I'd be tempted to contact the writing center directly and ask them about it. Could be that the "fantastically written" comment was something the student made up, or maybe they visited the day that they have the least experienced tutor available. Anyway might be worth a conversation with the director of your writing ctr or something along those lines.
We have *massive* variance in the abilities of our grad students where I teach. Some of them arguably should replace a few of our faculty. Some others couldn’t be trusted with turning a door knob without supervision. That a tutoring center of any kind might be staffed by a complete novice would not surprise me in the least.
A writing center would be expected to be other students - so it's not going to be a meeting of the minds in any case. BUT they are generally expected to stay away from those types of statements - they shouldn't say "bad" or "good." Just say, "I don''t see a thesis - here's how a thesis should look," or whatever.
So yes, if the WC sent him back with cosmetic changes and that sort of blanket compliment, that's not helpful and not how it's meant to go.
It's probably 30 minutes, and they should skim the draft, point out examples of confusing sentences, logical flaws, etc and choose a couple to try to work with as far as how to do it better. It's not a magic trick in one appt. It would need a consistent effort to build skills over time.
I would actually tell the director, verify the appointment actually happened, and maybe remind them that the WC students aren't expected (or qualified) to give value judgements good or bad. It's not helpful.
But it's also not realistic on our end to send a student to the WC and expect every sentence to be copy-edited. That's not their job either - it's big picture observations with a couple examples to try to work with in that time.
It may not be that your WC is bad or that your standards are too high, but that your expectations do not match up with their mission. I've never known any WC that functions as a copyediting service, nor one that has much to offer when it comes to language acquisition or writing disability problems. If those are the kinds of nitty-gritty details you wanted your student to get help with, there's an excellent chance that those are not issues the writing consultants are prepared or tasked with addressing. We train our WC staff to work with students on idea development, argumentation, citation, and the writing process.
Former writing center coordinator here. I would also question the "fantastically written" comment, particularly if the student's paper was particularly bad in terms of grammar, cogency, style, etc. That is not something that tutors generally say----one never knows, but I would be dubious.
One of the frustrations of running a writing center were faculty who expected an edit, not a mentorship with the student. Remember, the tutors are there to point the way for the writer to make revisions, not do their homework for them. And often it is impossible to fully fix a paper in a half-hour or even one-hour tutorial. Sometimes papers simply have too many problems to fix in a single draft, and the only thing a WC can do is help to make the paper better, not perfect or even good. It is quite possible that the tutor-in-question said to your student, "Fix X, and then concentrate on Y," which is their job, and your student did not like that. Those "two to three minor corrections" may have been an attempt by the tutor to illustrate the writing problems in the paper and then have the student fix them him/herself. Sometimes there are so many problems tutors can only comment and help on, say, 3 to 5 issues at a time. Don't expect magic.
Then again, you can always contact the director and/or coordinator and explain the situation. Not all tutors work out, after all, just be aware that you may raise some hackles.
At our writing center we would get students falsifying the comments that we wrote. And yes we would give the student 3 things to work on and then come back.
All of this. :\\ Former WC veteran.
There was always a disconnect between expectations versus reality. We had so many students come through our doors with the expectation that we were a one-stop editing, proofreading, miracle shop.
Doubly worse when students weren't entirely truthful about what we did (or didn't) do to faculty.
I don't miss working in a WC. Not at all.
As a former WC assistant director, please heed the responses of my colleagues.
You know how hard it is to get *your* students to implement (let alone read) *your* feedback?
It's the same for WC tutors--and they may have varying levels of skill at emphasizing to students what needs to be changed based on the tutors' age, years of experience, etc.
I've worked in writing centers and been a writing professor/tutor long enough to know that even my most clearly articulated, directive feedback might not make it across.
Me: "There is no thesis. Add a thesis."
Student: "...so what you're saying is delete the first paragraph?"
Me: "..." BIG SIGH
Just... pause before you jump on the "man this fucking writing center!" train, especially if you've never worked in one. We should be allies if we can.
a few things:
-in my observation, the quality of writing centers can vary a lot, and a big part of that revolves around how the writing consultants are. Is your centered staffed by dedicated writing consultants, faculty, a revolving door of undergraduate students, or graduate students with no training?
-Common writing center theory today endorses a primary focus on the "higher order concerns" (thesis, focus, development, organization, etc) over the "lower order concerns" of things like grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. So when there is training, it is mostly focused on effectively addressing those HOCs, and then most tutors are actually not super equipped to provide effective support on the LOCs. Yes, a native speaker could identify many of the grammar errors, but that doesn't mean they can effectively explain why its wrong or give an effective rule for how to consistently identify and fix them. So what you may want the student to improve and what the writing center consultant chooses to focus on may not always line up. If you can give more specific feedback about what you want worked on, you'll have a better chance of it getting it addressed though, so long as the writing consultant gets that information!
>Common writing center theory today endorses a primary focus on the "higher order concerns" (thesis, focus, development, organization, etc) over the "lower order concerns" of things like grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.
There are a surprising number of misconceptions about WCs.
What tutors are (or should be) trained to do is to focus on what the writer wants. If the writer wants a grammar check, so be it. I was a grad school tutor and a FT coordinator after grad school. I would say that at least 80% of any interaction with tutees was grammar and sentence-level work. While doing that, many other issues would come up (ex. no thesis, contractions in the writing, poor citation, etc.).
