilemma of translating the conversational, "gesturing" voice into the independent, intelligible, academic voice, necessary to conform to the audience of the rhetorical situation at hand. Just as Vygotsky could influence children to perceive a clock to be a drugstore through an association of like gestures, it seems plausible that a tutor, when appropriate, could furnish a tutee with the academic equivalent (or juste mot) to his or her conversational word and help him or her to perceive the aptness of the substitute, by allowing for an exploration of the association of gesture; for it has to be felt by the tutee, since sign fixation is a personal process (109-10). Also, Vygotsky suggests that people will make connections, make meaning, when told to view something as something else. Just as the little girl could see the bottle as a wolf, by describing the mouth of the bottle as the wolf's mouth and the stopper as an object clenched in the wolf's sharp teeth, so it seems that a tutor could help a tutee through a tough metaphor by first supplying a succinct explanation and following it with an allowance of time for the tutee to recreate the meaning out loud, personally testing the aptness of certain nuances of the metaphor so as to make things clearer (110). It is really quite like the girl's analysis the bottle as wolf (110). Jared Fischer. September 19, 2001.

        Harris addresses the sometimes overwhelming issue of helping students who cannot talk about their work. She lists the various reasons that students may have problems talking to a tutor, including shyness, apprehension about sharing work, distraction caused by other problems, and general boredom with the writing process. Harris then goes on to to provide possible solutions to these problems, inlcuding sample conversations between student and tutor throughout her explanations. Some of her suggestions for improving the quality of the tutoring session are restructuring the goals of the session based on the student's attitude, leaving introverted students time for quiet reflection, and offering a friendly ear to other problems. She also notes that, because both the tutors and the students bring varying personality traits and writing styles to the session, her solutions will not be universally successful.

        Harris's article is much like Koundakjian's in that they both suggestgetting to know the student in a social setting if communication seems to be a problem. However, Harris is quick to point out that the student may become overly reliant on the tutor as a pseudo psychologist and that distratcion from the task at hand sometimes diverts attention completely away from the paper. The problems that Harris identifies could be found in any college student, so her article holds relevence for learning how to communicate with tutees. Her solutions are also plausible, although the hypothetical conversations she includes are somewhat hokey. Overall, the article makes solid points about the importance of recognizing diffferent learning styles in the tutoring process and also offers simple solutions to solve problems that arise when a student is not willing or able to talk about his or her own work. Michelle Ruddle, 09-20-01

Podis, Leonard A. "Training Peer Tutors for the Writing Lab". Working With Student Writers. Ed. Leonard and Joanne Podis. Peter Lang: New York, 1999. 45-51.

        In his article Leonard Podis lays down the foundation for what I understand to be the class that our class is loosely based on. His class has three main goals: to give future tutors extensive knowledge about "language, discourse, and composition", to give them a familiarity with "various helping pedagogical styles", and to give them experience through field work in the lab (Podis & Podis 45). Podis' process of choosing participants is very similar to Goucher's (he gets nominations from the faculty, for instance). His class differs from ours in that "most tutors are junior or senior English majors" (Podis & Podis 45-46).

        I think our class has tweaked the model, for better, in that area; most of us are sophomores and not all of us are English majors. It makes sense to train tutors that will actually be around longer to tutor, and also to have a greater distribution of majors to draw from (every once in a while we'll need Dan to help someone with a bio/chem paper). Podis emphasizes the tutor as a guide and not "as a guard righteously defending the English language against those who would defile it" (Podis & Podis 46-47), a notion I think our class understands and is fairly safe from. The desired products of the class are tutors who have developed "a style which allows them to be as positive and encouraging as they can while still directing the tutee to work in areas needing improvement" (Podis & Podis 49).

        In essence, for all of us to become good tutors, we will have to learn to walk that fine line between teacher and fellow student. Podis ends his article with a note about how the administration appreciates having an elite group of tutors running a lab that helps students in their writing and, subsequently, teachers in their reading. It was only until reading an article from the professor's point of view that I saw us future tutors as partners with the faculty and administartion. Another line to walk I guess. ---- Mike Manglitz, 9/20/01

Schambelan, Elizabeth. " Defining a Persona within Academic Boundaries". Working with Student  Writers. Ed. Leonard Podis and JoAnn Podis. New York: Peter Lang, 193-198.

    Elizabeth Schambelan in this essay strikes an interesting chord as she comments on her personal battle between conformity and iconoclasm in academic writing. Her first effort involves breaking from the mold of the five-paragraph essay. Her teacher rejects her attempt, dismissing it as too confused. Elizabeth's retorts by later submitting a perfect five-paragraph essay on torn loose-leaf paper that she had typed up on a typewriter and onto which she literally cut and pasted paragraphs. The "awful-looking manuscript" received an A, and marked the first clash of pressures for acceptance and success within the academic community and her sense of integrity. Schambelan describes how her problems stemmed from prose in "high" academic discourse that required her to be an evacuated author for the purposes of finding an essential truth that would be lost if the author had emotion. This persona of "Intellectual as God" never sat well with her, because it subdued her actual persona. She goes on to explain how over the years, at Oberlin College, she found more subtle ways to express her self in academia. For instance, she peppered a dry paper on Lewis Carroll with quotations from Marquis de Sade and 120 Days of Sodom to illustrate sadomasochistic imagery in Alice in Wonderland. Comparing these quotes to graffiti, Schambelan, nevertheless, refers to this paper as her first success in integrating the two personas she felt was indelibly separated. She concludes that in order to survive in academia we all must defer to the "Intellectual as God persona", but by writing with this problem in mind we can simultaneously justify the deference and build a unique persona.

       I found this article to be particularly relevant to last weeks readings and our class discussion on Tuesday. Schambelan raises the question of "where does emotion fit into writing model" and "why does good writing entail the author being aloof from his work in a different form. If universal truths don't exist, or if the author simply doesn't believe in them, what is the point of assuming the "Intellectual as God persona"? Why has the emotionless author become so embedded in academic discourse? Perhaps, we make generalizations to preserve order and sense(value).

