Getting back a paper full of negative instructor comments can be demoralizing for students.

Positive Spin

It’s easy to find what’s wrong with your students’ writing and harder to find what’s right. But focusing on what students are doing well may ultimately be more useful in helping them to improve.

From grade school on, most of the feedback students receive on their writing focuses on what they’ve done wrong: spelling errors, comma mistakes, vague wording, awkward sentences, rambling paragraphs. They may see the occasional “Nice!” or “Good example” in the margins, but most writing teachers focus on what they think needs “fixing.” As a result, students often approach a writing assignment feeling defeated before they even begin. They’re like dogs that have been kicked by a previous owner; they’re wary and worn down.

The implications of that are significant. Imagine you’re trying to learn—at someone else’s insistence—something you find difficult, say, playing cricket or knitting an afghan. Imagine that most of the feedback you get from your instructor (or superior) is negative: “No, that’s wrong.” Or maybe at the end of every session you receive an assessment (“C-”) and only a word or two of explanation: “Sloppy work!” How eager would you be to keep making an effort?

That’s not too far from the way we try to teach writing. We offer students little chance to practice, and our reaction to their work is mostly negative. If that approach doesn’t seem to be working, maybe it’s time to change how you respond to student writing.

Offer students specific praise whenever you can do so honestly. Students find detailed feedback more credible and more helpful: “I found the research you cited on page 2 persuasive.”

Be leery of “but.” Faculty often try to blunt negative comments with token praise, a tactic students see right through. A comment like “You started off well, but failed to meet the goal of the assignment” isn’t really a compliment.

Listen to what students have to say. Put the need to evaluate aside, at least initially, and respond to your students’ words as a reader first. Tell them not only where their writing confuses you, but also where it holds your interest.

Ask students to reflect on their own work. Have students write a brief reaction to their work when they submit it. If they already know their conclusion is weak, you might not need to point it out.

Include praise in peer response. When students read their peers’ work, ask them to identify the most persuasive sentence, the most interesting paragraph, or the idea most worth expanding.

Ask questions. Rather than making comments, pose questions that encourage students to think about their subject more deeply. Remember: responses, whether in the form of questions or comments, are best offered on drafts, so students have a chance to consider them as they revise.

Write your comments on a separate sheet or rubric. Avoid writing directly on your students’ paper. This is a radical notion, but one that can transform how you read student work. Writing all over your students’ papers is a bit like interrupting them in conversation. They’re trying to tell you what they understand about the Renaissance or crustaceans, and you keep jumping in to criticize: “Wordy!”

ldquo;Awkward!” If you feel that you need to comment on specific sentence-level issues, have students insert line numbers—easily done on the computer—so you can refer quickly to a particular sentence.

Confining your comments to a separate place will also make you less likely to correct every error, which does little to help students make fewer mistakes in the future.

Even simply pointing out every error can be detrimental, though, since it takes the focus off of other writing concerns that may ultimately be more significant.

When you return a paper with all sorts of surface errors marked, you’re sending the message that correctness is what matters most. Of course, correctness does matter, but good writing is not only error-free. It’s also thoughtful, engaging, logical, amusing, persuasive, and/or informative. After all, when you come across a journal article you want to share with colleagues, you don’t say, “Take a look at this article. It’s surprisingly free of errors!”

So, what should you do about errors? You might comment only on patterns of errors, discuss common errors in class, offer handouts on recurring problems, or ask students to help each other proofread.

Whatever method you choose, try to direct most of your attention not to the misspelled words, but rather to the meaning those imperfect words are trying to convey. Putting meaning ahead of mistakes may ultimately be the most important thing you can do to make writing a more positive experience for you and your students.

At the writing center we’ve learned that students benefit from discussing writing with their peers.

Working at the University Writing Center is like seeing the state of writing at Texas A&M through a wide-angle lens.

We conduct more than 5,400 consultations a year with students at all levels—from freshmen to doctoral candidates—who come from all colleges and departments. We help with everything from English 104 papers to wildlife management plans.

As we work with your students on the writing you’ve assigned—as we question, advise, cajole, and cheer them—they are teaching us as much about writing as we are teaching them.

Some of what we’ve learned from our work might surprise you.

Talking about writing helps.

The cornerstone of the UWC philosophy is that talking about writing helps writers improve, even if the person listening is not an expert on the subject matter. Over and over our experiences in consultations prove that moving back and forth between speech and writing not only improves the quality of the assignment at hand, but also helps writers become more confident and self-aware.