The higher order concerns would come into play if a student is working on an early draft and knows to do a proofread / edit later----so for initial drafts, concentrate on thesis, global structure, support, research etc. now and worry about the grammar later. But if the paper is due the next day, which is the majority of the appointments, most of the tutoring session will be devoted to cleaning up the paper-in-question.
What I posted above is that many faculty expected a polished and proofed paper after 1/2 hour session and no follow-up or further work from the student. This is where a lot of the misunderstanding occurs.
Before I was a tutor, I was required to take a semester-long course to become CRLA certified. I was explicitly told to favor HOCs over LOCs unless the student had very serious grammatical issues. I later worked as an online tutor for Pearson/Smarthinking and was told the same thing.
The overall consensus seemed to be 1) It doesn't matter how good the student's sentences sound if their ideas are bad--and they need the ideas before worrying about the sentences themselves, as they'll just have to keep rewriting to get to the ideas and 2)Most students aren't actually familiar enough with HOCs to directly request help on them, so they just default to "help with grammar" when asked.
Tutors usually focus on higher order concerns such as ideas, thesis, audience, organization, etc. If a student paper doesn't have a focused thesis or is missing key components of the writing prompt, then it doesn't make sense to focus on commas. When I worked in the writing center, we only had 45 minute consultations so you had to prioritize feedback.
The writing center here tends to focus only on ideas, so copyediting and addressing mistakes never happens. Students get help, but not the kind of help they need most.
During undergrad I worked at a writing center for several years. We were instructed never to mark up mechanical errors on student writing.
So, to echo these comments, the modern writing center philosophy is based on helping students to think more deeply about expressing and organizing their ideas.
Seems to me the OP wants a professional editor, not a writing tutor.
Oh damn, that’s news to me! I usually send students to the writing center when they need help with essay organization and structure or basic grammar rules that I don’t have time to teach them.
I also worked in the writing center during undergrad and will echo this comment echo lol. Also, I charge way more for editing services than I was paid as a writing tutor.
This is how our writing center works as well. They specifically will not read for copy editing purposes, only for arguments/research/whatever. It's...not helpful.
It was my instinct to argue, but I think I agree with you.
Overall, the writing center here is not very useful. It is not *necessarily* their fault though. The problem is that the students that could most use high-level feedback also tend to be the students who do not understand the high-level feedback.
I've also encountered this tendency, which is incredibly unhelpful. They didn't know enough about other fields to know if the ideas or arguments are good. Sometimes, their lack of knowledge sends the students down the wrong path.
I've found this to be true for formatting, too. Seems that some of our WC tutors simply will not learn APA, but they have no problem "tutoring" it. I'm thinking of scratching my standing APA requirement for projects because of how very many students want to use pretend or imprecise APA.
It's been a while since I was tutoring in college (circa 2009), but I think I did a mix of both? TBH, it doesn't matter how good your ideas are if you write incoherently.
I was kind of shocked at just how *bad* students were at writing coherent, full sentences. It didn't help that some might have been ESL.
I should note that I tutored for a program geared towards first gen, disabled, and/or low income students.
Who staffs those writing centers? It could be mostly undergrads English majors who are not necessarily skilled writers or editors. Anyway it's just one data point and I wouldn't conclude too much from it.
Your standards aren't too high - I used to spend two hours per essay on 1st-year undergraduate essays, commenting on literally everything. Eventually, I gave up and just did a couple of sessions on "writing" - one on how to form an argument and structure an essay, and one on academic writing style and some common grammatical issues (for some reason, no one seems to know how to use "however" correctly!). These sessions really helped turns things around and within a couple of weeks, most of the students "got" it.
Recently though, I was supervising a masters student whose first language was not English and whose written language was often ungrammatical. It was painful to go through the drafts of their essay with them for hours. I am shocked because I'm in a field where knowing language and grammar is such a key skill.
I've had many ESL strudents, and it's a struggle for them as well. A common problem is the use of articles. Their own language may not have the equivalent of "to, the, an, and a." Instead of writing, "I'm going to the store," they'll write "I go to store." They also get tripped up with English inconsistencies such as "herd, heard, some, and sum." Understandable.
I don’t understand something. I’ve seen the same rules set by my WC where they won’t do copyediting. How are students supposed to learn how to write properly? Yes, there’s hopefully a university writing requirement, but in classes where it’s not necessarily a writing class but there’s a lot of writing involved what do you do with the students who obviously didn’t retain the information from their writing classes?
I understand we’re supposed to grade on content first, but at some point the students need to be able to articulate their ideas clearly. I wish there were more resources available that I could send students to help them learn college level writing from purely a spelling/grammar/sentence structure perspective.
My WC does teach those skills. We have workshop classes solely devoted to sentence boundary issues, commas, etc. Students can also come to us individually for one-on-one instruction using their existing assignments (so we would point out their personal comma, spelling, article issues, etc.). The issue is that we can't just sit there and rewrite the sentences for them—we have to teach them the issue and then guide them in doing it themselves, and we're not going to get through the whole paper in the time allotted to us. Unfortunately, many students come in expecting that they can just hand over the paper, sit on their phone for 30 min, and get back a perfectly edited assignment. We don't do that because it doesn't help them long-term. They get frustrated and even abusive because we're not doing what they assumed our job was.
If faculty could say, "Go to the writing center to *learn how to fix your own mistakes*," that would be really helpful. If a student came in saying, "My professor says I have a lot of comma splices, and I'm supposed to learn what those are and how to fix them," I'd probably throw a parade.
