Final Paper... and my hypothesis was right!!!

Introduction:
When a student walks into the Writing Center (WC), he has expectations that his tutor must fulfill in order for him to be satisfied with the session. Many students come to the WC because they were forced by their professors or to receive a participation grade. Some students come to the WC because they are just about failing the course and it is their last attempt to bring a grade up. Even fewer students come for personal learning reasons; they have a paper due and are not sure how to rewrite a sentence, or want to make sure their grammar or diction is correct.
Throughout the semester working in the Writing Center, I had the opportunity to tutor several students in different areas of study, backgrounds, and education levels and determine if there is a solid, common reason for college students to come to the writing center. I put my students into two categories; freshman, and upperclassman. I studied their writing and assignments, asked many questions, and tried to understand their problems in writing and why they came to the writing center. My goal was to find why students come to the Writing Center, and if their grade level determines what their problems are. I was able to tutor seven students, three freshmen, and four upperclassmen. While some of them were English as a Second Language students, they have been in America long enough to be fluent. I discovered that the differences of freshman and upperclassman coming to the WC are few, but dramatic. Freshmen come to the Writing Center because they are unsure of the assignments. Their questions are broad, “How do I start this paper?”, “How do I quote this?”, and the tutor has to guide them rather than just explain. Freshmen seem to be more insecure about their writing and teachers expectations and allow the tutor to have the upper hand on the assignment. Upperclassmen, on the other hand, come to the writing center to have a paper proof read, they already know the assignment and what to write, but they have concerns in sentence structure and grammar. Overall, the differences of students coming to the WC vary upon their grade and knowledge.

Review of Literature:
As this was research conducted for a peer tutoring class, the tutors were not certified and did not have prior knowledge or experience on tutoring. Tutoring Writing, A Practical Guide for Conferences was a great help in tutoring students. McAndrew and Reinstad state many guidelines and examples for tutors as they may come across challenging students. Cheerleading and assignment ownership issues are stated, as well as a chapter on tutoring students with different learning styles and abilities. However, they did not have much on students of various grade levels and how a tutor might differ his way of facilitating a session. A chapter on ability levels aided with this research and reminded the tutor that some student might not have learned the proper writing methods. Some students might be new to writing assignment, which from this research, freshman seem to come across a lot of new writing styles and ideas. McAndrew and Reigstad mention Freedman and Sperlings theory on high ability and low ability writers. High ability writers demonstrate positive attitude on writing, a confidence when working with tutors, and focus on discourse level topics. Low ability writers focus on discourse and correctness issues. Discourse-level focus is the character of the revision that is most improved after a tutoring session (91). Through this research, one will be able to identify high ability writers from low ability writers, but most importantly, classify these two categories as freshmen, or upperclassmen.
The Longman Guide to Writing Center Theory and Practice by Robert Barnett and Jacob Blumner focuses on the Writing Center as a microcosm. The WC is where students come to fix mistakes, but also learn outside the classroom. Barnett and Blumners chapter on minimalism was helpful for this research, as the tutor encouraged students to take ownership of their papers, by the end of a session the student was able to correct his work with little guidance from the tutor. Minimalist tutoring refers to the tutor guiding the student with an idea or simple correction, and the student LEARNING to use that idea to make it his own, or LEARNING to apply that correction to other papers. The tutor’s job is not to edit, but to teach how to fix ones mistakes. The tutors job is not to improve a paper, but to improve the writer (219). A minimalist approach is most helpful to freshmen, who need the skills and guidance to write similar papers in the future without a tutor.
Persons in Process by Anne Herrington and Marcia Curtis is a case study of four students of various backgrounds and levels of development. Nam, Steven, Rachel, and Francois are all college students who participated on a long term study. Herrington and Curtis’ study show the personal and private struggles of these students and how their writing changed over time. Herrington and Curtis address issues of ESL writers in the WC and problems college students encounter with their writing. It is important to note that this was a formal study conducted between one and four years to exemplify each students journey to become better writers, not by college students tutoring other college students for a month with little training or experience. Development in this study is stated as positive change, where all students improved their writing. This study parallels the students development, with their personal experiences, that their writing improved as they matured.
John Harbords article Minimalist tutoring--an exportable model?, asks the question “does the writing center teach students by minimalist tutoring”? By making students do all the work, is it helping them develop the skills to do work by themselves? Harbord states that the role of the tutor is to listen to students, set goals, guide the student through problems, help the student develop a thinking process to enable them to be better writers in the future. Harbord exemplifies a colleagues thoughts by the metaphor of product and processing. Product and Processing refers to a piece of paper and how its made; its not what the product looks like in the end, but why it looks like that. Similarly, a student can write a well written paper if he went through the process of developing himself into a good writer. Minimalist tutoring helps to develop critical thinking, making the student be accountable for his work, and learn, rather than have the tutor edit.