One part of our job as consultants is to act almost like stenographers, parroting back what students say in the course of a session. It’s a matter of helping them translate from a quick and familiar mode of discourse (speech) to a more deliberate and less practiced mode (writing.)

It’s surprising how often in the course of a consultation students will say out loud the exact words they’ve been struggling to put on paper.  It’s often the high point of a session. The consultant points to a garbled passage and says, “What are you trying to say here?” The student starts in, describing the ideas he or she had in mind and eventually says aloud the words that were so elusive in the writing process.

When the consultant repeats the sentence back, the student is astonished to find the words were there all along, waiting to be discovered.

Hard work doesn’t always translate into good writing.

Consultants often feel a palpable sense of frustration from writers who are on their third or fourth draft but still can’t write the paper they know their instructor expects of them. Quite simply, some students come to Texas A&M with inferior writing skills, deficits that can’t be overcome in a semester or two—and certainly not in a 45-minute consultation. Consultants know it’s impossible to tell how much effort has gone into a paper merely from the way it sounds.

Sitting side by side in a five-foot by seven-foot consultation room, consultants can’t help but sympathize with students who are putting forth maximum effort, yet still falling short of their mark. When UWC Consultant Melissa Carlsen describes her worst session ever, it’s not one with an uncooperative or hostile student, but rather one where, even after 45 minutes of intense effort, the determined student still couldn’t convey his ideas.

Luckily, most of our students do make progress, and we celebrate all of their hard-won victories, no matter how seemingly insignificant.

You say “error.” We say “stylistic preference.”

Jordan Fisher, an undergraduate writing consultant, recalls working with a student who said his professor had forbidden his students to use any introductory clauses or phrases in their papers, because he felt today’s students rely on them excessively.

Other professors consider the split infinitive to be the gravest of writing sins, even though grammarians have been arguing over whether it constitutes an error since at least the 1920s and the venerable Oxford English Dictionary has pronounced it acceptable. (Still other professors couldn’t identify a split infinitive if their tenure depended on it.)

Literature professors prefer everything written in present tense, while historians use past tense. Some disciplines forbid passive voice; others all but insist upon it.

Students, baffled by the seeming randomness of these distinctions, tend to gravitate to the extremes, either ignoring the “rules” completely or adhering to them slavishly in all situations, like the students who write personal statements without using the pronoun “I.” The reason? A high school teacher once told them the first-person pronoun was too informal for “good writing.”

Consultants, meanwhile, believe that good writing is writing that meets the needs of its audience, which is why they commit this line to memory: “There is no set rule on that; you’d better ask your instructor.”

Students can (and do) learn to correct their surface errors.

Research in composition shows that most direct grammar instruction fails to reduce students’ rate of error. The one exception is instruction given at “point of need.” In other words, grammar is best taught when students are smack in the middle of the writing process, which makes consultations fertile ground for impromptu grammar lessons conducted by peer consultants.

We see it every day: The consultant points out the missing apostrophe in a possessive, and two or three lines later, the student corrects another possessive without prompting.  At other times, students stop and ask us, “Shouldn’t there be a comma here?”

It’s not that students don’t care about grammar and punctuation; it’s just that the rules are voluminous, variable, and confusing, and the window of opportunity for teaching those rules is narrow.

Some students also have to unlearn habits they’ve picked up along the way. “I never know where the commas go,” a student will say, “so I try not to use any.”

At that point, the consultant reaches for the UWC handout on commas, explains the rule involved in that particular sentence, and tries to convince the student that punctuation is not the enemy.

International students are often better writers than they (or you) may realize.

Many English as a Second Language (ESL) students have an extensive knowledge of grammar—often more than their instructors. What these students don’t have is a command of idiomatic English. They may not know, for instance, whether to use “the” or “a” before a noun, or they may be confused about why we might say we’re “immersed in” a topic but not “immersed into” it—even though we might “dive into” that same subject.

With every sentence they write, ESL students must navigate rules a native speaker doesn’t even realize exist.

These students can also be hampered by their limited English vocabulary. Mark Twain once said “the difference between the almost right word and the right word” was “the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” When ESL students don’t know the English word they’re looking for—the one perfect word to convey their precise meaning—their idea, no matter how insightful, is as good as lost, destined to be either misunderstood or ignored.