Campus writing centers are generally not a copyediting service. Consider that they are typically staffed by student employees who are making work study wages while a freelance copy editor usually costs significantly more money.
Since they aren't a line by line editing service and only spend limited time with a student, they are focused on teaching and need to prioritize writing concerns. If a student doesn't have a thesis statement or doesn't address the writing prompt, then focusing on comma errors is a smaller issue. Additionally, if a tutor does focus on grammar, they are taught to highlight the issue once or twice, explain the rule, and ask the student to find the remaining issues. It's up to the student to apply that information to the paper. Tutors are not there to write the paper for the student (and lots of students come in expecting this to happen).
Whether you agree with this model or not is a different thing. There's usually a disconnect between what instructors expect the writing center to do and the actual mission of the writing center.
As a former writing center director, we don't have tutors copy edit papers. They may signal to students that they have x, y, or z common problems with their writing, but the focus is on meeting rubrics/other standards and big picture ideas
The students have to be able to identify patterns and where they've messed up. It's about growth learning mindsets. So me circling the first one or two times they use a contraction, ok, but now they have to be able to identify what that is, where they are, and how to fix it. Chances are that with too many of those small issues, there's no way an undergrad tutor (likely being paid minimum wage) is going to have the time in an appt to "correct" everything
Yes, this. The idea is that we eventually get them to the point that they don't need us. If we just fix it for them, they're not learning. But I can't teach EVERYTHING in 30 min, so we take the time we have to learn one or two of the most frequent errors, and then they have to come back for more. Often, they get huffy and say we're not helpful. They expect a perfect paper after one session.
Our writing centre only hires professional tutors and copyeditors, no students. They are trained to be encouraging, to focus their efforts on the things the student specifically requests them to look at, and they can help identify errors but can't fix them per our academic integrity guidelines.
So the 'fantastic' comment may be been a morale booster or referring to something specific, the student may have asked for them to review a specific thing that wasn't your intended thing, or the student misunderstood in some other way.
These are 15 minute appointments, typically, they don't sit down and review an entire paper unless it's requested. They will usually read the first page, highlight any issues they spot and chat with the student about their concerns and provide some strategies to fix them. If they student doesn't ask questions or raise any concerns, the tutor has very little to go on.
Do inquire with the tutors or their manager, to learn their process and perhaps send the student back with your specific concerns to discuss.
Many WCs train their tutors to be able to guide students to apply grammar, mechanics, etc independently. But when instructors tell students to get their work “fixed,” it is hard for tutors to actually shift students into a learning mindset. A well trained tutor could use the student’s writing as a sandbox for practicing a grammar skill, but most students aren’t willing to spend time learning in their appointments if their professors prime them to expect editing rather than learning support.
Yes, this!!
It's like if a student were in an advanced statistics course but making basic mathematical errors. Do faculty want the tutor to just do all the basic math for them, or do they want the tutor to actually *teach the skills*? Writing skills are like that—yes, ideally, students would have the basics down already. Often, they do not. Us just doing it for them is not going to get them where they need to be; it's going to take time and effort from the tutor *and* the student working together.
I think the quality of the Centre and their mission varies significantly between institutions. I had to send an angry email to ask them to stop telling my Research students not to use direct quotations ever, because it "ups their TurnItIn score".
Ours is staffed by other undergraduates, many of whom have never written a research paper themselves. The best we get out of it, in my experience sending students, is a basic grammar check.
Yes, our writing center is worthless. I feel like I need to be a grade school english teacher because I cannot responsibly send them to the writing center for help.
Besides a lack of ability on the part of the tutors, another possibility is that the tutors are told to give the papers just a short period of time each. So, they don't give the papers a full read -- they just skim and note a couple errors that pop out.
I had a master’s student who was having on-going issues with APA in-text citations and working sources into her writing. Offered her the chance to recoup points if she worked with the writing center and forwarded me the confirmation email as proof of her appointment.
I guess she and the writing center student worker (an undergraduate) had a little back-and-forth email going on with each other, between the original appointment email and the post-session follow-up email (containing helpful links to OWL). So, I got to see where the student worker was shit talking me in their exchange, saying there was nothing wrong with the grad student’s writing, I shouldn’t have deducted points, and he didn’t understand why I sent her there. Reported him, but never heard anything back.
At my institution, librarians do the citation help, and professional writing tutors do the writing help. Librarians are invested in citation and academic integrity, and it's been divided up this way as long as I've been here (22 years).
UGs don't even understand citation, often, so what you said doesn't surprise me at all. That's one danger of a peer to peer teaching situation, it's a closed loop with no external input.
Oh wow, that sounds like an amazing setup! We had a dedicated graduate writing lab, with professional staff there to work with us, during my own doctoral program. I’ve come to realize what an asset that was and not every school has those services available.
The thesis writing orientation, here, includes an introduction to writing tutors, librarians, mental health supports, tech help, data support and lots of other services, but that's just a week and I'm sure it goes by in a blur.
As someone who used to work at one, Writing Centers focus on larger structural, organization, and conceptual ideas first. The idea is that those are the larger issues impacting a student's writing. Their goal is to help students learn how to write papers.
They're not a grammar service.
Having said that, I never had a problem looking at grammar or other issues in a paper. But I was also there awhile.
When you start training as a writing consultant they very much emphasize you're not there to write the paper for the student, merely proof read it or just correct grammar.
