{"id":5959,"date":"2015-05-04T12:09:59","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T17:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/?p=5959"},"modified":"2017-07-12T14:51:24","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T19:51:24","slug":"a-case-for-disciplinary-tutoring-in-the-writing-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/a-case-for-disciplinary-tutoring-in-the-writing-center\/","title":{"rendered":"A Case for Disciplinary Tutoring in the Writing Center"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

By Laura Plummer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Plummer directs Indiana University\u2019s Campus Writing Program, a WAC program that administers the writing center. She is a part of the Big Ten Writing Center\/Program Directors\u2019 group that includes UW-Madison, and which meets annually to hobnob about running writing centers at big research institutions.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Vagaries of General Advice<\/h3>\n
\"Laura<\/a>
Laura Plummer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOK, Let me stop you for just a minute. The advice you just gave the writer will result in her receiving an F on that paper.\u201d<\/p>\n

I received that comment while interviewing for a writing center tutoring position when I was a graduate student in English literary studies.<\/p>\n

As part of the interview, I was given an assignment and an essay draft from an undergraduate business law course, alongside the probably familiar direction to read both documents in preparation for a role-playing discussion of the paper. The essay was an analysis of a case concerning the death of an employee who died on the job.<\/p>\n

What I had said to elicit this remark was to recommend that the writer vary his word choice, that the phrase \u201ccaused the death of\u201d was a bit awkward. Might he not find another word or phrase? \u201cKilled\u201d came to mind.<\/p>\n

\"arts<\/a>
Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences coat of arms<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And that was the word on which this embarrassing moment hung: to cause the death of someone, in legal terms, is different from killing her. The latter implies volition, or even worse, intent. My diagnosis (repetitive word choice) and recommendation (change up said words)\u2014are based on tenets of good writing tutoring. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) dedicates a section to this issue in its \u201cWord Choice\u201d resource.<\/p>\n

In my very specific tutorial moment, however, following such advice would have led the student into problematic prose. That is, my ignorance might have misled, well intentioned though I might have been.<\/p>\n

Mindful Practice<\/h3>\n

From that moment on, as a writing tutor then and as a writing center administrator now, I have remembered that lesson: to keep in mind the demands made of writers that are particular (even peculiar?) to individual courses, genres, and disciplinary discourses.<\/p>\n

Our writing center at Indiana University Bloomington, Writing Tutorial Services (WTS, or \u201cwits\u201d for short), sees roughly 7,000 hour-long tutorials per year. We are administratively housed in the office of the Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education and its Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. We are not administratively or financially tied to the English department.<\/p>\n

\"Indiana<\/a>
Indiana University School of Business coat of arms<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While 30 percent of our clients come from various flavors of the course that fulfills the university\u2019s first-year composition requirement, the remainder are drawn from throughout the curriculum. Other required \u201cgateway\u201d courses make up the second third of our clients: public speaking (from arts and sciences), business communication (from our business school); public policy (from our school of environmental and public affairs) and development of dramatic art (also in arts and sciences).<\/p>\n

Because we serve such a disciplinarily diverse group of writers, our staff is hired from throughout the university; as of today, we have 42 tutors representing these schools: computing and informatics (which includes library sciences), arts and sciences, music, public affairs, business, and journalism (soon to become the media school). Undergraduates comprise about half our staff; graduate students the other, most of whom are in Ph.D. programs.<\/p>\n

Disciplinary tutoring is not a new idea any more\u2014Sue Dinitz in her work with Jean Keidasch and with Susanmarie Harrington has argued that a lack of disciplinary knowledge places certain limitations upon tutors; the latter found in a modest study of political science and history students that the tutors\u2019 disciplinary knowledge helped tutors address more complex and broader issues in student writing.<\/p>\n

While we cannot reasonably promise our tutors to be experts about everything, we can quite easily educate ourselves and our tutors to be at least familiar with the generic requirements and disciplinary conventions of those courses and assignments we work with most at the WC.<\/p>\n

Does the responsibility for a document ultimately lie with the writer? Yes, of course, but we have to acknowledge that tutors do have some authority at the tutoring table. In the context of my business law fiasco, I was not a helpful partner; my diagnosis was clearly ill-advised.<\/p>\n

However, a few, simple points of knowledge about the business law assignment, for example, might have made a world of difference in our practice. Some are from the assignment:<\/p>\n