At the UWC we find that what ESL students need most is reassurance. They need to be reminded that the subtleties of idiomatic English and a richer vocabulary will come to them with time and effort. As Emily Richter, an undergraduate consultant, says of working with international students, “If you take the time to look past their surface errors, you’ll usually see the content is all there.”

Students need to learn time management as much as they need to learn grammar.

One of the first questions a consultant is likely to ask during a session is “When is this due?” Unfortunately, the answer is often given in hours, rather than days.

When consultants walk out of their sessions muttering that there wasn’t much they could accomplish since the client’s paper was due in 30 minutes, they sound for all the world like weary instructors bemoaning the sorry state of students today.

Working at the writing center makes us believe in the power of multiple drafts. We see how writing improves when students have the opportunity to leave it and come back later with fresh perspective.

We hope that someday students will learn to leave extra time for revising, editing,  and proofreading, but until they do, requiring preliminary drafts greatly improves the chance that their writing (and thinking) will be better.

Even our own consultants, who see the value of revision firsthand every day, sometimes need to be coerced into producing drafts. They are, after all, students and therefore not immune from the typical student demons of procrastination and over-scheduling.  Consultant Melissa Carlsen, for instance, admits to writing many of her papers just in the nick of time, but remembers one occasion when she was required to produce a rough draft.

“It was the best paper I ever did,” she concedes.

Writing helps students learn.

We see our share of disgruntled and apathetic students at the UWC. But the great majority of our clients are willing to put forth tremendous effort on their writing. As they work, they are engaged and focused.

Walking by a consultation room and seeing two students—one consultant and one UWC client—bent head-to-head over an essay on the Manhattan Project, discussing anything from the use of semicolons to the discovery of plutonium, can go a long way to further your faith in the power of learning.

UWC Executive Director Valerie Balester urges instructors to assign more writing in all courses, not just Ws. Students need the practice, and writing will also help them engage more deeply with their subject matter.

When I hear W course instructors express frustration over students’ lack of basic writing skills, I am sympathetic. Students in a W course should already know how to write a well-formed sentence within a well-formed paragraph; how to adapt their style and arguments to a general, educated reader; how to organize an academic essay or research paper; and how to cite scholarly sources.

So why, if our students have taken foundational writing courses (here or elsewhere), do they often seem unable to handle the basics? There are many possible reasons, but part of the problem is surely that students need more opportunities to practice what they’ve learned.

By the time students reach a W or C course, they have taken one required basic college writing course (or received credit for a high school course), so they should be prepared for upper-level writing. The problem is that we expect them to retain all they have learned in an early course and transfer that knowledge to a new kind of discipline-specific writing a few years later. That’s unrealistic. Students need frequent opportunities to apply their knowledge; learning to communicate effectively takes practice.

There is a core assumption operating behind the W or C course graduation requirement: although many communication skills are general and universal, others are more specialized and discipline-specific, and students must develop both. W and C courses focus on those more specialized skills, the ones that faculty deem important for students in their field to master as they move on to graduate studies or the workplace. These courses should also give students an opportunity to apply their previously acquired knowledge of writing, but they are not the optimum venue for teaching foundational skills.

We’ve made progress with W courses; they underscore the importance of writing and ensure that our students write at least 2,000 words per W class. But 4,000 words total over two courses really isn’t much when it comes to mastering something as complex as writing.

The results of the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement show our first year students write less than students at ten similar institutions, including the University of Texas, Ohio State, and Purdue. Our seniors are close to the bottom as well.

While we have increased our writing instruction over the past seven years, so have other universities, as they, too, have recognized the truth of what Richard Light, professor in the School of Education and John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote in the journal Peer Review in 2003: “The relationship between the amount of writing for a course and students’ level of engagement is stronger than the relationship between students’ engagement and any other course characteristic.” Further, the students Light interviewed for his research reported that they weren’t motivated to take writing seriously until they were asked in their junior or senior courses to write about their major.

It is time for us to consider writing from a longitudinal and curricular perspective. We need to stop thinking of writing as a hurdle to get past and see it instead as integral to student learning.

Our undergraduates should write more frequent and longer papers in more classes, W or not, and they should use writing to share ideas, solve problems, explain their thinking, and reflect on their learning. Not a semester should go by when students write fewer than eight pages, even in the sciences, and preferably more in other areas.

