My during-class thought

Guess what? I was surprised by my ENG 490 classmates’ and Dr. Hawkins’s reaction to Murphy’s reference to tutor as psychotherapist and writer as client who is “hurt”. I mean I did not agree with Murphy that all students coming to the center are all “hurt” or having suffered from some kind of “writer’s block or a high degree of inhibiting anxiety associated with the process of producing writing that will be evaluated by others.” They might simply just want someone to talk about or proofread their essay (like I do). Nonetheless, I have no strong reaction in this assertion either. I think she is right in the way that in order for students to be willing to collaborate with us, we tutors somehow need to adapt that soft strategy of the psychotherapist (being curious, emphatic, eager to help, etc). But does Murphy really mean to consider a writing center’s consultant as a therapy?

During the whole session last Wednesday, I kept asking myself: If I were a tutor (FYI, I have not done any tutoring session with anyone yet), who would I regard my client as? Then the word friend immediately popped in. I don’t know if other consultants feel the same way or if my brain works differently from others but I do like imagining myself with my client chatting about the paper together as a friend. My client/friend would be telling me about his/her assignment and I was having a deep interest in what my friend/client was saying. Or I was just digging out (not prying) their past experiences or opinion. Do you feel the same way? Or am I fantasizing thing about being a tutor?

But then another question came to my mind: What if my client did not want to be friend with me? Then I thought “so why the hell they come here (the writing center)?” “Well, it’s not a good of me to be out of temper like that. Maybe they haven’t seen the benefits of having someone to talk about their papers. So as a tutor I need to show them that, no matter what. At least, it would be an opportunity to learn to bring someone who is not interested to talk to get into talking, though it might be frustrating or unsuccessful sometimes.” I settled.

After all, I am not sure if this is the right way to deal with such situation. Given to the fact that I am from a totally different culture, oftentimes I don’t really understand American way of thinking.

Second Reflection

I think that the idea that the Writing Center is some kind of “fix-it” shop can probably still be found in USI student’s perspectives. I have asked some of my friends about what they think about the writing and their responses are either that they do not really know what the center does or that it is where they would bring their writing assignments for error checks. Also, during my 2 sessions of observation, almost all the students who came to the center asked for help with their grammar. I was even more shocked when what the tutor did was pointing out where the mistakes were and corrected them into what. It is a contrast to what North regarded the center as a “student-oriented” place to produce better writer not better writing (38). Moreover, when a friend of mine who is not a native user of English got her writing assignment checked for grammatical and punctuation mistakes the same way, I asked what she thought about it. Though she did not know what wrong with her sentence structure or word use, she admitted that correcting this way was fast and good. That friend of mine visited the center twice with the same purpose: to check her grammatical structure and punctuation. Because she had not been told why any particular word use was wrong, she went on to repeat the same mistake. Having seen this, I wonder how many students experience the same problem as my friend, how the writing center is to produce better writers, and whether there is any other better approach to deal with such situation.

Interpersonal relationship, as Murphy has stated, also plays part in determining the success of tutors in helping the writing students. She has mentioned many sources that compared tutoring process to that of counseling and psychotherapy, in which students are those who experience “writer’s block” or “anxiety associated with the process of producing writing that will be evaluated by others” (97). We tutor need to show them that we are, like a therapist or counselor, interested to help them, that we are, with “emphatic understanding”, are more than willing to get them overcome those writing sickness (97).

I think interpersonal relationship between tutors and students involves a lot of things and evolves throughout their interaction with one another. First, it is formed once students decide to step in the writing center and they should be awarded with warm greeting from the center itself. However, there is some time when the writing center at USI does not have someone to make students feel warm at first meeting. This might not be a big deal but I personally think that, though minor the problem is, it should not be overlooked because some students probably feel reluctant and choose not to approach the center having seen the unfriendly atmosphere inside. After that, interpersonal relationship is enriched while tutor and student sit and discuss together. It is said that “The person (whether a counselor, therapist, or teacher) who is better able to communicate warmth, genuineness, and accurate empathy is more effective in interpersonal relationships no matter what the goal of the interaction” (Truax and Carkhuff, qtd in Murphy 97).

