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Re: colleague's skepticism
WINTHROP UNIVERSITY Electronic Mail Message
Date: 02-Jan-1996 09:46am EDT
From: Josephine K. Tarvers
TARVERSJ
Dept: English
Tel No: (803) 323-4557
TO: Remote Addressee ( _smtp%"wcenter@unicorn.acs.ttu.edu" )
Subject: Re: colleague's skepticism
James, my first gut reaction to your colleague's slimy attack on setting up a
ceenter is this: finally, we know where to forward that message about magazine
subscriptions. A truly worthy recipient.
Now, as to his arguments. Do students learn from the reactions of their peers?
Yes, quite frequently. How many times do students tell us "I showed this to my
roommate/friends/lover/spouse/whatever" when we ask them how they revised and
edited a paper? The difference between showing it to such an informal reader and
to a peer tutor in the center is that the peer tutor is TRAINED--perhaps not to
the level of a Ph.D. in rhet/comp or belles lettres, but certainly in
recognizing and talking about major rhetorical problems (organization, audience,
strategy). Moreover the tutor will respond in the student's own language, not
teacher language, thus both making her response more accessible to the student
and contributing to the weight of her ethos (i.e. this is an issue that real
people like students care about, not one of those things that just teachers care
about). The value of the suggestions made by a peer tutor and the degree to
which the student writer act on them, I would agree, may be limited by lack of
talent, experience, or practice. Nonetheless, because their comments show
writers how a peer responds to a communicative act may well indicate areas of
indeterminacy in language and lead the writer to rre-enact his or her critical
praxis. (How's that for DeMan-iac language? ;-))
"Using undergraduate tutors is a measure of our desperation." No, I would say
that it is instead making best use of an underutilized resource. At Winthrop we
are making the shift from mostly faculty tutors to virtually no faculty tutors,
but we have been amazed at the quality and talent of people we have been able to
recruit on campus as new salaried tutors: a woman who has substitute-taught in
high schools for fifteen years, a man with many years of newspaper experience,
a transfer student from a university with a WIDE range of undergraduate
mentoring programs, the quinti-lingual spouse of a military officer (for whom
English is a FOURTH language, in which she is quite fluent). All of these are
undergraduates or first-year MA or MEd students. Peer tutors allow universities
to tap a greatly-underappreciated pool of talent. We are providing them with the
rhetorical training that will particularlize their talents to the needs of our
clients.
"Leave counseling to the psychology department." Balderdash. Well trained tutors
aren't in Centers to make the clients feel better about themselves; they're
there to help their clients write more effectively. If improving their writing
skills then helps clients feel more confident about and more satisfied with
their work, that's a nice side effect. However, that's not what our mission is.
As for dealing with resistance to the Center, I have found that having a mission
statement that clearly states (in positive, not negative language) what the
Center believes it can do for and with clients is helpful in dealing with
resistant folks like your colleague. It's available by gophering to
lurch.winthrop.edu, and selecting Winthrop Resources/Campus Resources. Feel free
to steal at will. (There will be a slightly revised version up soon.)
And as a medievalist by training and a person who's had to deal with much
resistance both in corporate and collegiate settings, I can only add:
illegitimum non carborundum. (Make _them_ go look it up.) ;-)
Cheers,
Jo
--------------------
Jo Koster Tarvers
Department of English and Writing Center
Winthrop University
Rock Hill, SC 29733 USA
(803-323-4557 voice) (803-323-4557 fax)
tarversj@winthrop.edu