Writing Center consultation write-up

Hello everyone!

One of our consultants gave me permission to post this reflection based on one of her recent consultations. Although every consultation is different, her post is an example of ways UWC sessions can help students with global issues (even though students say they are coming for help with "grammar"). --Kim

Consultation to Share

On Wednesday this week, a student came in with a paper for her ENC 1102 class. The assignment asked students to watch a documentary in class and to write a paper analyzing the documentary’s main point and the effectiveness of the director’s use of logos, ethos, and pathos, in showcasing this point to the audience. The documentary that this student watched focused on the surveillance procedures of the national government. While she had a 2-page single-spaced paper (in other words, the 4 double-spaced pages she was required to write), the paper was mostly summary and lists of people who had appeared as interviewees in the film. When I asked the student what her main concerns were she said grammar and sentence structure.

At this point I was a little worried and overwhelmed. She had already sent the paper to her mother and grandmother, and they had told her that it was “a decent paper but a little rambling.” Reading through her paper, I had noticed several grammatical errors (comma splices, fragments, tense shifts, and subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent agreement). I wanted to address the student’s concerns about grammar since they were so evident, but I knew that a paper full of summary would never suffice in a Composition 2 class. I mentioned that I had noticed a few things while reading through and asked if she had had any trouble inserting analysis of logos, ethos, and pathos into her paper while writing. She agreed that she had struggled with organizing her thoughts and mentioned that her mother and grandmother often tell her that her papers are “all over the place.” Seizing on this comment, I informed the student that I had the same reaction.

From there, I was able to point out the four sentences of analysis that the paper had and to help the student develop her thesis. Her original “thesis” had not been stated clearly or supported at all by the body of the paper. After talking through the ways she could analyze the film, I suggested a prewriting strategy (one that I often use) to her. I told her to take out a sheet of paper and write down everything that came to her mind when thinking about this assignment and then to go back with different colors of highlighters and group her thoughts into sections. From there she should be able to see the basic structure of her paper and to understand her argument a little bit better. She agreed that she liked that idea.

Once she had a better grip on which elements of her paper she could keep, how to structure the body, and what her thesis was, I turned to grammar because she had mentioned it as a concern. Focusing on the few sentences that she was planning on keeping, I pointed out some of the major problems that had become themes throughout the paper. I told her to keep an eye out for similar issues in her revisions then suggested that she return to the UWC after writing her next draft.