Topic Free Write

I want to explore the topic of digital composition in my final project for 303. Specifically, I want to learn more about how students are being asked to compose digitally, how students feel about digital composition (do they feel ready? Confident? Underprepared? Concerned?), how and why teachers are requiring more digital composition than ever before, and finally, synthesize all of that into a discussion of what we as consultants need to know about digital composition to help students. Phew. 

Something I’ve noticed in my own classroom experience is the prevalence of “digital composition” (which I know has a sticky definition). Even in the 6 years (sheesh) that I’ve been in college, the changes in technology have been drastic. I have very few classes today that don’t have an element of digital composition (be it a blog, a collaborative website, a web page, etc.) And yet, only a few classes I’ve been in have had any kind of instruction on the affordances and constraints of digital composition. For instance, in one of my first BSU classes, the teacher explained that we were to do a PowerPoint presentation for one of our projects. Why? Because the professor wanted to incorporate more “digital composition” into the classroom. Leaving aside the point that a PowerPoint presentation hardly fits the bill for including “digital composition” in the classroom, there was no instruction on the rhetorical effects of using a PPT presentation. We received no rubric and read no instructions on the genre. What ended up happening were many hard-to-read presentations with 25 slides FULL of texts, which were then read out loud by students. 

All of this leads me to my ultimate point: I want to write about what we need to know as consultants about the rhetoric of digital composition, so that when students bring digital composition in to the writing center--which will, no doubt, be more often over the next few years--we’ll know how to help them. Although I don’t think I’ll go into detail about the rhetoric of digital composition (I don’t want this to turn into a “how-to” article), I do want to point out the dangers of assuming that the same rules apply to traditional composition and digital composition. Ultimately I want to give writing center folks tools to think about digital composition, and ideas for responding to students’ digital writing. 

A possible outline: 

1. Introduce the situation
1. Define digital composition
2. Discuss prevalence of digital composition (statistics of assignments) 
3. Introduce problem for writing center consultants
2. Discuss typical digital composition assignments that assume the “same rules apply” as with traditional composition
3. Discuss pitfalls of tutoring in digital composition without understanding the genre
4. Introduce solution(s) -- discuss resources and ideas

ELL week

This week’s readings came at a good time for me, since I had my first two consultations with ELL students. I noticed a few of the things we’d discussed in class and read about happening in these sessions, and I also made some mistakes I want to learn from. 

Powers’ article was really powerful (no pun intended) for me, and was the first ELL text I feel like I got a lot out of. I think this was because she acknowledged the difficulty and--honestly--impossibility of applying one-size-fits-all tactics to such a diverse group of people. I found it mind-blowing to realize that our open-ended questioning may not be helpful for an ELL student who doesn’t actually have the answer. I think she really challenged me to be more aware and sensitive to the situation ELL students are in, and to not assume linguistic or cultural knowledge that these students may not have, and to embrace the role of “cultural informant,” both for our ELL writers and our native-speakers. Our readings this week helped me further realize that thought WHAT we do is the same with every writer, HOW we do it can differ drastically. 

My first appointment with an ELL student was along the lines of what I expected to encounter. The writer had a short interview essay with lots of grammatical errors. It was due the next day, and he still needed to ask two more questions of his interviewee to meet the assignment requirements. I tried to focus on higher order concerns first, of course, but I noticed that the writer didn’t want to have a conversation about these, and would instead just nod and say he understood, and move on to grammar. So, we went line-by-line basically for the rest of the session. 

I feel fairly good about how I handled the grammar portion--looking for patterns and helping the student find other areas that needed improvement, always naming the error and talking about--as simply as possible--why we needed to fix it. There were really consistently the same errors throughout. I could tell the writer was frustrated with his grammar errors, though, sometimes expressing how he knew what he wanted to say and that he just couldn’t say it. I wish I knew ways to help ELL students feel less frustrated in those situations. 

An action I wish I could take back, though, was a “correction” I gave him to make. He had interviewed another ELL student in his 122 class, and he had quoted him as saying he had broken his “leg fingers” playing soccer. I asked him questions about this, and realized they had come up with this to describe toes--the missing English word they didn’t know. As I talked this over with him, I explained the word was toes, and he changed his essay. I almost stopped to explain that he didn’t need to change it, and that it wasn’t necessarily wrong, and that he could explain somewhere else in his paper that he and his fellow student had come up with this word to describe toes… but I was stopped by the fact that we had trouble communicating verbally, and I wondered if he would understand my caveat. If I told him both that the word was “wrong” and “right,” would I actually be helping him or just confusing him? It was an interesting conundrum. 

Overall, this was definitely ELL week for me, and I’m glad I’ve had a few experiences with ELL writers under my belt to start building my skills for these sessions.

Consulting: Week 1

(Alternate title: The Post I Totally Spaced on Friday--Whoops!) 

First week as a consultant! I feel like next week has got to have some scary consultations in store, because this week was mostly fun, easy, and encouraging. I’ve had three consultations, all with willing writers. Only one had even remotely significant grammar issues, and all were interesting for me to read and comment on. 

I’ve noticed already a few things about my consulting style. The first is that I feel most comfortable with a laid-back style, and I noticed myself always trying to put the writer at ease. I think this is mostly selfish: I’m most at ease when they seem comfortable and like they’re engaged in the session. I realize this might be a weak point for me when I encounter reluctant or hostile writers, since this will probably make me more uncomfortable than they already are. I’ll have to work on strategies I can use to help myself feel comfortable when I confront those kinds of consultations. 