        I am sure that there is a "knee-jerk individualism" that everyone must overcome to exist in Academia as evidenced blatantly by the simple act of someone going to the writing center and accepting the tutelage of the "rules". Likewise, we should not become slaves to the acceptance of academia, reducing ourselves to collegiate worker bees. Regardless, we should face the fact that we enrolled in Goucher College voluntarily, and recognize that the graffiti described bove may receive attention, but also defaces your environment. Dan Pinnola 9/20/01

Flower, Linda and John R. Hayes. “The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical Problem.” Landmark Essays on the Writing Process. Ed. Sondra Perl. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1994.

        In this article, Flower and Hayes elaborate upon part of the model for the composition process described fully in “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing,” asserting that process of writing consists of creating meaning, not merely extracting, or finding, meaning from various internal and external forces. The authors seek to eliminate the “mythology of discovery,” which allows writers to believe that the creativity is a painful process of extracting ideas and meanings from long-term memory and previously acknowledged ideas. Instead, the authors postulate that writing is an act of problem solving, in which the writer tries to get from point A to point B, from an established problem to a reasonable solution. This means that a writer must determine his/her own problem-in other words, the writer must create a self-imposed goal-and from that problem (i.e. essay assignment) respond. The authors call this the rhetorical problem. The rhetorical problem provokes some questions of the writer: namely, the individual writer’s unique response to the determined problem, and whether or not the development of the problem itself helps to generate new ideas/solutions. The authors conclusions are based on a series of protocols, taken from writers categorized as “good” or “poor.” Good writers tend to have more experience as writers, having received NEH fellowships, while poor writers tend to be labeled “novice” and came from an introductory college background.

        The authors break the rhetorical problem into two main parts: situation, which consists of audience, actual assignment, and their constraints, and goals. Four main goals are identified, including how to affect the reader, the creation of the voice or persona, the construction of meaning, and the production of the text itself. The authors break down the presentation of meaning into “stored problem-representations” and “unique representation.” When information comes from “stored” mental faculties, there are established conventions to which the writer conforms. The authors use a “thank-you” letter as an example, for a writer is expected to use specific tone and content appropriate to the stored form. However, for classroom assignments, a “unique representation” of information is necessary, a more developed use of problem-solving the key to responding to the rhetorical problem. A writer’s goals determine whether the composition will be unique or come from a repository of knowledge about how the work is supposed to be.

        The authors find that developed, or “good,” writers tend to think heavily about how to affect their target audience, imagining a more complete picture of the audience’s mindset and how to influence its thoughts. Good writers also think about their voice (although the persona is more apt to be a “stored” construct) and can alter tone and word choice to affect the audience to a greater degree. Good writers also tend to use the process of composition to create meaning. They start with the generation of ideas, but unlike poor writers, they use the generation process to express ideas found in memory, and to find contradictions and more problems, goals that need to be solved. Hence, good writers constantly think of new goals and new ways to structure all of their goals. Good writers make more precise technical composition decisions, employing rhetorical devices to draw the reader in. The authors point out that writers who are also well-read have a greater base of “stored” rhetorical tricks, because they have seem more employed in the writing of others. Good writers are able to “juggle” their situation and goals, creating more depth of thought in the process. In the end, good writers have a better understanding of how to create a problem that needs to be solved, and poor writers have difficulty constructing a problem to begin with. The authors conclude the good writers are good at “problem-finding.” The authors also maintain that goal-setting is a “teachable” skill, and that poor writers can be taught to find problems, to define and explore their goals, to “create inspiration instead of wait for it.”

        Having read “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing,” this article elucidates the part of the model that the authors call the “task environment.” The task environment interacts with the other components of the model, the actual writing process and the writer’s long-term memory. This article clearly expresses the authors’ ideas of what makes a truly good writer, and gives hope to the tutor that even so-called poor writers can be taught to skills necessary to become a so-called good writer. Therefore, the tutor’s job becomes the facilitation of the problem-solving process, what the authors believe is at the heart of beginning the composing process.

Bartosenski, Mary.  “Color, Re-vision, and Painting a Paper.”  The Writing Center Journal.  12.2  (1992):  159-173.

             Bartosenski’s article brings up an innovative way to look at academic writing: through color.  In March of 1990, Mary Bartosenski began tutoring a young woman named Marianne at the Colby Writers’ Center.  Marianne came to their first session, tearful and angry, clutching a copy of an unsuccessful essay exam she had taken.  She explained that she was being tested for a learning disability and that she and writing just didn’t seem to click—she easily lost her train of thought, and what she wrote on paper was never clear enough.  Her “sentences always seemed to turn around what she’d meant to say” (160).  She simply wanted to be able to write what she wanted to communicate as easily as she could say it.  Bartosenski took into account the fact that Marianne was an artist and suggested that she try writing with colored pens, an idea that she’d come across in a learning disability article.  Together, they tackled Marianne’s rough draft, discussing unclear parts.  Bartosenski asked her which parts made sense and which parts didn’t so that she could stand back and analyze her own paper.  Marianne then made fuchsia and turquoise marks with her colored pens, scratching out extraneous sentences and making notes in the margins.  She could look at the sentences that she colored and focus on them, one by one, and not get overwhelmed. 

            As time went on, and Marianne made more and more revisions with all sorts of different colors, she got positive feedback from her professor.  And her tutor definitely saw drastic improvement—now, Marianne caught mistakes in her writing before Bartosenski could question them.  Marianne could speak freely about what exactly she wanted to accomplish in a specific passage of writing as she slashed fuchsia marks on the page.  She saw her paper as a whole with lots of layers.  She would use one color as she went through her draft once, and then go back and use a different color to show that her paper was constantly expanding and layering toward her desired product, a concise paper.  Seeing the colors also made it easier for her to see the changes she made.  Using different colors made revising interesting, even less serious and foreboding than the normal blue or black ink marks on typed paper.  And she felt in control when she could underline or scratch things out, a way to “fine-tune her points” (170) so that she could get her point across. 

