On focusing on "The Writer"

I know my tutors-in-training must find me a broken record, but I think they're finally starting to recognize the nuances inherent in what seemed a simple dictum when we read it in Stephen North back in August: Writing centers are there to help writers, not necessarily to improve a piece of writing.

This discussion was raised on P.'s blog last week and again in class yesterday. I hear it not only in the tutors' agony that their clients are still making Cs - shouldn't the writing center be able to get them to an A? what are we doing wrong? - but also in C.'s question: How much change can tutors really affect in the academy when it comes to things like convincing instructors that ESL writing doesn't have to sound like Native English Speaker (NES) writing in order to be effective?

Lying awake last night, puzzling over why yesterday's class felt like it fell so flat to me (aside from the fact that students are exhausted and living for Thanksgiving break at this point), I thought of all the points I really wanted to make but, stupidly, I thought were implicit in my simple repetition of "focus on the writer, guys, not the writing." So here's another try, which will bring me back to ESL writers in the end.

What does it mean to focus on the writer? A client comes to a session with an essay for Professor X's literature class. The essay clearly has no focus; the client has good ideas about "Why the Caged Bird Sings," but the essay is a mishmash of thoughts and insights without a controlling, overarching idea. The essay is due the next day, so the client has time for significant revision. As a tutor, what do we focus on? The fact that without a clear, recognizable thesis and substantial revision to connect relevant details back to that thesis (and to cut those that are irrelevant), Professor X is going to murder this essay? In a way, yes. But when we focus on the writer, we get beyond this essay, this professor, this assignment. As we patiently question the writer about what she really wants to say about Maya Angelou's work, we stress to her, "Ok, this sounds to me like your main idea. Do you understand that essays operate from controlling ideas, what we often call a 'thesis'?"

In that moment, we step back from this essay - and by extension, from the grade the writer will receive on this essay - and push outward to the writer herself. Does she understand what a 'thesis' is? Can we help her understand how to write one that a reader can recognize, and that will assist her in organizing her essays and choosing evidence that's appropriate for her overall purpose? If this writer can begin to learn that lesson (and in one session, she will probably only begin to learn it; she will still need practice), then she can apply it in her future essays, and abracadabra, we have focused on the writer, not the text.

Ideally, that tutoring session would also help this student get a good grade (or at least a better grade) on the essay. But let's say that in working with this client on her thesis and development, we realize we aren't addressing much about her grammar, and the essay she submits is still going to have some awkward phrasings, inelegant integration of quotes, and comma splices. Professor X marks down quite a lot for grammar. As tutors, have we not done our jobs because we didn't see to it that this client's text was absolutely, spot-on, just-the-way-Professor-X-likes-it perfect?

NO, IT DOES NOT. We worked with a writer; we focused on helping that client learn important lessons about academic writing - and, hopefully, about the writing process, as we should have made time to talk to her about strategies for finding, refining, and focusing a thesis at the end of our session. The client may be devastated that she didn't get an A on the essay. She may come back to us and cry on our shoulders about how unfair Professor X is. At that point, we pull out our interpersonal techniques, like the ones Christina Murphy describes, and we help the client overcome her emotional baggage so she can keep going on that arduous road to becoming a successful writer.

When we look at tutoring this way, we don't have to worry that we can't know every professor's expectations, or that some professors don't even seem to know their own expectations for student writing. It's a tall order in our product-driven society, but in the writing center, we are not interested in texts; we are interested in writers. (Gasp! I just used an idiomatic phrase. Hint-hint, nudge-nudge, wink-wink to my tutors-in-training.)

Now, how does this relate back to my less-than-stimulating presentation on cultural preferences in writing and ESL writers yesterday? Actually, I think this may be at the core of what made the lecture so...well, I'm not sure I really have words for how anti-climactic that discussion felt. But here's what came to me last night. When we work with ESL writers, we are still working with writers, not with their texts. A whole other dimension is added because we are also helping them to acquire a new language, and thus the tendency to focus exclusively on the text is perhaps even greater than it is with NES clients. I mean, ESL clients' essays just have so many errors sometimes, and we know Professor X's red pen is going to bleed all over that paper. What do we do? Where do we begin? How can we make Professor X and Company respect linguistic and cultural diversity so this student doesn't have to cast off her/his home culture and become just like every other Standard Edited American English academic automaton?

Well, what we do is what we do with every other client: We begin with the writer. Instead of worrying over the split between Higher Order Concerns and Lower Order Concerns, we try to figure out what would most help this client progress as a writer - not what would most benefit this particular text, but what this client doesn't seem to know, understand, or be able to control about her/his writing. No thesis? Let's talk about what a thesis statement is. Circular organization? Let's discuss American preferences for linearity, make sure the client understands our thousand-year-old rhetorical tradition "arrangement" (nod to J.). Missing articles? Let's explain to the client, in our own words, why non-count nouns (i.e., advice) don't get articles, but count nouns (i.e., the buses) do. Will this ESL client leave the writing center with an essay guaranteed to get an A? No. In fact, s/he may leave the writing center and turn that essay in to a professor who calls up the writing center director and fumes, "I thought your tutors were supposed to help ESL writers be able to sound more like American students! This kid can't even speak English! How am I supposed to read this?"

And the writing center director (or, in this case, the tutor-training professor) calmly replies, "First of all, my tutors are there to work with writers, not necessarily to improve their texts. And secondly, would you like me to send you some interesting articles about second language acquisition?"

And that's what it's all about.