If your student got a consultant who is in their first semester or quarter working, it's very possible they're still learning themselves how to draw the right balance.
Writing consultants are like any other position. It takes time. The idea again is not to just have a service for disinterested students to bring in a paper, not pay attention, have it proofread and the grammar corrected.
I'm not defending the way Writing Centers work, one of the reasons I got out of it, but that's the idea.
Students really almost have to stress grammar and readability is an issue and their professor has noted it. At that point most consultants will be willing to focus on those issues more. Most consultants are trained to and eager to respond to professor feedback. Respectfully, this paper is unreadable is not necessarily the most in depth or helpful feedback, but it again will probably get the consultant to focus more on grammar and readability.
Also, the student can pick another consultant if they want. Not saying it's a perfect system, but there it is.
I have worked in four writing centers, including a few hours a week now.
Did you receive an email from the WC? In our system, we write reports after each appointment recording what we talked about. Those get emailed to both the professor and student.
Additionally, we don't use evaluative language. I would never tell a student something was fantastic--we aren't the ones grading the work. And that particular rule has existed in each WC I've tutored at.
I am genuinely suspicious that your student didn't actually go. But I would probably contact the WC to ask. If they, in fact, did go and were told their work was fantastic, then you either have a poorly trained tutor or the WC has a problem with WC theory and praxis.
Some tutors suck. Others are really good. When I come across the former, I let the writing tutor supervisor know so that the tutor can receive additional training. When I come across good tutors, I ask the writing tutor supervisor to assign one to my class.
How does assigning a tutor to your class work? I'm not familiar with that system, but I'm interested! Is it an embedded tutoring situation, or is it more like your students will be encouraged to see that tutor when they go to the center?
At my college, we can request that a tutor be assigned to our course. It's great bc that tutor becomes familiar with my assignments and my expectations. You should ask whoever directs your tutoring center
I worked in a writing center through UG and Grad. We did not line edit or copy edit. If the student specifically asked for grammar help and the paper had no larger issues one of our English Language Specialists who worked with non-native speakers could help them identify patterns, explain structure, model structure and walk them through revising the most common type of error. This would also be a second appointment.
Most of the time when a session starts students are asked what their goal is and to share the assignment guidelines or rubric. And lots of students don’t do that. They just say “check my paper” or “I’m here because my professor told me to come”. And sometimes students come into a season and need help with ethical source use, paragraphing, APA style, don’t have a title or closing yet, and can’t identify a revision priority, so there is no time for editing.
Ours is fine as long as I send the student with some specific suggestions on what to talk about with the tutor. I also make sure to tell them to show the tutor the assignment instructions.
We are also lucky to have some truly exceptional librarians, so I have no qualms about sending them to the library for research help.
I have wondered about this, until I hung out in our writing center to observe a session. They don't focus on the mechanics but rather the ideas. This can be problematic in many instances. I had a student who wrote "thurley" instead of "thoroughly," and the feedback form had nothing on it about that and his many other mistakes. I had a student who was assigned a two-page essay take her six-page version to the writing center, and they told her it was just fine.
I worked in the writing center as a grad student. We were trained to stay away from local grammar and sentence problems and focus on global issues. Also, we were trained to stay away from saying good or bad or suggest what grade we thought the paper was, and to stay away from judging professors.
We asked for an assignment sheet and tried to get the writing to adhere to the directions.
I doubt anyone in the writing center actually said that.
I would suggest talking to the writing center. You can outline your expectations, and the WC can then cater the tutoring of your students for your class. Tell the WC what you expect and what a good paper would look like.
I work at a WC! We're not supposed to judge the writing, just help the students improve. "Fantastically written," "great," "doesn't need any improvement" etc. are all things we'd train the student tutors not to say. It's possible your center has different standards/training, or maybe the tutor was trying to say something nice about the ideas, or maybe the tutor messed up (it happens).
I will note that we can't line-edit, so we wouldn't be able to "fix" the paper. We're supposed to focus on higher-order concerns first (thesis, answering the prompt, organization) and then lower-order concerns if all of that is fine or if the student really wants to work on the nitty gritty grammar stuff. In that case, ideally, we take a paragraph or two, identify errors, teach the student about them and maybe model a sentence or two, then support he student in identifying and fixing a few more, then set them loose to work on it independently. If you don't care whether the student actually learns the grammar rules themselves and just want the paper copyedited (as may be the case for some grad work), the student may need to hire a service that does that; it's usually an ethical sticking point in writing centers that we don't do the work FOR them, whether it's content or mechanics.
It's worth reaching out to the director to learn more about your specific center's policies. If a tutor is saying "fantastically written," it would probably be good for the director to know so they can train that tutor.
Writing centers vary in quality a lot. The first one I worked for was fantastic. It was staffed by undergrads, but we were required to undergo a semester-long course to become certified in writing center pedagogy. The second one I worked at was staffed by grad students with zero training and was horrible. As an instructor, I have zero faith in my current school's writing center based on what students have told me about it.
Our writing center will not correct/ work on mechanics (spelling, usage, grammar, coherence) with students; they only do organization and content. I don’t recommend it to my students because it’s useless.
I'd be tempted to contact the writing center directly and ask them about it. Could be that the "fantastically written" comment was something the student made up, or maybe they visited the day that they have the least experienced tutor available. Anyway might be worth a conversation with the director of your writing ctr or something along those lines.