Another thing I noticed is something I expected: I tend to talk too much. I found myself starting sentences as statements, and then realizing that they were statements, and then starting over to phrase my statement as an open-ended question. Besides making for a few awkward sentences, this also made me aware of how often I speak versus how often the writer speaks. This is something I’ll have to work on--especially being aware of using more questions when I do talk. 

The other thing I’ve noticed is I’ve appreciated the ability to refer people to resources for lower order concerns. For instance, all three of my writers this week wanted to talk about citations, and listed it as a concern in their appointments. However, because I knew I could show them a resource online (I keep going back to Bedford St. Martin’s MLA… it’s so good), I felt comfortable setting the agenda early on in the session to address higher order concerns first, and had great extensive conversations with two of the writers before we ever got to citations. In the final 10 minutes or so, with two of these writers, I pointed them to the web page and walked through their in-text citations and reference pages, using the website to model how to check your own citations. I felt really confident that those two writers walked away with tools to work on their own citations in the future, as well as a really solid revision plan for their paper’s organization and focus. 

My last consultation of the week was the roughest, but it was still a pretty good experience. It was rough for a couple reasons: 1) the writer had a peer-review worksheet from class that I had to fill out (in other words--agenda set, no time for higher order concerns, and I knew I’d spend a good amount of time working on filling out the page and a half sheet rather than talking with the writer), and 2) I had a great little coughing fit in the middle of it and had to grab water before I could keep going (yayyyy). Also, this was the paper that had some grammar issues that were in the way of clarity, so between the grammar issues, the citation issues, and the extension peer-review sheet, I felt like we spent this entire half-hour session on lower order concerns (which, really, we did). Since the review sheet basically set the agenda, it made it difficult to do what I knew would be best for the writer. For instance, with basically 3 minutes left in the consultation, I was rushing to fill out the form while keeping the writer involved by letting him know how I was filling it out. The second to last question was a higher order concern question: something like, “What do you feel was missing in this paper?” This question came so late in the game, but I felt the need to answer it honestly to help the writer with revision. I also felt horrible giving the writer a thought on a higher order concern that late in the game. So I told him how I felt there may have been a missing connection (a “how” question) in his paper, but downplayed it, feeling like I didn’t have time and didn’t want to frustrate the writer. That was frustrating for me, because if I had been able to set the agenda from the beginning, I think this question would have taken up much of our time, rather than word counts, grammar, and citations. I think if I come up against one of these peer review sheets in the future, I’ll try to flip it, answering all of the questions but focusing on them in the order I think would be most helpful to the writer. 

303er to consultant

Well, this is it. We’re all officially on the schedule for next week, ready to take consultations. I’m nervous and excited. I can’t wait to get the first one under my belt--I feel like, no matter how that one goes, at least after the first one, I’ll have confirmation that I can do it, even if I don’t do it well at first. 

A couple things are making me feel better going into this week. Last week in class, we talked about dealing with unfamiliar subjects, and I had a bit of an epiphany. It’s a pretty obvious concept, and it’s been said before in 303, but like most moments of clarity for me, it didn’t hit me until later. Every consultation is based on some of the same guiding principles. The way you talk to an engineering student is based on the same ideas as how you talk to an English major. Some of the same thoughts apply to a consultation with an ELL student as apply a native speaker. A similar mindset is needed for a reluctant student as is needed for a talkative student. All of them come back to our go-to strategies: asking probing, engaging, open-ended questions, being an active listener, and trying to leave a student empowered as a writer. 

Of course, this is tempered by the fact that every consultation is different. So, the degree to which certain strategies will work is going to differ in every circumstance, and the ways we employ our strategies will look wildly different. But ultimately, we’re still just going back to those guiding ideas of conversation. That helps me feel more prepared for consultations next week--I might not be equipped to “tutor” an ELL student in language acquisition, and I might not be ready to talk about quantum physics, but I am prepared to listen actively, ask engaging questions, and talk about writing. 

The other thing that has me feeling more confident has been watching other consultants. They’re always willing to ask questions, especially during email consultations when it’s not keeping someone waiting. I think watching--and often participating--in this group support has driven home to me that we don’t consult in a vacuum necessarily. When a consultant has a rough experience, they have a supportive and edifying audience that will help them build new strategies for other situations. Even if we’re not asking questions during a consultation, we’re having debrief sessions and keeping the conversation going about our “craft.” This attitude relieves the pressure of having to be “an expert” because everyone else is, or of having to muddle through consultations in a silo. 

My strategy going into my first consultation (which, let’s be honest, may just be out the window if I’m nervous and not thinking about it) is going to be pretty simple. I want to make sure not to blow past the pre-textual stage, because I think my consultation style will be based a lot on casual relating--AND because I think starting with the “how are yous” will take the edge off my nervousness and get me started. I want to make sure and ask those open-ended questions at the beginning that will help me figure out where to try and focus the consultation, and make sure I’m setting an agenda with the student. Then I want to move into the meat of the discussion. At this point, it’ll be important for me to watch how much I’m talking in relation to how much the student is talking--I know I have a tendency to talk too much, or to only be formulating my response while someone else is talking instead of actively listening. Finally, I want to make sure I wrap up the consultation smoothly, by keeping an eye on the clock somewhat and writing helpful notes on the orange sheet to send with them. Throughout, I really want to focus on encouraging the writer, and taking an active interest in what they’re working on. 

Here goes!