Writing instruction is not someone else’s responsibility, and we must not consider the job done simply because students have completed the minimum requirements. Texas A&M cannot abdicate the responsibility for teaching students to communicate effectively in a wide variety of circumstances and for all kinds of audiences. Wherever and however our students have been schooled in the foundational courses, it is our responsibility to build on that foundation and push our students to use their skills at the highest levels.

Karen-Beth Scholthof uses literature and art to teach students about the human cost of disease.

Science professor experiments with writing

Karen-Beth Scholthof, a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, has won the 2008 W Course Teaching Award for her work in the course, “Pathogens, the Environment, and Society.” The $3,000 award, presented to Scholthof last November, recognized her spirit of innovation and unwavering commitment to improving her students’ writing.

Students in her course learn not only about the science behind some of history’s most notorious epidemics, but also—through Scholthof’s use of relevant fiction and poetry—discover the human consequences of these outbreaks.

The course’s heavy emphasis on reading and writing may be unusual for a science class, but the combination comes naturally to Scholthof.

“I don’t know any other way to teach,” she says, pointing to her own eclectic reading tastes and noting that even before the advent of W courses, she always assigned writing.

“I’m not interested in exams,” she says. “I don’t see the sense in rote memorization. I want my students to gain confidence that they have opinions and can defend their point of view.”

Scholthof finds students often lack that confidence and have genuine anxiety about writing. She tries to lessen their fear by making the first assignment worth only a few points and limiting it to 500 words.

She also works hard to earn their trust. She reads and comments on everything they write, including journal assignments they complete in class. As she reads, Scholthof marks errors, offers comments, asks questions, compliments good ideas, and even recommends additional reading students might enjoy. In essence, she treats each student as she might treat a valued colleague. It’s an approach that takes some students by surprise.

“I had one student who looked at his paper and said, ‘Wow, you actually read this.’ And I said, ‘Well, you wrote it, so why wouldn’t I read it?’” she recalls, laughing.

Scholthof isn’t the only one reading each student’s paper, though:  after considering the idea for several semesters, Scholthof decided to add peer review to her course.

“I was reluctant to give up my lecture time,” she admits, but she now sees it differently.

“By the end of the course, the students had completely bought into the peer review process and were going on about how great it was,” she says.  “Some of them were actually doing extra peer review, having their roommates read their work if they missed a session.”

During peer review, students read their paper aloud to two of their classmates. At one point Scholthof made reading aloud optional, but some students complained, saying that reading out loud was especially useful because it allowed them to hear problems they wouldn’t catch otherwise.  When Scholthof’s students submit their final drafts, they also turn in a paragraph discussing how they’ve responded to their peers’ advice.

Now that she’s sold on peer review, Scholthof is contemplating additional changes to the course, including a possible wiki assignment. She compares refining the course to her work as a scientist.

“In the lab, you sometimes get surprising results, and that’s the direction you go,” she says. “You can’t stay locked in to just one idea.”

Assistant Professor Ginger Carney shares her insights about writing

When Assistant Professor Ginger Carney tells her biology students that writing will be important in their future careers, she’s speaking from experience. Carney became a biologist because she loved science, but she soon found she was spending more than half of her time writing.  That’s why, when she came to the biology department at Texas A&M four and a half years ago, she agreed to teach the department’s first W course, “Critical Writing in Biology.”

It would seem she’s doing something right: this past fall Carney received the Center for Teaching Excellence 25th Anniversary W Course Award for teaching. The award, presented at a ceremony in her department, included a $1,500 prize.

Carney spends so much time writing that grammar reference books occupy a prime place on her bookshelf: “When I’m writing a new proposal or a paper, I almost always have one of them open on my desk, so I can check those little things we all forget.”

She tries to be careful and deliberate in everything she writes, even emails, because she believes her writing plays a crucial role in how others perceive her work. As Carney puts it, “Who is going to fund my research if I can’t motivate someone to be interested in it or explain why it’s important?”

One of Carney’s first goals for the undergraduates in her W classes is to get them to start writing like scientists, and that means teaching them to be direct and concise.

“Students produce a lot of ‘fluffy’ writing for the first assignment, whereas scientists prefer to just say it. Scientists get the information out there without elaborating,” says Carney. To help her students recognize that flowery language can be distracting, Carney uses a Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) assignment that asks them to read and respond to three essays, one of which, Carney says, “sounds really smart, but doesn’t make a lick of sense.” In discussing the essays, her students begin to appreciate simple, straightforward prose.