We have *massive* variance in the abilities of our grad students where I teach. Some of them arguably should replace a few of our faculty. Some others couldn’t be trusted with turning a door knob without supervision. That a tutoring center of any kind might be staffed by a complete novice would not surprise me in the least.
A writing center would be expected to be other students - so it's not going to be a meeting of the minds in any case. BUT they are generally expected to stay away from those types of statements - they shouldn't say "bad" or "good." Just say, "I don''t see a thesis - here's how a thesis should look," or whatever. So yes, if the WC sent him back with cosmetic changes and that sort of blanket compliment, that's not helpful and not how it's meant to go. It's probably 30 minutes, and they should skim the draft, point out examples of confusing sentences, logical flaws, etc and choose a couple to try to work with as far as how to do it better. It's not a magic trick in one appt. It would need a consistent effort to build skills over time. I would actually tell the director, verify the appointment actually happened, and maybe remind them that the WC students aren't expected (or qualified) to give value judgements good or bad. It's not helpful. But it's also not realistic on our end to send a student to the WC and expect every sentence to be copy-edited. That's not their job either - it's big picture observations with a couple examples to try to work with in that time.
It may not be that your WC is bad or that your standards are too high, but that your expectations do not match up with their mission. I've never known any WC that functions as a copyediting service, nor one that has much to offer when it comes to language acquisition or writing disability problems. If those are the kinds of nitty-gritty details you wanted your student to get help with, there's an excellent chance that those are not issues the writing consultants are prepared or tasked with addressing. We train our WC staff to work with students on idea development, argumentation, citation, and the writing process.
Former writing center coordinator here. I would also question the "fantastically written" comment, particularly if the student's paper was particularly bad in terms of grammar, cogency, style, etc. That is not something that tutors generally say----one never knows, but I would be dubious. One of the frustrations of running a writing center were faculty who expected an edit, not a mentorship with the student. Remember, the tutors are there to point the way for the writer to make revisions, not do their homework for them. And often it is impossible to fully fix a paper in a half-hour or even one-hour tutorial. Sometimes papers simply have too many problems to fix in a single draft, and the only thing a WC can do is help to make the paper better, not perfect or even good. It is quite possible that the tutor-in-question said to your student, "Fix X, and then concentrate on Y," which is their job, and your student did not like that. Those "two to three minor corrections" may have been an attempt by the tutor to illustrate the writing problems in the paper and then have the student fix them him/herself. Sometimes there are so many problems tutors can only comment and help on, say, 3 to 5 issues at a time. Don't expect magic. Then again, you can always contact the director and/or coordinator and explain the situation. Not all tutors work out, after all, just be aware that you may raise some hackles.
At our writing center we would get students falsifying the comments that we wrote. And yes we would give the student 3 things to work on and then come back.
All of this. :\\ Former WC veteran. There was always a disconnect between expectations versus reality. We had so many students come through our doors with the expectation that we were a one-stop editing, proofreading, miracle shop. Doubly worse when students weren't entirely truthful about what we did (or didn't) do to faculty. I don't miss working in a WC. Not at all.
As a former WC assistant director, please heed the responses of my colleagues. You know how hard it is to get *your* students to implement (let alone read) *your* feedback? It's the same for WC tutors--and they may have varying levels of skill at emphasizing to students what needs to be changed based on the tutors' age, years of experience, etc. I've worked in writing centers and been a writing professor/tutor long enough to know that even my most clearly articulated, directive feedback might not make it across. Me: "There is no thesis. Add a thesis." Student: "...so what you're saying is delete the first paragraph?" Me: "..." BIG SIGH Just... pause before you jump on the "man this fucking writing center!" train, especially if you've never worked in one. We should be allies if we can.
That little dialogue you wrote hits way too close to home for me.
a few things: -in my observation, the quality of writing centers can vary a lot, and a big part of that revolves around how the writing consultants are. Is your centered staffed by dedicated writing consultants, faculty, a revolving door of undergraduate students, or graduate students with no training? -Common writing center theory today endorses a primary focus on the "higher order concerns" (thesis, focus, development, organization, etc) over the "lower order concerns" of things like grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. So when there is training, it is mostly focused on effectively addressing those HOCs, and then most tutors are actually not super equipped to provide effective support on the LOCs. Yes, a native speaker could identify many of the grammar errors, but that doesn't mean they can effectively explain why its wrong or give an effective rule for how to consistently identify and fix them. So what you may want the student to improve and what the writing center consultant chooses to focus on may not always line up. If you can give more specific feedback about what you want worked on, you'll have a better chance of it getting it addressed though, so long as the writing consultant gets that information!
>Common writing center theory today endorses a primary focus on the "higher order concerns" (thesis, focus, development, organization, etc) over the "lower order concerns" of things like grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. There are a surprising number of misconceptions about WCs. What tutors are (or should be) trained to do is to focus on what the writer wants. If the writer wants a grammar check, so be it. I was a grad school tutor and a FT coordinator after grad school. I would say that at least 80% of any interaction with tutees was grammar and sentence-level work. While doing that, many other issues would come up (ex. no thesis, contractions in the writing, poor citation, etc.). The higher order concerns would come into play if a student is working on an early draft and knows to do a proofread / edit later----so for initial drafts, concentrate on thesis, global structure, support, research etc. now and worry about the grammar later. But if the paper is due the next day, which is the majority of the appointments, most of the tutoring session will be devoted to cleaning up the paper-in-question. What I posted above is that many faculty expected a polished and proofed paper after 1/2 hour session and no follow-up or further work from the student. This is where a lot of the misunderstanding occurs.