Additionally, I totally agree with Shaughnessy’s idea that writing tutors are the “students of their students” (qtd. In Dipardo 101). That is any form of tutorial should be “unilateral”. Some tutors might not be aware about that but they really are collecting valuable information from various students with different academic and social background. By acknowledging oneself that they know no more than the writers themselves, tutors would be able to see beyond the surface level of the problems. Moreover, writers would not feel inferior when seeking help. Such feeling can provoke them to open up more about their problems or opinions.

Finally, students should leave the center with the satisfaction that they have been helped. It might be hard especially when student does not collaborate with the writer at the first place. This might be the case when they feel that their tutor is dominant or superior, and that they are not given enough chance to voice out their point of view. If repeatedly happens, students might lose confidence in the writing center’s ability to help.

References:

North, Stephen. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” In Murphy and Sherwood, 32-46

Murphy, Christina. “Freud in the Writing Center: The Psychoanalytics of Tutoring Well.” In Murphy and Sherwood, 95-100

Dipardo, Anne. ‘ “Whispers of Coming and Going”: Lessons from Fannie’. In Murphy and Sherwood, 100-116

First Reflection

Writing center is relatively a new concept to me since we do not have such center in our home university or probably not even in the whole country. However, there are some points in this week assigned reading that have caught my attention.

First I was fascinated about how scholars in the writing academia do not share the same view on what writing center is all about. North’s frustration for those who view writing center as a “fix-it shop” is clearly demonstrated in his essay “The Idea of the Writing Center”. According to North, the writing center is not all about fixing mechanical problems such as grammatical error or punctuation; instead writing tutor has a fundamental role in helping writer during the writing process. It prompted me to wonder whether similar misunderstanding would also be presented should there be a writing center in Cambodia and what roles the writing center has in Cambodian’s education institutions.

Furthermore, I found North’s idea about giving more focus on the writer rather the writing itself surprising. He claimed that changing the text is not necessary but changing the writer is, and that the writing center’s job is “to produce better writers, not better writing” (38). I was struck at this because though I have never been a formal writing tutor before, there are lots of times when my friends ask me to help with their writing assignments. Nonetheless, what I usually focus on is on the text only. I have never given a single notice on how my friends engaged themselves in the writing process. Having read North’s essay, I promise myself that when I am helping other writers, I would try giving more attention to writer and their writing process rather than just locating and correcting errors found in the paper.

What also interests me is how the writing center plays part in producing better citizens for the society. I have never thought that writing tutorials also seek to keep students aware of social issues as said in the text The Tutoring Process “…the goal of writing should not be the simple improvement of student writing. Instead, the goal is to give student writers a heightened awareness of the social injustice perpetrated by the dominant culture’s racist and classist agenda and to empower these writers to resist this agenda” (Murphy and Sherwood 4). I mean I know that most of the topic in my school writing assignment is about various issues recently discussed in the society. I do not know that by writing about such thing can produce a better citizen out of me nor am I aware that by tutoring others I am also learning to be a better citizen.

Last but not least, what is also intriguing is Bawashi and Pelkowski’s concern about the writing center taking away student’s originality so that his/her text could be fit in the university standard. They suggested that “under-prepared students, especially those marginalized by race, class, and ethnicity, are encouraged to adopt critical consciousnessas a means of functioning within the university and its discourses” (qtd. in Murphy and Sherwood 5). As a non-native user of English, I started to think if I have ever been unconsciously forced to give up my own perspectives so that my ideas could fit into “frameworks acceptable to the university”.

This week reading has shed me some light on what is expected from me for being a tutor in the writing center. As both an ESL learner and tutor, I am eager to explore more about the writing center and to learn from other tutors so that I can relate what I have learnt and observed when I am to get engaged in the tutoring practicum in the next few weeks.

Reference:

Murphy, Christina and Steve Sherwood. The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors. 3^rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 1-24.

North, Stephen. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” In Murphy and Sherwood, 32-46