Writing Center Observation #4

My second session today was a much more enjoyable experience. The student was also ESL, but she was definitely a more advanced speaker than the first client I observed. The student actually brought in three short papers. She wanted grammar and content help on the first, and general APA formatting help on all three since she found APA very confusing. She also mentioned that her professor was extremely picky, both about the APA formatting and the sentence structure of the class's papers, and hated the use of unspecified pronouns, so the consultant had a good idea of what to look for. The student read the whole paper aloud first, and then they went back and started looking for possible improvements.

The client and consultant had a much better chemistry in this session than in the last, and I felt that they shared leadership of the session very equally. Grammar wasn't a very big issue for this student, and she was able to point out several areas that she thought needed improvement. The consultant was really good at bouncing ideas off the student, and at using what she said about different sections to make suggestions. The consultant often asked questions like "Is this what you mean?" and he used the student's clarification to offer advice, which she used to solve the problems. The consultant also pointed out strong points of the paper as they were going through it, rather than mentioning strengths first and then only focusing on weaknesses for the rest of the session. I thought this was a great way to run a session.

After going through that paper, they looked through an APA handbook the client had brought in to fix formatting mistakes. The consultant pointed out the errors in the paper and made sure to find something in the book to back up his suggestions. He also wrote them all on his copy of the paper (in pencil, of course) so that the student could use them for reference later if she was unsure of her own notes.

Overall, I was really impressed with this consultant's methods, and I'm glad I got to sit in on this session after the unimpressive one I observed just before it.