            Reading this article reinforced just how much we as humans bring to the writing process.  As we’ve been discussing in class, we can’t be separated from our emotions, no matter what step of the writing process we’re working on.  Emotionally, writing used to drain Marianne.  She felt so frustrated that her written language didn’t jibe with her verbal language.  So she used her visual language to access her written language.  The colors she used were “fun,” and they spoke to her emotions, which consequently rose from dejectedness to confidence in her writing.  We’re not all artists, but I think that the color approach has something important in it.  Sometimes our thoughts are so difficult to organize, and the corrections we need to make to create a readable paper are intangible.  That little bit of color therapy could make such a difference.  Highlighting questionable parts of our papers focuses on that one aspect so that we can fine-tune, piece by piece, until the entire paper is what we want it to be.  We are visual; why not make paper-writing a visual process? Turn a dry topic into Technicolor.  Revise, layer by layer, to create a paper of a different color.  –Maggie Butler, 9/19/01

Rose, Mike.  "Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitivist Analysis of Writer's Block."  Landmark Essays.  Vol 7.  Ed. Sondra Perl.  Davis, CA: Hermagoras, 1994.  85-97. 

            Rose presents and examines several reasons why some students routinely suffer from writer's block while other students rarely encounter this problem.  He observed the writing habits of ten undergraduate students at UCLA.  Although all ten students possess the same level of skill, five of the students experience frequent writer's block and the other five do not.  Rose's study differs from other studies examining writer's block in that he disregarded clinical interviews and testing and focused on the disability from a purely cognitive perspective; in other words, he focused on the composing process instead of on the completed text.  Rose concludes that what separates the two groups of students is that "the five students who experienced blocking were all operating either with writing rules or with planning strategies that impeded rather than enhanced the composing process" (86).  Also, the group of students that did not experience writer's block utilized less rigid and more functional rules when writing.

            The writing process, which Rose likens to a mathematical problem, is divided into three separate stages: the introductory period which takes place when the problem (or writing assignment) is first presented, the processing period in which the mathematician/writer contemplates possible solutions, and the solution period where the answer is attained.  According to Rose, writer's block generally surfaces in the processing period because "past learning and the particular…direction or orientation that the problem solver takes in dealing with past experience and present stimuli have critical bearing on the efficacy of solution" (87).  In other words, writers that adhere to overly rigid rules of writing are more likely to suffer from writer's block than writers that focus primarily on the content of their writing and secondarily on textbook rules of writing.

            The processing period is further subdivided into rules and plans.  Rules are what "guide response to the myriad stimuli that confront us daily" (87).  Rules are a fixed set of instructions as to how to solve specific problems.  In writing students are taught to abide by rules such as "grab the audience's attention" and "focus on three points in every essay."  An algorithmic rule is one that presents a specific set of instructions (e.g., "when x happens, do y and z.")  Heuristic rules, on the other hand, "allow varying degrees of flexibility when approaching problems" (88).  Heuristic rules are like finding a solution through trial and error, while algorithmic rules present an unchanging formula for producing a given result.  Rose also found that during the planning stage students that request feedback from professors, peers, writing center tutors, etc. are less likely to suffer from writer's block because they expose themselves to a variety of opinions instead of clinging to textbook rules of writing they learned in high school.  According to Rose, "dysfunctional rules are easily replaced with or counter-balanced by functional ones if there is no emotional reason to hold onto that which simply doesn't work" (97).  When students suffer from writer's block, Rose suggests that the writing center tutor ask them what writing rules they learned in high school and then introduce students to more flexible and functional rules that will strengthen their writing instead of inhibit it -- Aliza Epstein, 9/20/01    

Podis, Leonard A.  "Peer Tutors: What the Teacher Can Learn."  Working With Student Writers.  Ed. Leonard A. Podis & Joanne M. Podis.  New York: Peter Lang, 1999.  59-65. 

            Leonard Podis describes what an excellent source of information tutors can be on tutees, and what insight they can provide faculty about their students.  Podis was surprised to find that "tutors assigned to work in writing-intensive courses across the curriculum report that, even when students are able to start projects a few days ahead of time, they are generally quite pessimistic about the possibility of creating much more time in their hectic schedules for additional drafting and revising" (59-60).  In such situations, many parts of the Flowers and Hayes process are severely neglected, and writing can often be forced to take on a very linear pattern.  Podis suggests that faculty follow his example in giving longer time periods, shorter assignments, and intermediate due dates to foster a greater spirit of revision and recursive writing.  In the article, Podis uses the example of a tutor who felt badly about preaching the power of revision when he himself rarely revised his own writing.  Trying out the New Paradigm proposal for one of his papers, he found that "the thrill of revision had been so inspiring that I took home the final draft, opened it up again and found myself doing another radical revision.  Each time I reread it, I found things that, I came to see, had to be changed" (62).  Podis ends his article reminiscing over how he, like his present tutors, had at one time struggled to learn and adopt the new teaching and writing theories.  For us 221 students, we not only have the opportunity to acquaint ourselves with these ways of teaching, thinking, and writing, we have the chance to make some of our own.---Mike Manglitz, 9/27/01 

Sherwood, Steve. "Censoring Students, Censoring Ourselves:  Constraining Conversations in the Writing Center." TheWriting Center Journal. 20.1 (1999): 51-60.

            By addressing the political, educational and personal problems that can arise when confronting a student with a piece of writing that is less than politically correct in its statements, Sherwood explains how the tutor is placed in a position of authority that can inadvertently lead to censorship of the student's ideas.  The role of tutor in the writing center, while being more peer-oriented, is still a role of leadership, however limited it may be.  "Most of the students that come to the writing center are eager to make their papers more acceptable to their professors," and in the face of this need for approval, a suggestion from the tutor could be seen as the "right" way that the ideas should be presented or even the "right" ideas to present.  Through the honest desire to help the student, the tutor may actually be encouraging self-censorship in the student, which may inhibit his or her exploration or discovery of new and valid ideas.  Sherwood also suggests that we as tutors are not in a position of authority that would validate our wish to censor less than ideal ideas or opinions, nor should we, as tutors whose main concern is helping the student develop his or her writing ability, wish to.  By censoring a student to a view considered "correct," we are basically coloring in half of that empty slate available for the student to work with.

            Along with illuminating the ways in which a tutor can put pressure on the ideas of his or her tutee, he also presents a solution to this conflict between the tutor's "own political or ideological agendas" and the First Amendment rights of the student.  As opposed to restricting the writer to the views that we accept as correct, Sherwood concludes that we as tutors should subjectively, without being judgmental, challenge ALL of their ideas, not just the questionable opinions, causing the student to validate them and possibly call "their ideas, ideals, and lines of reasoning into question." 