Another of Carney’s goals is teaching students to write within a set word limit, an important skill for budding scientists who might someday need to write grant proposals. She gives them a list of deadwood phrases to avoid and encourages them to weed out repetitions.

Carney assigns the class three graded CPR assignments, but before each of those her students produce a related journal entry. The students then take that  through a peer review process, which begins with reading their work aloud to a partner. With as many as 80 students in a section, that’s a noisy proposition, but Carney is determined to stick with it. Her students, though, tend to be skeptical: “They feel strange about reading out loud and look at me like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’”  Their reluctance fades quickly, though, when they see how useful reading aloud can be in helping them find their own surface errors.

Of course, there are often far more errors than Carney would like. One of her frustrations with teaching a W course is that it isn’t possible to provide all the writing instruction some students may need, but, as she sees it, “I’m not here to teach composition. I’m not going to teach them when to use a semicolon. But I will direct them to places where they can get help with that if they need it.”

Even if Carney can’t teach her students everything she’d like about writing, she’s committed to the process. Not only does she see writing as important to her students’ careers; she also thinks it’s vital to their thinking.

“Writing crystallizes things,” she says. “You read a research paper and think, ‘Yeah, I understand that.’ But if you actually have to write about what you’ve read, you sometimes realize that you don’t understand it after all.”

As a way to encourage students to think critically, Carney asks students to read and respond to two articles that reach different conclusions about the same topic.

“The question for my students is ‘How can two research groups of talented people at good universities come up with different answers to the same problem?’ A lot of students think when they see something that’s been published that it must be the answer. But it’s hardly ever the complete answer,” says Carney, adding, “Just because it’s been published doesn’t mean the answer is correct.”

If Carney has her way, her students will be astute enough to question everything they read and skilled enough to write compellingly about their own conclusions.

UWC Executive Director Valerie Balester and UWC Associate Director Candace Schaefer will discuss how faculty can actively discourage plagiarism, including using tools like Turnitin.com proactively and designing assignments that minimize students’ opportunities to cheat. Matt Fry, director of the Aggie Honor System Office, will discuss how to proceed if you suspect a student has plagiarized. He’ll also review why it’s best to report plagiarism through the official channels.

“There are always going to be students who flaunt the rules,” says Balester, “but there are steps faculty can take to make plagiarism a less attractive option. Fortunately, most of those steps are fairly simple, and they also align with many of the best practices for teaching writing.”

The workshop will run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. with lunch provided. To register, go to the UWC Web site: uwc.tamu.edu.

The workshop, entitled “We’re All in This Together: Tools for Supporting Group Writing Projects,” will be held from noon to 2:30 p.m. on January 28 in Evans Library 204B. Lunch will be included.

Small—who also created and facilitates the UWC’s online faculty resource, The Write Place for Faculty—sees group writing as both full of potential and fraught with difficulty.

“In theory, group projects offer exciting opportunities for collaborative learning and shared success,” says Small. “In reality, though, group projects can be a minefield. Instructors have to contend with inconsistent participation, personality conflicts, and group infighting, and then try to assign grades fairly.”

Small’s workshop will discuss strategies and techniques for avoiding the minefield and for focusing students on the project or content rather than on group difficulties.

To register for the workshop, go to the UWC Web site: writingcenter.tamu.edu.

Helping students learn to write is never simple, but with students who aren’t native speakers of English, the task can be exponentially more complicated. For these students—typically referred to as ESL students for “English as a second language”—writing even a basic academic paper can be an arduous process.

Perhaps the most valuable thing you as an instructor can do to improve the writing of your ESL students is to focus first and foremost on their message, not their mistakes.

Most ESL students are understandably intimidated by writing in a different language and terribly leery of making mistakes. When you hone in on their errors, you often further undermine their limited confidence and do little to help them improve.

Instead, as you respond to your students’ drafts, think about your priorities for that assignment and focus your comments on how well they achieved those pedagogical goals. Then, rather than marking every error, you can point out general patterns of error or mark a few representative mistakes.

As you do so, keep in mind that not all errors are created equal. Many of the surface-level mistakes found in the writing of ESL students are only minor
annoyances, the written equivalent of speaking with an accent. Common ESL errors include omitting or confusing the articles “a,” “an,” and “the,” using the wrong prepositions in idiomatic expressions, and using incorrect verb tenses. These are the kinds of errors students will begin to correct themselves over time as they become more fluent in English. Fortunately, they’re also the kind of errors that do little to obscure the writer’s true meaning.

