The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

Reading in the Writing Center! What?
76
Sharon Cooper
Nicole Scanlan
Spring 2010
Many assumptions are made about what happens in the writing center. It is often thought that we
are a one-stop shop for grammar and punctuation. Yet, as tutors we know that our job is more complex
than that. We are given the challenge of helping students become better writers. This involves much more
than simple lower-order concerns. Each of us may struggle to find a way to help our students. We suggest
that one of the best ways to help a struggling writer is to read in the writing center.
In his English 125B class, Angus Dunstan uses this quote: "There is nothing else we ask all our
students to do in school that even approaches writing in the intellectual and psychological demands that it
make on students." This is truth tested every day in the writing center where student tutors and tutees
collaborate in an effort to improve the tutee’s writing. We developed the idea for this article from a
discussion we had in the tutor lounge about how academic writing overwhelms students with marginal
reading skills. We conclude that certain tutees need far more from the writing center than focus on their
lower order concerns, although most of them tend to think that grammar and syntax is their major
problem. While we do not wish, in anyway, to diminish the important role prescriptive grammar play in
academic discourse, our topic focuses on what occurs before the tutee ever begins to write. It is our
sincere hope that our discussion will prove useful to you in your own efforts to make a difference.
Some Theoretical Background
In a 2002 report, The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) states that
good academic writing is a response to analytical reading. Their finding is supported by a survey of
California College and University faculty which shows a positive correlation between analytical reading
and student success: 90% at UC; 71% CSU; and CCC 83%. This survey repeatedly identifies reading as
the most significant factor in the success of college students. Three fundamental reading competencies
prove essential: Reading for literal comprehension and retention, reading for depth of understanding, and
reading for analysis and interaction with the text. Gary Griswold’s article about tutoring reading, In
Postsecondary Reading: What Writer Center Tutors Need to Know, provides support for the ASCCC
findings and gives evidence that tutors are supportive of reading in the Writing Center. Every tutor
Griswold interviewed expressed concern about the reading skills of students they see. Most felt that their
students did not have problems actually reading the words on the page but rather had difficulty engaging
critically with the text and distinguishing between key points and supporting evidence.
Though students regularly have issues with literary analysis, Griswold's article also suggests that
they have unique problems dealing with infotexts, such as textbooks and academic essays. All tutors
interviewed believed that helping students become better readers is of importance in teaching writing.
Griswold voices encouragement for the role of reading in writing centers by stating that tutors should be
aware that a lack of formal course work in the teaching of reading does not mean they cannot be of great
assistance to students, just like tutors who do not consider themselves grammarians but who, nonetheless,
have acquired the ability to write and tutor grammatically correct English prose. He concludes that if
writing center tutors receive even minimal training on and information about reading theory, they can
develop a concept of how reading is best taught just as they have done with concepts or strategies for
teaching writing. By formulating and incorporating specific reading strategies in their tutee sessions,
tutors can improve a tutee’s reading ability, which will, in turn, improve the individual’s writing ability.