Reading Blog 2

Chapter 1

    Chapter 1 of the Bedford Guide, “The Writing Center as a Workplace”, focuses on the professional code of conduct a tutor should operate by during an appointment. The chapter covers courteousness, friendliness, polite ways to go about criticism, confidentiality, and formality.

    It was the section about formality that struck out to me the most, particularly the guide’s warning about being excessively informal with the student. The guide says that being too informal may offend students, possibly to a greater extent students of different backgrounds. I thought this was interesting because it brought me back to points made in previous readings about the essence of a writing center, the first being about collaboration made by Lunsford and the second being about the importance of taking into consideration student backgrounds. It seems to me that both of these undertakings would require at some point for conversations to diverge from actual writing and into informal conversation.

    Thus, the question I would have is how do we draw the line between informal conversation as a critical tool and informal conversation as an unprofessional look for a center?

Chapter 2

    Chapter 2 of the Bedford Guide breaks down into steps what actions the tutor should take each meeting to ensure the writer feels most at ease and the session is as productive as possible. This includes basic greetings, agenda setting, and important conversational components.

    A section of this chapter that I found particularly interesting is in the part of the agenda setting section in which the author covers navigating through deadlines and time constraints to address the most pertinent issues. At one point it is emphasized that the content and structure of a piece of writing is more important than its grammar and spelling, but it is at another point acknowledged that time or student preferences may constrain what a tutor is able to work on during a session. I think this implies that at certain points disagreements will arise concerning what issues should be addressed that aren’t resolvable through initial conversation.

    My question is, then, if a tutor might be considered the “expert” between themself and the writer, how much freedom should be given to the writer in deciding the most important parts of the paper or their writing to address?