Of course, if you encounter errors significant enough that they do interfere with your understanding of the author’s meaning, you should point that out, asking specific questions and encouraging the writer to clarify things in the final draft.

Differing cultural attitudes about writing can also pose difficulties for ESL writers, who sometimes have very different assumptions about what constitutes “good” writing. They may use elaborate and flowery language, decline to state opinions directly, or borrow extensively from other sources without seeing a need for attribution.

Instructors need to be alert for such differences and can help clarify their expectations by providing writing models for students to use as a guide. Fortunately, using models will likely be helpful to all of your students.

In fact, many of the teaching techniques that most benefit ESL writers are good practices for any writing class. Such tactics include providing directions for your assignment both orally and in writing, offering opportunities for students to revise after receiving feedback, and giving students a chance to practice their writing with low-stakes assignments, such as reading journals or observations about their field work.

While it may sound obvious, it’s also important to be patient in dealing with ESL students. Becoming fluent in a language takes time, so you need to accept that your students may not make much apparent progress in a single semester-long course. That doesn’t mean your teaching can’t make a difference, but you and your students should have realistic expectations.

It’s also important to be patient in the more immediate sense. ESL students may take longer to frame their responses to questions, whether in class discussions or in a one-to-one conference about their paper. Don’t be afraid of silences. In fact, the more talking you’re doing about their writing, the less students are likely to be learning.

While writing can be a source of difficulty for ESL students, you can also use it to their benefit. If some of your students find it difficult to speak up in class due to their lack of fluency, assign some writing exercises that will help everyone prepare for class discussions. Or, ask students to conduct a discussion online, perhaps through blogs or a message board. That way ESL students won’t feel rushed to contribute, and other students can hear viewpoints different from their own.

Finally, make sure your ESL students are aware of available resources. They can come to the UWC for consultations, access our handouts online, submit papers to our online writing lab, or seek help from other online sources such as www.eslcafe.com.

Candace Schaefer leads a recent UWC graduate student workshop.

Candace Schaefer, associate director of the University Writing Center, knows first hand the difficulties that writing teachers face. Before becoming an administrator, she spent almost 20 years teaching writing.

“I know that reading and responding to papers is a lot of work,” she says. “There’s no doubt that running 40 Scantrons through a machine is a lot easier.”

Schaefer says the effort is worth it, though, because writing teachers make a huge difference in the lives of their students.

“I remember almost every paper I wrote in college. And I remember none of the Scantron tests I took,” she says simply.

Schaefer also believes writing is crucial to helping students develop as thinkers.

“Teaching students to write lays the ground work for them to mature in their thinking,” she says, noting that, “thinking and writing are inextricably linked.”

“Writing is not like a Paula Deen cooking show,” she says. “It’s not like you throw in a stick of butter and suddenly pull something perfect out of the
oven. If we make the creative process seem easy to our students, we’ve shortchanged them. We should share our struggles as writers.”

That’s why Schaefer has such admiration for W course instructors like Assistant Professor of Economics Ted Turocy who are willing to share their own imperfect first drafts with students. She says students benefit enormously from seeing for themselves how many revisions a professional writer may go through before considering a piece of writing finished.

“When you first start thinking about an idea, you usually can’t articulate it well, but students don’t understand that,” Schaefer says. “They often write their first draft and then turn it in as their final draft. Those of us who are older and wiser know that you need to let an idea simmer and then keep revising. That process is slow but necessary.”

According to UWC Executive Director Valerie Balester, “When Candace came to the UWC in 2006, she had been an academic administrator and had also been a real pioneer in teaching online. But she had started out as an English teacher and that blend of experience makes her a great fit for us. She makes us more professional, while never losing sight of our core mission of improving writing at Texas A&M University.”

That mission is two-fold—helping students improve their writing and helping faculty improve the teaching of writing—but Schaefer doesn’t see the division.

“You can’t support the students without supporting the faculty, and you can’t support the faculty without supporting the students,” she explains. “So, for instance, when we recently acquired a trial version of Waypoint software for instructors to use in responding to student writing, it was a move designed to benefit both groups. Students get rich feedback and teachers get a tool for providing that feedback more efficiently.”