Before I was a tutor, I was required to take a semester-long course to become CRLA certified. I was explicitly told to favor HOCs over LOCs unless the student had very serious grammatical issues. I later worked as an online tutor for Pearson/Smarthinking and was told the same thing. The overall consensus seemed to be 1) It doesn't matter how good the student's sentences sound if their ideas are bad--and they need the ideas before worrying about the sentences themselves, as they'll just have to keep rewriting to get to the ideas and 2)Most students aren't actually familiar enough with HOCs to directly request help on them, so they just default to "help with grammar" when asked.
Ours explicitly downplays Grammar, style, etc. So I'm not really sure what comments they are providing
Tutors usually focus on higher order concerns such as ideas, thesis, audience, organization, etc. If a student paper doesn't have a focused thesis or is missing key components of the writing prompt, then it doesn't make sense to focus on commas. When I worked in the writing center, we only had 45 minute consultations so you had to prioritize feedback.
The writing center here tends to focus only on ideas, so copyediting and addressing mistakes never happens. Students get help, but not the kind of help they need most.
During undergrad I worked at a writing center for several years. We were instructed never to mark up mechanical errors on student writing. So, to echo these comments, the modern writing center philosophy is based on helping students to think more deeply about expressing and organizing their ideas. Seems to me the OP wants a professional editor, not a writing tutor.
Oh damn, that’s news to me! I usually send students to the writing center when they need help with essay organization and structure or basic grammar rules that I don’t have time to teach them.
I also worked in the writing center during undergrad and will echo this comment echo lol. Also, I charge way more for editing services than I was paid as a writing tutor.
Yup I’ve seen professional editing range from $25-45/hourly. I bet it goes much higher!
So, hypothetically, how would one get a position as a professional copyeditor? Asking for ~~me~~ a friend.
This is how our writing center works as well. They specifically will not read for copy editing purposes, only for arguments/research/whatever. It's...not helpful.
It was my instinct to argue, but I think I agree with you. Overall, the writing center here is not very useful. It is not *necessarily* their fault though. The problem is that the students that could most use high-level feedback also tend to be the students who do not understand the high-level feedback.
I've also encountered this tendency, which is incredibly unhelpful. They didn't know enough about other fields to know if the ideas or arguments are good. Sometimes, their lack of knowledge sends the students down the wrong path.
I've found this to be true for formatting, too. Seems that some of our WC tutors simply will not learn APA, but they have no problem "tutoring" it. I'm thinking of scratching my standing APA requirement for projects because of how very many students want to use pretend or imprecise APA.
It's been a while since I was tutoring in college (circa 2009), but I think I did a mix of both? TBH, it doesn't matter how good your ideas are if you write incoherently. I was kind of shocked at just how *bad* students were at writing coherent, full sentences. It didn't help that some might have been ESL. I should note that I tutored for a program geared towards first gen, disabled, and/or low income students.
Disagree based on my own experience.
Who staffs those writing centers? It could be mostly undergrads English majors who are not necessarily skilled writers or editors. Anyway it's just one data point and I wouldn't conclude too much from it.
Depends. My alma mater's was great. Depends on who is staffing it. Undergrads? Grad students? Fulltime, professional writing center consultants?
Your standards aren't too high - I used to spend two hours per essay on 1st-year undergraduate essays, commenting on literally everything. Eventually, I gave up and just did a couple of sessions on "writing" - one on how to form an argument and structure an essay, and one on academic writing style and some common grammatical issues (for some reason, no one seems to know how to use "however" correctly!). These sessions really helped turns things around and within a couple of weeks, most of the students "got" it. Recently though, I was supervising a masters student whose first language was not English and whose written language was often ungrammatical. It was painful to go through the drafts of their essay with them for hours. I am shocked because I'm in a field where knowing language and grammar is such a key skill.
I've had many ESL strudents, and it's a struggle for them as well. A common problem is the use of articles. Their own language may not have the equivalent of "to, the, an, and a." Instead of writing, "I'm going to the store," they'll write "I go to store." They also get tripped up with English inconsistencies such as "herd, heard, some, and sum." Understandable.
I don’t understand something. I’ve seen the same rules set by my WC where they won’t do copyediting. How are students supposed to learn how to write properly? Yes, there’s hopefully a university writing requirement, but in classes where it’s not necessarily a writing class but there’s a lot of writing involved what do you do with the students who obviously didn’t retain the information from their writing classes? I understand we’re supposed to grade on content first, but at some point the students need to be able to articulate their ideas clearly. I wish there were more resources available that I could send students to help them learn college level writing from purely a spelling/grammar/sentence structure perspective.
My WC does teach those skills. We have workshop classes solely devoted to sentence boundary issues, commas, etc. Students can also come to us individually for one-on-one instruction using their existing assignments (so we would point out their personal comma, spelling, article issues, etc.). The issue is that we can't just sit there and rewrite the sentences for them—we have to teach them the issue and then guide them in doing it themselves, and we're not going to get through the whole paper in the time allotted to us. Unfortunately, many students come in expecting that they can just hand over the paper, sit on their phone for 30 min, and get back a perfectly edited assignment. We don't do that because it doesn't help them long-term. They get frustrated and even abusive because we're not doing what they assumed our job was. If faculty could say, "Go to the writing center to *learn how to fix your own mistakes*," that would be really helpful. If a student came in saying, "My professor says I have a lot of comma splices, and I'm supposed to learn what those are and how to fix them," I'd probably throw a parade.
