Engage with Tutoring & Composition Theory

During my first semester as a Writing Mentor, I took an ENG 484 class that surveyed teaching pedagogy and composition theory. This blog post reflects on how the theories I studied in that course helped me to enhance my teaching tactics in the online classroom.

ENG 484 Reading List:

Author	Article
The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Committee	"A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction"
Peter Elbow	"About Responding to Student Writing"
Asao Inoue	"Community-Based Assessment Pedagogy"
Ed White	"Responding to and Grading Student Writing"
Alyssa-Rae Hug	"Two's Company, Three's a Conversation"
George Cooper, Kara Bui, and Linda Riker	"Protocols and Process in Online Tutoring"
Richard Beach	“Demonstrating Techniques for Response in the Writing Conference”
Lil Brannon and C. H. Knoblauch	"On Students' Rights to Their Own Texts"
Yergeau et al.	"Multimodality in Motion"
Valerie Balester	"How Writing Rubrics Fail: Toward a Multicultural Model"
Zandra L. Jordan	"Students Right, African American English, and Writing Assessment: Considering the HBCU"
Tony Silva	"On the Ethical Treatment of ESL Writers”
Paul K. Matsuda	"The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. Composition"
Carol Severino	"Crossing Cultures with International ESL Writers: The Tutor as Contact Zone Person"

After each assigned ENG 484 reading, my peers and I participated in an online discussion forum to share our reactions and ideas about the different pedagogies. Engaging with both the readings and my fellow classmates allowed me to consider new teaching approaches and how I might implement the ideas in my own classes.

Though I believe each of these readings impacted my understanding of my mentoring practices, I particularly enjoyed Alyssa-Rae Hug's teaching and composition theories. Her article focuses on making composition courses more conversational as well as empowering the student to retain ownership over their writing.

Here is a snippet of my discussion forum response to Hug's writing: 

I hadn’t considered how destructive a “singular monologue” approach can be to a student’s growth as a writer. Instead, Hug suggests that we should offer feedback from multiple voices (or, in her example, from the professor and writing fellow). This variety of voices gives students a chance to hear multiple perspectives, which repositions the traditional authority expectations and prompts students to freely discuss their work as a writer. It also lets students acknowledge that there can be different readings of the same essay. I believe the main benefit of Hug’s approach is that her feedback style asks students to reevaluate what they personally want to say. This approach helps the writer keep ownership over their own writing.

Following this discussion forum reflection, I encouraged my students to attend "writing workshops" to discuss their essay drafts in groups of 2 to 4 students. When workshopping a portion of the essay — for example, the student's thesis statement — I began to prompt all students to "chip in" during the conversation. This not only developed a more collaborative atmosphere in the classroom, but it also allowed students to hear multiple perspectives.

For asynchronous feedback, I began to use Google Docs, which allowed me to create a dialogue by prompting the student to respond to my Google Doc comments. This was another was to move away from the "monologue" and towards a meaningful conversation.

Hug's article also explores how teaching practices can encourage (or discourage) students to take ownership of their learning and writing. After reading her article, I've grown more aware of my interactions with students and make an effort to ensure students retain ownership over their writing projects. For example, I now address my students as "writers" in my feedback explanations and describe myself as the "reader." I want to emphasize the idea that they are the writers and I am just a reader that will give them insight into how their work is perceived/understood. That is, I am not going to "swoop in" and do their revisions for them.

In this draft comment, I use the phrase "as the reader" to emphasize my role as a reader, not a writer.

I also literally address the students as writers in my group blog posts and class emails, whereas before I used to address the students as "everyone."

Before:

After:

Alongside these more subtle changes, I also encourage peer review in my classes by emphasizing the importance of hearing others' perspectives. I congratulate students on their thoughtful contributions when they step up to the challenge and offer constructive feedback to their peers. It is my hope that, as Hug suggests, encouraging more feedback channels and acknowledging students as writers will help students retain ownership over their own writing.