Schaefer has recently lead several workshops introducing Waypoint’s Web-based software to instructors. She also presents workshops on various writing topics for both undergraduate and graduate students and has lead classes on plagiarism, the topic of the dissertation she’s writing.

Schaefer’s other responsibilities at the UWC include hiring, training, and supervising the peer consultants, most of whom are undergraduates. For Schaefer working with the consultants is one of the joys of her job.

“We’re fortunate to have some of the best and brightest students at Texas A&M working in the writing center,” she says.

Schaefer ideally hires students as incoming sophomores, so they’ll be with the UWC for several years. Still, it’s always hard when graduation rolls around and she loses another half-dozen of her best employees. Recently, Schaefer has implemented a program to develop leaders among the consultants. As the consultants gain seniority, they’re being asked to take on projects like improving
the classroom workshops and conducting staff training. Of course, the consultants have already proven themselves over and over in their work with student writers.

“Every day our consultants are challenged to think on their feet,” she says of the work the UWC’s peer tutors do in their sessions. After all, they’re helping students learn to write, something Schaefer, always a teacher at heart, sees as “an awesome responsibility.”

Working at the UWC also offers Schaefer the chance to watch student writers develop over time: “We work with students for more than a semester, which is gratifying. After all, you can’t learn to write in a semester.”

Students can also come to West Campus Library for writing help.

Behind the scenes at the UWC

When your students come to the UWC for a consultation, what should they expect?

It’s tough to say since no two sessions are exactly alike. While there is certainly an underlying philosophy that guides how UWC consultants approach student writers, the specific interplay of student, consultant, assignment, and timing makes every session unique. You may need to experience one to appreciate fully the kind of serious and thoughtful conversation peers can have about writing.

Here then is the next best thing: some observations made during four recent
UWC consultations. (Although the peer consultants are identified by name, no
student names are given in order to respect their privacy.)

Consultant Emily Richter has a nine o’clock session on Monday morning with
an international doctoral candidate. The student has worked with Richter once
before and today wants to discuss a five-page book review.

The student has two copies of her paper and hands one to Richter, who asks
her to read it aloud. The student’s voice is barely audible as she begins to
read. When she finishes the first paragraph, Richter assures her she’s off
to a good start. Then Richter looks at the paragraph again and points out that
there’s no mention of the book being reviewed until quite late in the introduction,
which might confuse readers. The student nods and looks for a place to insert
the title earlier. Richter also points out some awkward repetitions of a key
phrase. She suggests an alternative for one of the instances and asks the student
to come up with a third variant, which she does.

As the student reads more, her voice, though still soft, seems more assured.
In the next paragraph, Richter asks for clarification about another sentence.
The student’s response includes new information, which Richter suggests adding
as an example.

Later, Richter asks about a citation: “Did all of this come from page 27?”

She reminds the student to use quotation marks anytime she’s copying the
author’s wording. The student mentions that the class uses APA style, so Richter
grabs a handout on APA and briefly reviews the rules. Richter also hands the
student a highlighter, so she can mark other places where she might need a
citation.

While much of their time is spent on grammar issues such as missing articles,
Richter also asks questions whenever the student’s meaning is murky. The student,
pausing often to find the right word, offers further clarifications. After
one such exchange, Richter smiles and says, “Oh, I think wording it like that
would be better.” Richter knows from experience that shifting modes of expression,
from writing to speaking, is often all it takes to unlock words a student has
been struggling to get on paper.

After 45 minutes, they’ve worked through the five pages. Not every error
has been fixed and a few more may be created later when the student incorporates
some of the new insights she’s gained, but the student seems pleased.

Ashley Johnston begins a session with an international student pursuing a
graduate degree in agriculture. He is quiet, perhaps nervous about being observed.
He has come to the UWC several times so far this semester, his first in the
United States.

As the session begins, the student mentions that he has trouble using articles
correctly—quite common for students new to English—but the session ultimately
covers a range of topics, including maintaining a consistent verb tense and
subject/verb agreement. The student reads his paper aloud, but during their
discussions, Johnston often rereads individual sentences back to him, changing
the emphasis to illustrate areas of confusion. Johnston also “checks in” frequently,
asking, “Does that make sense?” or “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

The student remains reserved throughout, but at one point he and Johnston
both begin to smile as he reads a sentence that has clearly veered off course.