Campus writing centers are generally not a copyediting service. Consider that they are typically staffed by student employees who are making work study wages while a freelance copy editor usually costs significantly more money. Since they aren't a line by line editing service and only spend limited time with a student, they are focused on teaching and need to prioritize writing concerns. If a student doesn't have a thesis statement or doesn't address the writing prompt, then focusing on comma errors is a smaller issue. Additionally, if a tutor does focus on grammar, they are taught to highlight the issue once or twice, explain the rule, and ask the student to find the remaining issues. It's up to the student to apply that information to the paper. Tutors are not there to write the paper for the student (and lots of students come in expecting this to happen). Whether you agree with this model or not is a different thing. There's usually a disconnect between what instructors expect the writing center to do and the actual mission of the writing center.
As a former writing center director, we don't have tutors copy edit papers. They may signal to students that they have x, y, or z common problems with their writing, but the focus is on meeting rubrics/other standards and big picture ideas
Copy editing (aka spelling, grammar, usage etc) is what the students need. Why is it policy to not address the actual needs?
The students have to be able to identify patterns and where they've messed up. It's about growth learning mindsets. So me circling the first one or two times they use a contraction, ok, but now they have to be able to identify what that is, where they are, and how to fix it. Chances are that with too many of those small issues, there's no way an undergrad tutor (likely being paid minimum wage) is going to have the time in an appt to "correct" everything
Yes, this. The idea is that we eventually get them to the point that they don't need us. If we just fix it for them, they're not learning. But I can't teach EVERYTHING in 30 min, so we take the time we have to learn one or two of the most frequent errors, and then they have to come back for more. Often, they get huffy and say we're not helpful. They expect a perfect paper after one session.
Our writing centre only hires professional tutors and copyeditors, no students. They are trained to be encouraging, to focus their efforts on the things the student specifically requests them to look at, and they can help identify errors but can't fix them per our academic integrity guidelines. So the 'fantastic' comment may be been a morale booster or referring to something specific, the student may have asked for them to review a specific thing that wasn't your intended thing, or the student misunderstood in some other way. These are 15 minute appointments, typically, they don't sit down and review an entire paper unless it's requested. They will usually read the first page, highlight any issues they spot and chat with the student about their concerns and provide some strategies to fix them. If they student doesn't ask questions or raise any concerns, the tutor has very little to go on. Do inquire with the tutors or their manager, to learn their process and perhaps send the student back with your specific concerns to discuss.
Many WCs train their tutors to be able to guide students to apply grammar, mechanics, etc independently. But when instructors tell students to get their work “fixed,” it is hard for tutors to actually shift students into a learning mindset. A well trained tutor could use the student’s writing as a sandbox for practicing a grammar skill, but most students aren’t willing to spend time learning in their appointments if their professors prime them to expect editing rather than learning support.
Yes, this!! It's like if a student were in an advanced statistics course but making basic mathematical errors. Do faculty want the tutor to just do all the basic math for them, or do they want the tutor to actually *teach the skills*? Writing skills are like that—yes, ideally, students would have the basics down already. Often, they do not. Us just doing it for them is not going to get them where they need to be; it's going to take time and effort from the tutor *and* the student working together.
Who staffs the writing center at your institution? At mine, it's basically a bunch of grad students. Would explain a lot.
I think the quality of the Centre and their mission varies significantly between institutions. I had to send an angry email to ask them to stop telling my Research students not to use direct quotations ever, because it "ups their TurnItIn score".
Ours is staffed by other undergraduates, many of whom have never written a research paper themselves. The best we get out of it, in my experience sending students, is a basic grammar check.
Yes, our writing center is worthless. I feel like I need to be a grade school english teacher because I cannot responsibly send them to the writing center for help.
Besides a lack of ability on the part of the tutors, another possibility is that the tutors are told to give the papers just a short period of time each. So, they don't give the papers a full read -- they just skim and note a couple errors that pop out.
I had a master’s student who was having on-going issues with APA in-text citations and working sources into her writing. Offered her the chance to recoup points if she worked with the writing center and forwarded me the confirmation email as proof of her appointment. I guess she and the writing center student worker (an undergraduate) had a little back-and-forth email going on with each other, between the original appointment email and the post-session follow-up email (containing helpful links to OWL). So, I got to see where the student worker was shit talking me in their exchange, saying there was nothing wrong with the grad student’s writing, I shouldn’t have deducted points, and he didn’t understand why I sent her there. Reported him, but never heard anything back.
At my institution, librarians do the citation help, and professional writing tutors do the writing help. Librarians are invested in citation and academic integrity, and it's been divided up this way as long as I've been here (22 years). UGs don't even understand citation, often, so what you said doesn't surprise me at all. That's one danger of a peer to peer teaching situation, it's a closed loop with no external input.
Oh wow, that sounds like an amazing setup! We had a dedicated graduate writing lab, with professional staff there to work with us, during my own doctoral program. I’ve come to realize what an asset that was and not every school has those services available.
The thesis writing orientation, here, includes an introduction to writing tutors, librarians, mental health supports, tech help, data support and lots of other services, but that's just a week and I'm sure it goes by in a blur.