            I chose this article because of the title.  As a big fan of literature, especially the classics, I have always been aware of censorship and the evil that it can create in the literary world.  So out of this appreciation my interest was sparked by the concept that censorship could enter the writing center environment and my actions as a tutor could have that type of influence on the writings of others.  Throughout the reading of the article, many questions were raised by Sherwood's ideas on censorship within the writing center but Sherwood clearly and understandably tackled all of the doubts that cropped up in my mind as I read the article.  Not only did he address all of the social, political and educational conflicts that arise when censorship is brought into the writing center, but he also possessed a certain amount of passion about censorship himself, which helped when he was conveying his points using personal examples.  He was particularly adamant about not restricting the options of the writer through censorship and allowing him or her to explore their own ideas no matter how dangerous those ideas may be.  To quote Ray Bradbury, "you've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down."  It was Sherwood's conviction in this concept that helped him to convey his thoughts so effectively.

This article is especially applicable to our class because is reflects how our actions as tutors can fundamentally affect the writing process of our tutees.  The article is helpful because it not only warns again censorship but it also provides advice on how we should approach a situation where censorship could possible occur in our tutoring.  Ideally we as tutors should approach the writing of each student neutrally, considering equally their ideas and their possibility of development, overlooking any personal qualms that we may encounter in their opinions.  But just as one of our earlier readings by Alice G. Brand explains, "the very idea of being both human and impartial is a contradiction in terms."  So to make the best of our own partiality toward some ideas over others, we should question their ideas so as to promote growth and exploration in those ideas, because it is the exploration of foreign and strange concepts, concepts that go against the norm, that creates great writings.

            And just for fun  and because it kind of applies: "Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme."Ray Bradbury  Ralee Miller 9-27-01 

Bishop, Wendy.  Writing from the Tips of Our Tongues: Writers, Tutors, and Talk.  The Writing Center Journal.  14.1 (1993) 30-41.

    Communication, Bishop states, is important in a writing center, because of  the opportunity to enrich one's writing skills through discussion (Bishop 31).  While communicating, the student has a dialogue with he tutor about writing.  That dialogue allows the tutor and the tutee to talk freely about how the writer can improve his work.  In some of my visits to the Writing Center, I have been asked to read my work out loud.  Reading the material out loud helped me to gain a different perspective on what I had written than the one I would have after reading my essay on a computer screen.  When I read an essay out loud, I could pinpoint many of my errors.  The tutor acted like a guide, asking as I read 'How can you change that?'  When typing, not all the mistakes are visible, but hearing the words spoken opens the writer's mind because he is not writing at the moment; his role is to be a listener and a reader.  After he finishes speaking his piece, the tutor and the tutee talk about the paper.  Now that the tutee has gained this other perspective, he is more aware of the piece's weaknesses.  Throughout the session, the tutor and the tutee should always be able to bring up a point or idea for the paper.  The atmosphere must be open so any ideas can be discussed openly.  If the tutor and the tutee can't talk freely analyze the paper together, there is no effect from the session, the dialogue is then lost, and the tutor can't help the student.      

            A point that Bishop stresses is collaboration.  Collaboration is important because the tutor and the tutee are working together for the goal of making a piece of writing fluent.  Collaboration can become hazardous if both voices are not equally heard, or there is no communication between the two voices.  The benefit to collaboration is that the tutor and the tutee can play off each other, coming up with new ideas as they work together on the piece.  The writer is not struggling on his computer to complete the piece himself.  Without the two voices, then there is no collaboration, only one sole voice deciding on a direction for the piece.  When Bishop mentions the creative writer and the collaborative process, that type of writer is often reluctant to collaborate because he wants to work to be solely his, or that he feels like his work is better than average composition (Bishop 34).  If a creative writer feels like this, the writer has this fear that the 'baby' is not his, that in some way, they lost control of his baby, that what he wanted to say was pushed aside.  The creative writer may also feel that his sense of accomplishment is diminished because he has to go to a writing center tutor to be sure that his writing was fluent and comprehendible.  The accomplishment is not diminished because the ideas came from the writer; the tutor's role is to work with the student to improve on what was written.  

            Further in the essay, Bishop states that a writing center should be a place where student writers come to talk, and engage in discussions on writing (33).  Bishop's ideas were similar to the class discussion on how to improve the Writing Center.  Bishop's idea of the community of writers was intriguing, which reminded me of Professor Sander's comment that the Writing Center should become 'A Language Cafe.'  This free flow of ideas from one writer to another, talking about craft, debating over the meaning of a line in a piece, should be the purpose of writing centers.  The group discusses each other's work and develop their own writing abilities in the process.  They talk and hear what people thought what worked and what did not work in the paper.  In order to establish that community, Bishop's ideas of communication and collaboration must be incorporated.  The community is a valuable tool in teaching writers how to improve their skills because they are hearing the processes and critiques of others.  The writer can then look at their own arsenal of skills and determine how his skills can improve.  Another function of the community is to act as the support when a member is afflicted with Writer's Block.  Members of the community can help the struggling member work through the block and return to writing.  The community becomes a training ground and support group as each member starts a new assignment.--Louis Standish, 9/27/2001 

Lehr, Fran. "Revision in the Writing Process". Reading and Communication Skills. 1 Jan. 1995. ERIC Digests. 26 Sept. 2001. <http://ehostvgw19.epnet/delivery.asp…hr&startHitNum=1&rlStartHit=1&delType=FT>

            In this rather boring article, Lehr examines the use of revision in the writing processes of middle-schoolers to college students. Revision, she found, usually connotes to students failure or mistakes in grammar or syntax. Rarely is it used to develop or expand upon ideas. Instead, most students see it as a series of "cosmetic changes rather than as rethinking one's work." She contends that it should be seen not as a process of fixing grammatical mistakes but rather one in which "ideas emerge and evolve."

            To support her claims, Lehr cites research which found that from fourth grade to college-level writers, revision mainly focused on "surface changes." She blames this partly on the classic definition of the stages in the writing process, where revision is the final step apparently used to fix mistakes: this, in my view, is just more evidence of its inadequacy. This strictly structured approach often used to teach writing, she believes, leads to poor revision skills. In think the cognitive model, with its ongoing revision, would lead to a better-developed paper ultimately and should be utilized more often.

