Ask the typical student on KU’s virtual campus what he or she knows about the Writing Center, the odds are that most would say the Writing Center provides a paper review service for students. While this statement is true, it is not the whole truth – and there lies the problem.
Over the past several months, the Writing Center has seen a drastic increase in submissions to its paper review service to the point where meeting the 48 – 72 hour turn-around time can be a formidable, tutor-intensive challenge. Students often submit papers at the 11th hour, including sometimes frantic messages for paper-weary tutors: “Please help! This is due tomorrow!” For too many students, submitting a paper to the Writing Center has become an ingrained part of their writing process: draft, submit to the Writing Center for review, finalize based on Writing Center feedback.
This tendency to use the paper review service as purely an editorial service is not only a bad practice in general, but it has also come at the expense of other valuable Writing Center services – live tutoring, writing reference library, question and answer queue, and workshops and presentations – that might legitimately assist students with their writing process. For example, a twenty minute live tutoring session might help the student discover and articulate an appropriate focus and/or structure for a paper. Visiting the writing reference library might assist a student with prewriting strategies that can be employed to generate ideas for paper topics or supporting points.
Too often students come to the Writing Center at the end of their process (if a bona fide process has been used at all), thinking that a paper review is just what they need before finalizing and then submitting for evaluation. This approach is a breeding ground for bad writing because students often need help much earlier in their process, but due to a complicated amalgam of factors (work, family, other courses, for example), students don’t use the Writing Center until a draft is completed and at that point problems may already be inherent in the writing that may have been resolved sooner and much easier. Unfortunately, as is often the case with writing, “fixing” something involves much more than correcting a few comma splices and possessives errors; to this end, the work needed to improve upon a draft with systemic issues (a skewed focus, for example) will take considerable time, which is a strong argument against using the Writing Center’s paper review service as it is being used now. If a student submits a paper to the review service that lacks a clear focus, what is it the tutor can say, really, other than the paper lacks a clear focus and that perhaps a stronger thesis would help give the paper much-needed clarity and even structure? If this same student came to the Writing Center earlier, say to chat in real time with a tutor, he/she could have discussed the focus of the paper and perhaps worked on a thesis that established an appropriate focus – all before drafting. Students and instructors need to realize that the Writing Center can help in significant ways prior to a draft ever being completed.
To complicate the issue, some courses and/or instructors have a blanket policy that requires all students to submit papers to the Writing Center for review. This practice, while well-intended, does not promote good writing and, in fact, encourages the writer to be more passive about his/her learning as students give their work less attention up front because they think the tutors will point out what needs to be “corrected” during the review process.
While the paper review service certainly can be helpful, it is important to understand that tutors offer holistic feedback, not line editing. Tutors offer global, here’s-what-to-do-when-thinking-about-the-writing-as-a-whole type responses, and do not simply point out errors, though the latter seems to be what drives students to submit papers in the first place. The “error and correction” method of responding to student writing is an ancient and still used pedagogy that does little to improve student writing. What value is there in knowing a comma splice exists in a sentence in the sixth paragraph if the focus of the paper is not yet defined clearly, if body paragraphs lack supporting details and general development or if ideas are arranged as haphazardly as leaves in a windstorm? By over-relying on the paper review service, students miss out on the opportunities to think about and explore their ideas – to be a part of their own writing process and not a casual by-stander. If students compose a draft, submit that draft (sometimes the very first draft!) to the Writing Center, and then revise based on what a tutor reports, how is that kind of process truly going to help students become better writers?
And what do the students do with the feedback they receive from tutors, especially if it holistic? Do they really address the important substantive issues that can help them become better writers or do they only address what can be easily “corrected”?
Paper review can be an effective form of feedback if the service is used appropriately by students and faculty alike. To this end, all must realize that the student needs to do the legwork first – the working through the process – and submit a paper that represents time and effort spent to discover a focus, try out ideas, draft, experiment with structure, and clarify meaning. When students rush to complete a draft, when they bypass the actual writing process and instead just sit down and type, problems will ensue. When instructors make it mandatory for students to submit papers to the Writing Center, students are compelled to hurry through the writing so they can submit their papers for review.
The Writing Center and tutors can offer substantive help long before the final period is placed on a draft so those services should be used. Indeed, students should take advantage of the other valuable Writing Center services that may provide the kind of feedback and help that will lead to a much more polished final project and, better yet, real hands-on learning in terms of understanding and working with the writing process and addressing issues to make students better college-level writers.
[This article was originally published in our July, 2009 issue.]
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