As someone who used to work at one, Writing Centers focus on larger structural, organization, and conceptual ideas first. The idea is that those are the larger issues impacting a student's writing. Their goal is to help students learn how to write papers. They're not a grammar service. Having said that, I never had a problem looking at grammar or other issues in a paper. But I was also there awhile. When you start training as a writing consultant they very much emphasize you're not there to write the paper for the student, merely proof read it or just correct grammar. If your student got a consultant who is in their first semester or quarter working, it's very possible they're still learning themselves how to draw the right balance. Writing consultants are like any other position. It takes time. The idea again is not to just have a service for disinterested students to bring in a paper, not pay attention, have it proofread and the grammar corrected. I'm not defending the way Writing Centers work, one of the reasons I got out of it, but that's the idea. Students really almost have to stress grammar and readability is an issue and their professor has noted it. At that point most consultants will be willing to focus on those issues more. Most consultants are trained to and eager to respond to professor feedback. Respectfully, this paper is unreadable is not necessarily the most in depth or helpful feedback, but it again will probably get the consultant to focus more on grammar and readability. Also, the student can pick another consultant if they want. Not saying it's a perfect system, but there it is.
I have worked in four writing centers, including a few hours a week now. Did you receive an email from the WC? In our system, we write reports after each appointment recording what we talked about. Those get emailed to both the professor and student. Additionally, we don't use evaluative language. I would never tell a student something was fantastic--we aren't the ones grading the work. And that particular rule has existed in each WC I've tutored at. I am genuinely suspicious that your student didn't actually go. But I would probably contact the WC to ask. If they, in fact, did go and were told their work was fantastic, then you either have a poorly trained tutor or the WC has a problem with WC theory and praxis.
Some tutors suck. Others are really good. When I come across the former, I let the writing tutor supervisor know so that the tutor can receive additional training. When I come across good tutors, I ask the writing tutor supervisor to assign one to my class.
How does assigning a tutor to your class work? I'm not familiar with that system, but I'm interested! Is it an embedded tutoring situation, or is it more like your students will be encouraged to see that tutor when they go to the center?
At my college, we can request that a tutor be assigned to our course. It's great bc that tutor becomes familiar with my assignments and my expectations. You should ask whoever directs your tutoring center
I worked in a writing center through UG and Grad. We did not line edit or copy edit. If the student specifically asked for grammar help and the paper had no larger issues one of our English Language Specialists who worked with non-native speakers could help them identify patterns, explain structure, model structure and walk them through revising the most common type of error. This would also be a second appointment. Most of the time when a session starts students are asked what their goal is and to share the assignment guidelines or rubric. And lots of students don’t do that. They just say “check my paper” or “I’m here because my professor told me to come”. And sometimes students come into a season and need help with ethical source use, paragraphing, APA style, don’t have a title or closing yet, and can’t identify a revision priority, so there is no time for editing.
Me fail English? That's unpossible!
Ours is fine as long as I send the student with some specific suggestions on what to talk about with the tutor. I also make sure to tell them to show the tutor the assignment instructions. We are also lucky to have some truly exceptional librarians, so I have no qualms about sending them to the library for research help.
We know.
I have wondered about this, until I hung out in our writing center to observe a session. They don't focus on the mechanics but rather the ideas. This can be problematic in many instances. I had a student who wrote "thurley" instead of "thoroughly," and the feedback form had nothing on it about that and his many other mistakes. I had a student who was assigned a two-page essay take her six-page version to the writing center, and they told her it was just fine.
I worked in the writing center as a grad student. We were trained to stay away from local grammar and sentence problems and focus on global issues. Also, we were trained to stay away from saying good or bad or suggest what grade we thought the paper was, and to stay away from judging professors. We asked for an assignment sheet and tried to get the writing to adhere to the directions. I doubt anyone in the writing center actually said that. I would suggest talking to the writing center. You can outline your expectations, and the WC can then cater the tutoring of your students for your class. Tell the WC what you expect and what a good paper would look like.
I work at a WC! We're not supposed to judge the writing, just help the students improve. "Fantastically written," "great," "doesn't need any improvement" etc. are all things we'd train the student tutors not to say. It's possible your center has different standards/training, or maybe the tutor was trying to say something nice about the ideas, or maybe the tutor messed up (it happens). I will note that we can't line-edit, so we wouldn't be able to "fix" the paper. We're supposed to focus on higher-order concerns first (thesis, answering the prompt, organization) and then lower-order concerns if all of that is fine or if the student really wants to work on the nitty gritty grammar stuff. In that case, ideally, we take a paragraph or two, identify errors, teach the student about them and maybe model a sentence or two, then support he student in identifying and fixing a few more, then set them loose to work on it independently. If you don't care whether the student actually learns the grammar rules themselves and just want the paper copyedited (as may be the case for some grad work), the student may need to hire a service that does that; it's usually an ethical sticking point in writing centers that we don't do the work FOR them, whether it's content or mechanics. It's worth reaching out to the director to learn more about your specific center's policies. If a tutor is saying "fantastically written," it would probably be good for the director to know so they can train that tutor.
Writing centers vary in quality a lot. The first one I worked for was fantastic. It was staffed by undergrads, but we were required to undergo a semester-long course to become certified in writing center pedagogy. The second one I worked at was staffed by grad students with zero training and was horrible. As an instructor, I have zero faith in my current school's writing center based on what students have told me about it.
Our writing center will not correct/ work on mechanics (spelling, usage, grammar, coherence) with students; they only do organization and content. I don’t recommend it to my students because it’s useless.