THE WRITING CONFERENCE

WHAT IS THE TUTOR'S ROLE IN THE WRITING CONFERENCE?

* Help students leave with ideas for significantly improving their papers.
* Provide a real reader’s perspective for the students.
* Listen and encourage students to talk through the problems they are having with their papers.
* Model planning, drafting, and revision strategies.
* Show support as students’ papers are analyzed.

HOW MIGHT A WRITING CONFERENCE PROCEED FROM START TO FINISH?

* Get acquainted briefly.
* Ask students for their concerns related to the papers they bring you. Listen
carefully. Take notes.
* Read and develop your own concerns. Add to your notes.
* Negotiate with students which concerns to discuss first, second, etc.
* Teach. (See handout titled “Strategies for Teaching One-To-One.”)
* Have students discuss what they plan to revise.
* Repeat steps 5 and 6 as needed for various concerns.

HOW SHOULD A TUTOR WORK WITH A CONFERENCING STUDENT?

* Use “I” language (e.g., I have trouble understanding this sentence) rather than “you” language (e.g., “you made a mistake here).
* Use reader-based responses whenever possible (e.g., I don’t really see the main point of this paragraph). Use rule-based responses only when absolutely necessary (e.g., You should always start your paragraph with a topic sentence).
* Sit side-by-side with students, not face-to-face.
* Teach using the whole writing process: Planning, drafting, revision, editing.
* Ask probing/prompting questions (e.g., What else can you tell me about this idea?) to get students thinking/talking more broadly and deeply.
* Ask leading questions (e.g., When do you use a comma with the word and?) to get students to recall basic information.
* Be patient with silence when waiting for students to respond to questions or prompts. Let them think and answer.
* Model behaviors and concepts that you’re trying to teach:
* Explain what you’re going to model.
* As you model, call attention to important aspects of what you’re modeling.
* Ask students to summarize what you modeled.
* Ask students to go through the process you modeled.

WHAT KINDS OF FEARS MIGHT CONFERENCING STUDENTS HAVE?

* They are bad writers.
* They can’t articulate their needs.
* They don’t know what teachers want from them.
* They don’t really care much about writing.
* They don’t really like to write.
* You’ll think they’re dumb or unworthy for any of the above.

WHAT SHOULD TUTORS AVOID WHILE CONFERENCING?

* Talking a lot (Allow and encourage students to talk a lot.)
* Prescribing remedies (Allow and encourage the students to develop a set of
possible remedies and select from among them.)
* Proceeding without a goal (After the first five or ten minutes or so, you and
students should know fairly specifically what you’re trying to accomplish.)
* Imposing too much structure (Create a new plan if the first one isn’t working for the student.)
* Ignoring whole-paper problems (Focusing on mechanical or grammatical problems is often easier but less useful.)
* Creating a list of all of a student’s problems or all of a paper’s errors at the beginning of the conference (This will overwhelm and discourage students.)
* Taking the paper and pencil away from students (The paper and all decisions concerning the paper belong to the student.)
* Accepting any responsibility for the final written product
* Predicting what grade an instructor might give a paper
* Revising, editing, proofreading any part of any paper

WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS FOR A TUTOR TO REMEMBER?

* Do all you can to help a student improve a paper in the most significant ways possible.
* Don’t revise, edit, or proofread for the student.
* Don’t discuss with the student what grade an instructor might assign a paper.

Adapted from Muriel Harris, Teaching One-to-One: The Writing Conference ( NCTE, 1986).