The Do's and Dont's

In my experience with the Writing Center so far, I have discovered that the style of each tutor is based on the "do's" and "dont's" that most Centers employ. I have collectively worked with three separate tutors so far this semester and each one employs a different approach when it comes to running a session. The first tutor I had a session with told me that he never used a red pen because of how harsh it appeared on the page. He told me the last thing any writer needs is to see their ideas covered in red ink. The second tutor I worked with told me to overlook all grammatical errors. Unless the student was in dire need for assistance, grammatical errors were something only the writer had the authority to change. The last tutor I worked with took a completely opposite approach to that of the second tutor, telling me that grammatical errors should always be amended. She told me that by correcting this area of the writing, it would only improve on the writer's mechanics which is completely independent from their style. She said there is no right or wrong style, but there is such a thing as a right or wrong sentence.

Looking back on all of these experiences I find myself asking the question "What are the the ethics that all Centers should employ and how do we decide what those are?" To look into this further, I discovered an article by Irene Lurkis Clark entitled "Collaboration and Ethics in Writing Center Pedagogy". Click here for PDF

Clark's article explores the controversial issue of plagiarism in Writing Centers. In the beginning of the article she recalls times where she asked for assistance and opinions from her colleagues on papers and never once thought about the implications of doing so. She goes on to say, however, that "In writing labs and centers, though, the kind of assistance which occurs regularly among colleagues might raise questions, if not eyebrows, over issues of ethics." It seems there is a big difference between reading over a colleagues paper and providing suggestions and being a writing tutor and doing those things. I believe a lot of this lies in the formal nature of writing centers and their desire to be academic institutions that play by the rules. "The humanities tradition" says that the text should be produced by the sole effort of an individual, not a collaboration. Because of this, Clark explains that the founders of writing centers are constantly on the defensive when explaining the roles of the institutions in universities. She goes on further to explain that because tutors are so concerned with issues of plagiarism and students taking their advice too far can disengage the tutor from the writing and keep them at a distance from both the text and the writer.

Clark concludes her article with a plea to have tutors become more active roles in the writing of tutees. She brings up the idea of imitation, saying that this approach has a bad reputation amongst people in the world academia. They say that writing is about self discovery and is a process that students must undergo themselves through their experience in academic institutions. However, there is much to be said about the advantages of imitation. When we correct spelling or grammar in papers, it is informing and reminding writers of the rules of writing. It is training those writers to not make careless mistakes again and instead focus on larger issues having to do with context and structure. Isn't our initial approach to learning a form of imitation? We learn to speak when we are very young simply by imitating the sounds and noises we hear around us. Clark writes that similarly our style in writing did not appear out of thin air. We are constantly prompted and pushed in different directions due to the influences around us. She writes, "Sometimes the suggestion of a phrase or two can e wonderfully instructive...often a timely suggestion of a phrase can result in the student's adoption of that phrase as his or her own". Granted, tutors should always be aware that they are there to assist writers and not make direct change without any input from the writer themselves. However, when tutors take a more hands on approach and explain to their tutees why they are making such changes, it will help to train them not to make careless mistakes and employ the same correctional style.

Click here for PDF