            Lehr believes that teachers play a vital role in changing these skills and students' negative attitudes towards revision. She advocates collaborative writing and revision between the teacher and student throughout the entire process. Teachers' (or tutors') questions, for example, about specific parts of students' texts can lead to a revision or expansion of ideas. We must be careful, however, not to give suggestions that lead to the work being "focused… on those [purposes] of the teacher:" such suggestions make it more the teacher's work than the student's result in a general loss of interest. This point reinforces my belief that teacher should allow students to choose, within the limits of the assignment, topics that interest them. Implicitly acknowledging the power of the audience, she recommends that public readings or viewings may motivate students to do their best in regards to both grammar and ideas. I like this idea: it gives the student more to work for that just a high grade and teacher approval. She concludes by insisting that teachers "emphasize the whole text over its parts" to help students realize "the power of writing… [in] shaping ideas" rather than earning a grade. Echoing what I said last week, I believe that this, rather than plugging the right variables into some sort of literary formula, should be the goal of writing: to learn and teach about oneself and the world, to explore ideas and learn to think critically about the world. *sara brown* 9.26.01 

Kellogg, Ronald T.  "Competition for Working Memory among Writing Processes."  American Journal of Psychology 114.2 (2001): 175-191. 

            Using Linda Flower and John R. Hayes' Cognitive Process Theory as a framework for his research, Ronald Kellogg designed an experiment to examine working memory in relation to the writing process.  Extracting a definition of writing processes from Flower and Hayes' model, Kellogg classifies the processes for the purpose of his study "as planning, translation, and reviewing" (176).  Kellogg establishes in his article a background concerning previous research related to his experiment.  In this respect, Kellogg illustrates the historical development for his study.

            Kellogg's experiment echoes Flower and Hayes' tape recording sessions where the writers voice their thoughts aloud as they type.  Unlike the original experiment, Kellogg appears to discover that which Flower and Hayes ignored through his examination of the effect composing has on working memory.  Whereas Hayes and Flower acknowledged that memory played a role in the writing process, Kellogg's approach investigated how the writer uses his or her memory during the writing process.  Kellogg determines his study  "experimentally manipulated the demands of planning and the motor execution phase of translating performance on a written composition task and directly tracked the use of working memory resources by planning, translating, and reviewing" (176).   The researchers instructed the students in the study to "[categorize] his or her thoughts at the time of the probe as planning, translating, reviewing, or other unrelated processes" (176).  During each composition at various time intervals, a tone signaled (the probe) the writers to categorize their process while the researchers observed a probe reaction time (RT).  He attempts to ascertain how the brain utilizes the working memory, whether or not the three processes compete for memory resources.  Writers in Kellogg's study used both writing longhand and typing on a word processor and composed "narrative, descriptive, [and] persuasive text" (177). 

            Kellogg found that the RT data "support the hypothesis of a common resource but also suggest that it is not divided equally in all cases" (181).  Nevertheless, Kellogg reviewed the data from various angles.  He clearly discusses the various reasons for the particular occurrence of the observed data.  Relating back to previous research, Kellogg's "analysis of processing time" supports the "typical patterns" of earlier findings (183).  Providing a thorough analysis of the methods used to conduct the study, Kellogg creates possibilities for future researchers to further investigate.  His study does appear to substantiate the pattern described in Flower and Hayes' cognitive theory model of writing.

The study applies itself to teaching and tutoring in a subtle, but no less important respect.  The methods used in the experiment by the researchers can manifest themselves in teaching techniques.  By familiarizing students with the cognitive theory and by educating students to categorize their processes as they compose, teachers give students the tools by which they may gain a better understanding of their personal writing process, and gain an awareness of their process in their writing.  Perhaps, or ideally, students could learn to make better use of their working memories, but a better understanding of such means needs examining.   9.27.01 Leah Frank 

Murphy, Christina. “Freud in the Writing Center: The Psychoanalytics of Tutoring Well.” The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing Center Theory and Practice. Ed.            Robert W. Barnett and Jacob S. Blumner. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001. 296-301. 

Christina Murphy takes a very different look at the interaction between a tutor and the student. Murphy makes an argument for the presents of Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis in the writing conference. She claims that the students that come to the writing center are expressing their desire for help with their writing and tend to display emotions of anxiety, self-doubt, negative cognition, procrastination and general insecurities about their writing. Murphy states that it is part of the tutor’s job to establish a comfortable one-on-one relationship. Where the student will feel comfortable talking to the tutor about his ideas and perhaps be able to articulate the possible reasons for his difficulty in writing the paper, as well as the goals for the particular writing assignment. As he is expressing these thoughts and emotions, the student places himself in a very vulnerable position to the tutor. By being so expressive the student makes himself vulnerable to the tutor’s judgements, agreements, disagreements, acceptances, and misunderstandings. According to Murphy, it is the tutor’s role to establish an environment in which the student will be able to articulate himself freely and “awaken individuals to their potentials and to channel their creative energies toward self-enhancing ends” (299). If the tutor is successful, he will not only help the student with his writing but also give him a clearer understanding of himself.

            It is important to bare in mind when tutoring students that it takes a lot of courage for the student to realize that they need help and then to go seek it. As Murphy states at the beginning of the article, the student who goes to the writing center wants help with his writing. The next step is to break down the walls of reservation while conferencing. The student, in a sense, puts himself in a very vulnerable position. He reveals his writing to another peer, in some cases one who may be a stranger or worse one who is a good friend, and has to explain the assignment and his thoughts on the topic. This makes him liable to be judged in many ways by the tutor and that is a hard idea to overcome for many students. The students who seek help, will find ways to justify the reasons for not writing well and needing to seek help. This facilitates them to overcome the fear of being evaluated by the tutor, especially if they feel the evaluation is negative. Once again Rogers concept of unconditional positive regard is mentioned, reminding the tutor that the act of writing is very person and that any sort of value judgements made by the tutor regarding the student’s work will have severe repercussions for the student. For example he may not want to go to the writing center again, he may be discouraged to write, or feel that his writing is worthless. The creation of a positive relationship between the tutor and student will help the student reach the ultimate goal of bettering himself.