Although questions about grammar predominate, Johnston also asks about his
use of source material, reminding him of the need for quotation marks around
any language copied verbatim. She also discusses the difficulty of paraphrasing
and warns him to be wary of “patch writing”—pulling together a few words from
one source and a few words from another and “stitching” them all together as
if they’re his own creation. It’s a common problem in academic writing, but
a particular danger for those unsure of their English.

The writing center will help students at any stage of the creative process. They’re often amazed by how helpful it is to talk about their writing with someone, even if that person isn’t an expert in their field.

Later that day, Graduate Consultant Sarah Spring has a follow-up appointment
with an engineering major. He met with Spring the week before, bringing in the
assignment sheet for a W course paper and several pages of preliminary notes.
At that appointment, they sorted through his ideas so he could begin a first
draft. Now, the student wants to discuss what he hopes will be his final draft,
which is due the next day.

He shows Spring the grading rubric he received from his TA for his first
draft. He’s lost points for not using transitions.

“Did she give you any indication of how to improve that or what kind of transitions
she’s looking for?” Spring asks.

“Uh . . . no.”

They laugh in shared frustration at that, and then Spring asks him to begin
reading aloud. He hesitates, but she assures him it’s a good way for him to
begin finding his own errors.

Spring stops him after the first paragraph to ask what he means by the phrase
“using similar paradigms.” In the process of explaining it to her, the student
recognizes that he has, in fact, created two introductory paragraphs.

Spring says the two-part introduction may be one of the things the TA had
found problematic, since the two paragraphs don’t seem connected. She asks
him to explain how they’re linked. Spring listens and nods: “That makes sense
to me, but I’m not sure that’s reflected in your paper.”

The student wants to know if he should simply link the two existing paragraphs
or combine them into what he terms a “super introduction.” Spring says whichever
way he proceeds, he needs to make the connections apparent.

The student still seems confused, though, so Spring asks him to restate his
idea. The consultation room is silent while he thinks. Slowly, he composes
a sentence. Spring says he seems to be on the right track, although he may
want to fine-tune the wording.

Later, Spring suggests pulling out the first sentence of every paragraph
and pasting them in a separate Word document, so he can see the connections
between his main ideas. He listens, but it’s not clear if he’ll be willing
to take this extra step.

They jump ahead to another trouble spot, the student again asking Spring
specifically what to do and Spring gently refusing to make his choices for
him, instead saying, “What do you think?”

At one point, when the student seems to be hopelessly tangled in his own
thinking, Spring flips back a page and points out a place where he’s already
mentioned a pivotal relationship between ideas.

“Oh, yeah, that’s my most important point,” the student says with more enthusiasm.

“All I’m doing is echoing back what you’ve already told me,” explains Spring.

As the session ends, Spring offers the student a bit of reassurance: “Overall,
I think your writing is sound.” Then, knowing there is still work to be done,
she brings him back to the words of his TA: “Just be sure you’re making those
connections.”

Georgia Kate Lombardo sits down with a client who is back for her second
session, this time with a new version of a rhetorical analysis paper for English
104. Her instructor had criticized her first draft for being a simple summary,
so the student decided to start over.

Lombardo has already seen several responses to this particular 104 assignment.
In fact, 104 assignments are seen so often in the UWC that they had been the
topic of the previous week’s staff meting.

At Lombardo’s request, the student begins to read aloud. She moves quickly
over the words as if afraid to linger.

After the first paragraph, Lombardo comments on the paper’s thesis, noting
that it seems well suited to the assignment. The student continues reading,
stopping after each paragraph. Lombardo points out some basic errors, such
as writing “belief” for “believe,” and asks for clarification on a few sentences
that seem to go astray.

As they work, the student seems very engaged. She points to one sentence
and shakes her head, saying, “I don’t like how this sounds.”

“What don’t you like?” Lombardo asks.

“The ending.” So the two bend their heads over the paper and discuss alternative
wordings.

Several times Lombardo points out highly informal diction, which she says
the instructor might consider inappropriate. They also discuss the difference
between “image” meaning reputation and “images” meaning pictures.

As the session winds down, Lombardo voices concern about the conclusion,
which seems to veer away from the intent of the assignment, so they discuss
how the student might revise that. When their time is up, the student, who
has been smiling throughout, thanks Lombardo and leaves quickly.

In her post-consultation report, Lombardo describes the student as “an eager
learner.” Unfortunately, Lombardo knows their hard work will probably not be
reflected in this paper’s final grade: during the session the student has admitted
that the final draft is due within the hour.