In any writing center newsletters I have read, I keep hearing about North’s notion that the writing center strives to produce better writer not better paper. It is not that I don’t like that idea; in fact, I would love to see my clients coming out of the session learning something about writing rather than just having their paper improved. The thing is, as Matthew Ortoleva pointed out in “Centering the Writer or Centering the Text A Meditation on a Shifting Practice in the Writing Center Consultation”, student writers usually come to the center with an aim to improve their paper. Thus it is our job, the consultant, to inform them that we are here to help them become better writer and that their papers are not necessarily to be perfected. I also think our writing center should do something more to inform students about the idea of the writing center.

Matthew Ortoleva raised two good questions on practice in writing center’s tutorial: “Where should the consultant’s focus be during a consultation—on the writer or on the text? When is it time to move to a more directive approach to writing consultation?” Many consultants including me probably find ourselves ask that same questions. Upon completing any tutorial, I kept asking myself if I had been writer-centered with that client or not. Sometimes, I found myself focus more on the text than on the writer. However, I think whether a tutorial is text center or writer center, it depends on individual needs. There are some writers who are already good writers themselves; they just need someone to assure them that their papers are okay. I have worked with that type of clients and I thought I used the text-centered approach with that client and it seemed to work well, as least to some extent.

I think Ortoleva is right in the sense that “working with a student from an unfamiliar discipline necessitated a writer-centered approach”. It is probably because we are not familiar with the convention and discourse of that discipline. I found the example about his session with Samantha very useful. He asked questions like “What does the assignment call for? Why this arrangement? Is this the only way to organize this essay, or is there another?” I think we can also use this strategy with client from the same or similar discipline as ours so as to avoid being directive in our session. But what if the student is not sure about the assignment him/herself? What if s/he does not even know how to organize that essay? Would we end up suggesting student writer ways to organize their essay or what to do on the assignment? And is it a bad idea if we do so? In fact, I have worked with some students who were not sure how to organize their thoughts and ideas. What I did was suggesting some ways to do it, but by doing so did it mean that I was preventing them from creative thinking?

Now that we are nearly to the end of the semester, we have read and discussed lots about various tutoring approaches practiced in the writing center such as directive and non-directive, the minimalist tutoring, editing line-by-line, assimilationist, accommodationist,…etc. Whether a tutorial session is successful or not depends on tutor’s flexibility in choosing what to do to suit the need of that particular client.