            When Murphy writes about students who come to the writing center she lists particular characteristics that make the tutoring process harder: anxiety, self-doubt, negative cognition and procrastination. Personally I would have to argue that although procrastination has been always viewed in a negative way, for some people it works. Through the papers that we’ve written about how we write and from personal experience, sometimes what is needed is the pressure of the clock weighing down on the person to make them write. Whether the writing that is the product of that type of situation is good or not, is hard to judge since it’ll dramatically vary from person to person. However I don’t believe that procrastination is always a bad thing, although it limits the revision and evaluation process, it also forces the student to focus. Although I’ll admit that in a tutoring setting it does not leave the tutor with a lot options but instead limits the work that can be done.--Olga Wartenberg, 09-26-01 

Howey, Noelle.  “The Dilemmas of Grading.”  Working With Student Writers.  Ed. Leonard and Joanne Podis.  Peter Lang: New York, 1999.  95-100.

Unlike Peter Elbow, Noelle Howey is not talking so much about an inhibitive audience leading to a case of writer’s block in her essay.  Her mind doesn’t blank out as a protection against failure; her more expressive thoughts are completely smothered in the effort to earn an A, the only acceptable letter grade.  “Personal experience or even alternative readings of texts were not permitted to enter [her] papers.”  In some high schools, the strict impersonal writing rules are like the ten commandments of the English Department.  I can picture the stone slab up in my 12^th grade English Classroom: “Thou shalt not say I in the 5-paragraph essay.”  Howey describes the separation between the academic and personal voice as “dangerous for all students.”  If learning is about understanding oneself and one’s world better, why is writing in High school and first year College comp. Courses  so much about detaching that self from the work?  Everything we learn is related in our minds to everything else.  It should not be punishable through a lower grade the way Howey explains her school did, when writing, to provide a personal view or story to the thesis.  It makes the essay more interesting for the writer to write and for the reader to read.  The most interesting articles I have found this semester have been the ones that make a point through a story, not by stating the idea and methodically listing the points underneath in a formulaic pattern. 

Although grades are often a means of incentive for a student to learn information they might be interested in, but couldn’t be bothered to learn otherwise, they are also detrimental in certain areas where it is impossible to lay out a specific set of rules to follow.  In cases like these, in to which essays fall, Howey argues that evaluations are the most productive means of grading, whether written or oral.  At the end of her essay, Howey says, “In the end, the most important thing that needs to be communicated about the grading system is its insignificance.”  Personally, I have had great success on essays when given the chance to hear a teacher’s analysis in person.  The chance to explain ideas and reason points out one on one is a superior technique in teaching and grading.  This is a good reason why tutoring and writing centers are a very helpful way to help every English student improve as a writer and not as an A seeker.  -Helena Flint, 9/27/01 

Fulwiler, Toby.  “Provocative Revision.”  The Writing Center Journal.  12.2  (1992) 190-204. 

Fulwiler’s article addresses the intimidating process of revision.  According to Fulwiler, “teaching writing is teaching re-writing” (190).  He recognizes that, to many college students, revision means some simple spell checking and rearranging.  But he claims, “revision is the primary way that both thinking and writing evolve, mature, and improve” (190).  He says that limiting, adding, switching, and transforming are four components of “provocative revising,” revising that.  Limiting involves narrowing a topic from broad generalizations to specific instances with telling details so that the reader can get a closer look at the problem.  For instance, if the writer is describing what goes on behind the scenes of a high school play, it’s more desirable to tell what occurs on a particular performance night rather than tell what usually occurs.  Adding simply means introducing new information and better explanation, but it does a great deal.  Adding dialogue and interviews can spice up dry information and help limit action, place, and time by putting real people in the scene (196).  Switching, or writing the paper from a different perspective, can also introduce more information that wasn’t in the paper before.  Switching point of view and voice reveal the problem from a fresh angle and can add more details that the first angle couldn’t.   Finally, transforming the paper offers an exciting experiment that can do away with any research paper “staleness” (201).  Changing the paper from a formal report to a set of diary entries or a fictional filmed interview is a way to make the process more enjoyable for the students to do and the teachers to grade.  This article shows the inventive side of revising that makes the paper the writer’s own.  It attempts to do away with the impersonal five-paragraph structure so that the writer is visibly present in his or her work. 

Before reading this article, I shuddered to think of revision; I skirted it by checking for sentence structure and changing a few words around.  “Revision” was just a scary word.  It meant rewriting the paper that had caused so much pain to write, so I merely disguised the old paper as a new one.  But when you break the word down, its parts are benign, even beneficial—it means re-seeing.  In the Flower and Hayes article, revising, or reviewing, is a “springboard” to new dimensions of writing that we didn’t know existed.  They say that we can find “new cycles of planning and translating” when we take a different view (374).  Fulwiler writes that the first draft is general and incomplete (194).  His revision methods treat the research paper as if it is an exciting exploration: “re-seeing writing in a different form is, at the same time, generative, liberating, and fun” (201).  We can see a new vision of our papers if we treat them as creative projects—using interesting details, changing points of view, and changing the form of the paper.  And the final draft becomes complete in the sense that through seeing our paper in a new way, we have actively taken part in it, not just churned out another cookie-cutter formal essay.  –Maggie Butler, 9/25/01 

Parks, Steve and Eli Goldblatt. “Writing Beyond the Curriculum : Fostering New Collaborations in Literacy.” College English. 62.5(2000) 584-606.

            Parks and Goldblatt discuss the current state of programs defined as WAC (Writing Across the Curriculum) and the future of such programs in institutes across the country. They acknowledge the importance of extending college programs beyond the classroom and into other areas of study and community-based projects and praise the efforts of WAC courses to “think more about the context and nature of student learning than they might within the traditional content-driven model of college teaching” (584). In this article, Parks and Goldblatt also call for a reformation of the program to become even more inclusive of different schools of thought and academic communities. They maintain that, “if compositionists reframe WAC to reach beyond university boundaries, we can foster cross-pollination and interdisciplinary discussion of how knowledge is shaped and conveyed in culture” (585).

            They first deal with the problems associated with the integration and expansion of the academic community. The authors define jealousy or lack of respect among academics as a major issue in their movement, as well as lack of respect towards students who are education majors. They also make reference to the increasingly negative attitude of our society towards high-priced liberal arts schools and education programs that seem to produce less-qualified teachers. There is a discrepancy between the higher expectations of incoming college students and the lack of funding for the types of programs they are suggesting.  Parks and Goldblatt insist that an “integrated and productive educational environment requires an active dialogue between educators, neighborhood members and students about the future of their region,” even suggesting that discourse between high school and college instructors would increase the success of WAC (593).

