Cinnabar and Alabaster

(Murphy/Sherwood)

"generally, tutor and student must first establish a working relationship or mutual understanding, as a basis for collaboration on improving the student's text"--stages of this process are "pretextual, textual, and posttextual" (8)

on developing that (pretextual) relationship, from meyer & smith: "tutors 'must listen carefully to distinguish underlying meanings in a writer's comments' (9)"; "the ways in which individuals process information must always be taken into account, too, since people tend to interpret, understand, and evaluate ideas in diverse ways. consequently, tutors need to engage in what harris calls 'perception checking' or 'guessing the student's basic message and asking for affirmation of that guess' (57)"; doing all of this empathetically & nonjudgmentally "will go a long way toward forming a special trust" <--an unexamined but apparently key component to a successful session (9)

"a good question for tutors to ask ourselves is, 'who has the power in the collaboration and how is that power used' as we, for example, truly interested in what the student has to say, or are we too quick to announce our opinions? are we acting as collaborators or authority figures? do our comments invite responses and show respect for the student's ideas, or do they foreclose further interaction and leave the student feeling intimidated?" (10)

on the textual part of sessions: "to find solutions that remain true to a student's writing style and intent, a tutor must learn to address the student's needs while also creating a collaborative space within which confidence and skills can flourish" (17)

on the posttextual: (like in interviewing) you want to wrap up by sending them forth w/a sense of what's been accomplished

on tutoring online: (according to joanna castner) "synchronous online tutoring offers opportunities for dialogue between tutors and writers, allowing them to build a relationship, clarify misunderstandings, and collaboratively create knowledge (124-7)"; also working online "allows a tutor and writer to keep a record of their conversations"; notes eric crump, in "at home in the MUD: writing centers learn to wallow" (on p. 242) "what is often lost, in the time between the conversation and the inscription, is the rich immersion in detail and nuance" taking place interactionally, which is recorded in online transcriptions (23-4)

(McAndrew & Reigstad)
according to reigstad (1980) conferences follow 3 models: student-centered, collaborative, & teacher-centered (25); being totally student-centered is often idealized but each has its benefits for different kinds of tutoring problem/situation.

tutoring in the real world is characterized by "chaos, complexity, & fuzziness," & while that makes it hard to offer definitive blanket-advice on how to do it, these are good things we shouldn't try to overcome (27)

body language and the tutoring environment: "polished tutors are aware of the messages given by their posture, gestures, and tone of voice, and they learn to manipulate those three areas to ensure the messages are positive. posture, because it is often seen and assessed from a distance, is the first message the tutor sends to the writer. the tutor should adopt a posture that is alert but relaxed. if the tutor is overly attentive, the writer may perceive it as nervousness, insecurity, or even anger; if the tutor is too relaxed, the writer may take it as indifference or fatigue....the rule for posture is: look available. once the tutoring session is underway, the tutor can lean in a bit to show interest and connection."

"the tutor's gestures are constantly assessed by the writer. at the first moment of interaction, the tutor should establish eye contact and smile....once tutoring is underway, the tutor can nod and use back-channel vocalizations like 'yeah' and 'uh-huh' to reinforce the nod, showing attention and interest."

"the writer reads the tutor's tone of voice, so the tutor should strive for a tone that is both friendly and professional, approachable and efficient. if the tutor sounds harsh, the writer may be intimidated or put off. if the tutor is too warm, the writer may assume that nothing directly useful will happen" (28-9)

(Gillespie & Lerner) (chp. 3 "The Tutoring Process")
26. "as a tutor, you don't have to be an expert on the subject matter of the paper the writer is working on" [and i'm not the expert on what they wrote or how/why they did it--they're the expert. i'm the one coming to them for demonstrations of the workings of their expertise]

29. "start with questions": "what was the assignment? what is your central point or main argument?" [& from there, "what kinds of influences/resources did you decide you needed in order to make that argument" or "...did you draw upon when designing your argument?"]

30. the writer-reads-aloud part--[this is why i want to pre-read work sent to me electronically, b/c it's done to fill time/space while the tutor becomes familiar w/the work, & to reduce awkwardness, & i don't want to have to use their time that way, plus i want to be more familiar with their texts than such an introduction would allow]

35. "higher-order concerns come first" & lower-order concerns later if the session's long enough for both [they mean structure, assignment-appropriateness, etc. as opposed to grammar details, but it's applicable too to questions like "what do you neeed other sources/influences in this paper for?" as opposed to questions like "how did you go about it--what does this inclusion look like in the text?" <--citations, allusions, etc.]

37. ideals for the session: "would look like two peers having a conversation about writing, where each is equally likely to ask a question, move forward or point out his or her confusion"; "right and wrong ways of asking questions"--"you may ask, 'why did you choose to put this section here?' the writer is still going to hear this question as 'this doesn't belong here'" (37).

contrastingly w/spradley, at least in the 1st example [(but this is for tutoring, not interviewing, although his concerns would likely apply here as well)] "content-clarifying questions can be important. 'what does this term mean?' 'what is this paragraph's function?' overall, avoid questions that put the writer in the position of trying to guess the answer that's in your head" (38). [how about "can you describe the reasoning you used when you put this together this way?"; can i ask "what do you mean" if i package it as "i want to make sure i'm hearing this the way you mean it" & then try a rephrase?]

100. ways to get more writer-talk inc. "descriptive meta-analysis questions" s.a. "what have you done when you've encountered this problem in the past?"

101. the classic wait time: "when you ask questions, wait for the answer. be patient. when you think you've waited long enough, wait that amount of time again."

(in Radforth: "Tutoring in Unfamiliar Subjects" by Alexis Greiner p. 115-20)

suggested approaches to not being sure you get what they're doing on the page, w/o losing their confidence in your knowledgeability, when you need to get it in order to see if it's working.

117. "it sounds like 'affected' is a key term. would you agree? [ann agrees] what exactly do you mean by 'affected?' i ask because its meaning might be the focus of your paper" <--"notice how the tutor depends on ann to confirm what the tutor thinks ann is getting at"

118. "this is hard for me to understand. it seems like you are putting forth a formula and then you explain why it works in those reactions. is that right?" ann: "close, but not really. i was trying to illustrate a flaw in a fairly well-known theorum as it applies to intercellular interactions"

119. "your client probably has a better sense of the writing in her discipline than you do"

(in Barnett & Blumner: Kenneth Bruffee and "Peer Tutoring and the 'Conversation of Mankind'" p. 206-18)

[he's not talking about exactly what i'm talking about, but his observations nevertheless defend it:] "if we accept the premise that knowledge is an artifact created by a community of knowledgeable peers and that learning is a social process not an individual one, then learning is not assimilating information...learning is an activity in which people work collaboratively to create knowledge among themselves by socially justifying belief. we create knowledge or justify belief collaboratively by cancelling each other's biases and presuppositions; by negotiating collectively toward new paradigms of perception, thought, feeling, and expression; and by joining larger, more experienced communities of knowledgeable peers through assenting to those communities' interests, values, language, and paradigm of perception and thought" (214); "peer tutoring is not, after all, something new under the sun. however we may explore its conceptual ramifications, the fact is that people have always learned from their peers and doggedly persist in doing so" (216).