Some of the issues that thisarticle brought up were familiar to me because I have experienced them in the writing center. Ortoleva brings up the issue of scientific writing in the writing lab. Consultants usually don't have a clue how to set up a scientific essay. For instance, a biology 141 class has been bringing in some of the scientific essays for the writing consultants to review. Unfortunately enough for them, I do not understand how to properly set up scientific essays. I actually took a biology 141 my freshman year and had to drop out half way because of my lack of understanding! We have one writing consultant who is a biology major, and if she is in the writing center, I usually ask her to take the biology students if she is not busy. I tried to help the first biology student that I encountered. I found no mechanical or grammatical errors, and I could make no suggestions on the structural aspect. I asked the biology major writing consultant to review in and she found several structural mistakes that you would only find if you knew about biology and scientific essays. I encountered other biology 141 students while she was not there. Then, I simply reviewed what I could of the essay and then advised them to maybe step in to academic skills and get an opinion from a biology tutor.
I completely agree with Ortoleva's discussion of the view of the writing center. Consultants are told over and over again that we are a writer-based facility and our main goal is to produce better writers. However, the students come to the writing lab to get a better paper and expect text-based assistance. It's a tough battle. As a consultant, we are supposed to meet the requests of the client, and usually their requests are completely text-based. It is also easier to work with a student in the planning and organizing stages of their essays. The consultant can show the client how to get started and what aspects to include. This can benefit a writer greatly, and they can learn a lot. It is much harder to produce a better writer when a student comes in and says, "This paper is due today; I just want you to make sure there are no mistakes." I do not know how to really make a better writer from this situation (other than to tell them to not use the writing center this way).
I am still puzzled on the issue we discussed in class about the ESL student's graduate school admission essay. I don't know what is right. I know when I work with ESL students, it's so hard for me not to reword some of their phrases. I read them, and they make sense, but I just have a great desire to make them sound more "academic". I usually refrain from this, but then I feel like I did not do much as a consultant other than fix errors and explain why they are errors. However, I know that I did not put any words in their mouth and that their paper is all their own.
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Regarding "rewording some of the ESL phrases to make them sound more academic", I wonder if tutor can also suggest some ways to make them more academic. I think sometimes it is okay to tell them that this words/phrases are more professional than the other one. It helps us, ESL writers, to build up our vocabularies. But by doing this, it sounds like we are taking away their authorship. So when should we do it and when should we not?
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of balance between between "appropriation" (taking over a client's text) and "informant" (helping the client understand how the text might be improved, or made more "academic") extends beyond ESL clients, and it's part of the writer-centered vs. text-centered debate. A writer-centered tutor is probably less likely to appropriate a text because you aren't focused on the text; you're focused on the writer, so the writer needs to understand what is good, bad, and problematic about the text before she or he can make those improvements not just in this paper but in future papers. Hmm. Maybe a research topic in there somewhere...
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