            Their solutions to these problems and the overwhelming problem of how to reform the education system include not only increased interaction between academic colleagues, but also an overall increase in the contact with the community and outside world.  This applies not only to students, but to all educators and members of organizations dealing with education. Parks and Goldblatt encourage participation in “actual community politics” and support the idea of a “broad, integrated educational community” (596).

            The article ends with stimulating questions pertaining to the relevance and difficulty of their proposal, including their three defined problems of “maintaining focus, gathering support, and building alliances” (600). They also tackle the issue of college students who are trying to combine the goal of getting an education mainly to increase salary after college (or, as Parks and Goldblatt call it, “5 to 8 years of indentured servitude in exchange for their degrees” (601)) with the overriding goal of instructors to educate for the sake of education. Parks and Goldblatt also outline the next steps their program should take, including a more intense “graduate training and prep” programs for teachers (601).

            While this article seems to be geared mostly toward college instructors and other academics who make important decisions about the course college programs make, I found it to be extremely interesting and relevant to our class and Goucher’s educational system. The goal of Parks and Goldblatt to “reconceptionalize WAC” is an important one to any academic institution (592). The proposed efforts to reach beyond our sheltered educational community and into the ‘real world’ are valid to any program that professes to enhance the knowledge and abilities of students. Bringing the article closer to home in our efforts to become better writers and tutors, I found the stress on interaction among colleagues to be pertinent. An open discourse will be required to communicate with and aid students with their writing. Even in Goucher’s Writing Center, there needs to be an open line of conversation between students (be they tutors or tutees) and the ruling academic community. It ensures the proper information is being relayed and also encourages students to become more open to talks about their writing with other peers or instructors. I also thought the article encouraged thought about the future of the Writing Center and others like it and its large role in the future of education. The focus of Parks and Goldblatt on community outreach also affects our Writing Center. Perhaps now, as both writers and tutors, we can focus on the Writing Center and college writing in general as a link to the outside world and not isolated within Academia. Michelle Ruddle 9-27-01 

Elbow, Peter. “The Teacherless Writing Class.” Writing Without Teachers. London: Oxford UP, 1973. 

        Though seeming quite absurd, when heard out of context, Elbow’s dramatic, italicized charge that “in writing, anything can do anything” encapsulates two ideas central to his understanding of writing as “business” or “transaction” (77-97). First, he claims that readers “experience” texts and respond to “time-bound, subjective but factual” questions, arising from their “perceptions” and “experiences” as readers (85). Second, he dissuades readers and writers from operating (which includes criticizing, evaluating, discriminating, revising, censoring, etc.,) under the strictures of certain, polar couples, namely “right” vs. “wrong,” and “good” vs. “bad” (80). Rather, he suggests the usefulness of replacing these couples with another more pressing one: “it works” vs. “it doesn’t work”  (80). Implicitly, what works (or that is to say, what receives lucid perception) for one reader may not work for another (80). In this way, Elbow depicts the high degree of subjectivity innate in one’s experience of reading and in one’s interaction with language (80-82). Is it not logical then that writers are constantly in dire need of “feedback”- do not they constantly have provocation to test-out exactly how their social comments, ideas, voices will be perceived, experienced by diverse readers? From this vantage, in an effort to provide a practical reality, capable of meeting this need, so central to all writers, Elbow promotes the novel “teacherless classroom” (78). One may ask, why not have a teacher? A (singular) teacher is by far, in truth, too narrow of a source of feedback; he or she hardly represents the average reader, the wider audience of a text- nor, as Elbow adds, does he or she usually describe adequately his or her experiences and perceptions of the texts, but instead he or she is somewhat quick to correct mistakes and attach a grade (77). Elbow talks about texts “getting into reader’s heads,” and probably, one would desire feedback, which would acknowledge that more heads than just that of the teacher are reachable by a certain text in view (77-78).  So Elbow conceives that a class, meeting without a teacher, with students all of whom are committed to writing something each week and to reading all the others’ works (or listening to them being read aloud), would (almost therapeutically) promote a well distributed and diversified source of feedback (78-79). He adamantly encourages interaction between the disciplines and genres, so long as seven to twelve people meet and are committed to listening to each others’ experiences of the texts and thereby learning better to understand and anticipate the typical or wider audience (78-79).

It is made clear that no reader-reaction is irrelevant, though some are more productive than others (97). Often, he says, one may ask a reader to work backwards from an ambiguous reaction to find the latent validity or truth of the statement- and in this way, discover which “parts” of the text (rather than the whole) encourage the reaction, experience (97). Responses based on the temporal reading experience are more productive (in terms of expressing what worked or did not work) than those based on (often “dubious”) theories; however, the reality is that, though theories are often counterproductive to the reader, when solely describing experience, theories tend to pollute (or saturate) perceptions (97).   Pointing to words, summarizing, telling, and showing with gestures or drawings an unclear thought or impression, all these Elbow finds to be relevant and productive modes of supplying a writer with needed feedback (76-106). The writer, in listening, learns what to trust about the audience and, conversely, what to trust about his or her own self or writing (101).

Considering the practical value of this chapter for our college, our course and our writing center, I am convinced by Elbow's writing that such a teacherless classroom (meeting group or club) would be ideal and productive for Goucher students in that feedback would become as ready as a hamburger at Pearl Stone Café. Maybe the writing center could group-up those individuals, interested in writing feedback -in groups of seven to twelve and have them meet once a week and, basically, carry on as Elbow describes. Maybe we would have them even read Elbow as an assigned text for the club or class Theatre majors could help poets by experiencing, out loud, the tone of a poem, the voice of a poem, for example. Also, this would resituate writing as a social event, as business, and as an expressive event and would, hopefully, pull students away from the rigid confines of having only teacher-student relationships, where fear of grades lurks over one’s every waking thought, rendering the relationships quite uneasy. If one gets feedback from seven students (all in the academic discourse community), which tell him or her that his or her prose is lucid; then, most likely, that prose piece will be somewhat lucid for the teacher. So, with a teacherless meeting group, students may test the waters and build their confidences as writers. Though Elbow wrote in the seventies, I would strongly suggest that Goucher appropriate his teacherless classroom design. Note, this does not necessarily mean the removal of professors from courses, it means setting up meeting groups, associated with the writing center to supply writers with hearty, useful feedback of all kinds. - Jared Fischer September 27, 2001      

Brown, Jean; Stephans, Elaine. “Writing as Transformation: A New paradigm for Content Writing.” Clearing House, Sep/Oct 95, Vol. 69 Issue 1. Pgs 14-18.

            Brown and Stevens, in their article "Writing as Transformation", urge a few basic tenets: writing is a way of knowing, clarifying ideas, and using new information to synthesize information already part of one's schema. They agree with Brand that the old linear process model of writing is antiquated, and the new paradigm must be a recursive model. The theory of Writing as Transformation encompasses three facets: Writing as intuition, writing as metacognition, and writing as a change agent. These principles may function concurrently or separately, but are not hierarchal by nature, as opposed to the Flower and Hayes model. The "common foundation" for this model is that authentic writing results from the fusion of thought and emotion. When the writer combines cognitive and affective responses they begin to make connections; this merge represents the construction of meaning that transforms the author.

Writing as intuition stems from the latent desire of the individual to express himself, to harness the power of communication from the written word. Examples include making lists, copying instructions, or recording observations, personnel use only comes onto play as a means of communicating with others. Metacognition refers to a vehicle for reflection. Writers gain understanding of what they learn, apply this knowledge, and learn how to solve problems. Writing as a change agent is simply the result of the aforementioned processes. Increased perceptions and knowledge, provides the impetus for change inside of and to the surroundings the individual.

"Writing as Transformation" displays an interesting model of writing, but in my opinion doesn't represent the writing process so much as the Flower and Hayes model, but better describes why reasons for writing arose and the benefits of it rather than what thought processes govern actual writing. Nonetheless, the paper touches upon some important, pertinent topics. In short terms, the three facets mentioned above combine independently or in conjunction to produce original thought, a must in "good writing" according to past readings, which transforms the writer. However, I think a better way to say this the writing process is really a growing process. I would rearrange the model to state intuition leads to creation, which leads to growth, or transformation, which may be the driving force in nature. Growth may also be an organization effort for the purpose of making sense (value) to reality. There is a hypothesis built from Einstein's Theory of Relativity that states time is a function of entropy, and the passage of time is a movement towards higher entropy (less order) in the universe. Perhaps the will to write and growth inherent in human nature is an attempt against disorder and thus time itself.  - Dan Pinnola 9/27/01   

Murray, Donald.  “All Writing is Autobiographical.”  Landmark Essays on Writing Process.  Ed. Sondra Perl.  Ann Arbor:  Hermagoras Press, 1994.  207-216.

            Murray writes about writing as a personal experience that is expressed autobiographically, no matter what the topic or medium is.  Murray identifies writing as a personal process, one which people often do as therapy, to help them understand their experiences.  We each choose our different topics for different reasons, and we write about them in our own “language,” which is a product of our experience.  Murray’s main point is that we take bits and pieces of our own personal experience, coupled with our own creative, fictional ideas, and bring them together into something meaningful on paper.

Murray uses many examples of his own writing to prove his point.  In one example, a novel that he is beginning to write, he cites ideas in the novel that are completely autobiographical, and other events that are merely based on ideas he has had.  Generally, the things that are autobiographical are those attached to great emotion, such as his feelings for a wife (whose name is changed) or memories of war.  He asks, “Is the setting real?” and responds with Herman Melville’s quote:  “’It is not down on any map; true settings never are’” (212).  The response emphasizes Murray’s point by showing that although the details of a story may be changed, the premise and setting remain true because they are a part of him; they are based on autobiographical events.

Murray also notes that writings which are at first imaginary later become autobiographical.  His poem, “Black Ice,” was originally based on a childhood memory but due to an impulse of creativity, it soon became completely un-autobiographical.  Of course, after the poem was completed, it became autobiographical because the images of the poem struck him so much that he could not escape them in his real life.  This proves even further that writing is a personal process because Murray created something even greater than himself or his own memory – and it affected him in a very personal way.

Murray concludes by stating that writing becomes an autobiographical experience for the writer because they can learn from the experience of professional writers who write about their own experiences, and they can also apply the experiences of others to their own lives, thus making writing autobiographical from all levels and perspectives.  His thesis is relevant to students of composition theory because it proves how writing is very personal and how everybody has a different standard of writing, based on their own experience.--Amy Bartlow 9/27/01  

Podis, Lauren.  “No Voice, No Vote: The Politics of Basic Writing.”  Working with Student Writers: Essays on Tutoring and Teaching.  Eds. Leonard Podis and JoAnne Podis.  New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999.   

              In “No Voice, No Vote” Podis examines the way in which expository writing programs and peer-run writing centers fit into the larger academic setting, finding that both are generally regarded as inferior to critical literary studies.  Podis begins by explaining her position within the academic hierarchy; she grew overhearing her parents’ conversations about “discourse communities and paradigm shifts.”  Her unique position as the daughter of Oberlin’s Leonard Podis allows her to see the dynamics of academic hierarchy from the writing center’s point of view.  Podis makes two claims: 1) expository writing programs are important and 2) expository writing programs are not well respected. 

            Podis explains her father’s involvement with Oberlin College and his struggle to validate the importance of the Expository Writing Department and the “bias toward its existence.”  Podis contends that most faculty view composition as useful, but that it is intellectually inferior to literary criticism.  A general distrust of expository writing instruction exists because of the “idea of remediation which they seem to imply.”  To most students and faculty, the writing center and expository writing classes are places to send writers that are having difficulty composing and are commonly considered “poor” writers.  Another stigma associated with the programs consists of the belief that expository writing classes are harboring “unfit” students, creating tension between those in expository classes and those in literature-based classes.  Because of this rift, Podis claims that composition instructors suffer smaller salaries, hold a greater number of part-time and temporary positions, and teach a higher volume of course loads.   Essentially, many teachers and students consider composition a “vocational education,” that does not have bearing in high academic discourse.  Writing then becomes a necessary evil—a tool not “an end in itself.”