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Conducting Helpful Conferences
This handout provides tips for conferencing with students in a way that reinforces student-centered pedagogy. If we teach that writing is a self-empowering process in our classrooms, it is incumbent upon us to model the same philosophy in our offices. This approach to "office hours" presents several challenges, most of which are related to time constraints and the power differential between the student and teacher.
An effective conference is not simply a conversation about the student's writing, even if it sometimes can feel that way; instead, a good conference involves setting a clear goal, enacting specific strategies for meeting that goal, and mapping out an action plan for what the student will do when he or she leaves the office. A student should be doing the majority of the work on his or her writing during the conference.
Different types of conferences demand different demeanors and different strategies. Certainly, a conference with a student whom we suspect of plagiarism will differ markedly from a conference with a student who is dropping by for a little thesis statement help. In this handout, I do not attempt to address special situations such as conferencing about academic dishonesty or a contested grade. Instead, this handout should help you help a student with his or her writing, whether the student drops by during office hours by his or her own volition, attends a 15 minute session that is required of all students, or comes into the office at your request.
Acting as a facilitator during a conference can be difficult. First of all, there is a limited amount of time. Given this, it can be tempting to forego process pedagogy and focus instead on the product; it takes more time to lead the student to an answer than it does to provide the answer yourself. Second, telling the student the solution to a writing problem is easy. The student is struggling, and needs answers, and you most likely have them. Resist the urge to become the Teacher with a capital "T." It's possible to undermine what we have accomplished in the classroom by taking too much control over the paper's direction, making comments that damage self-confidence, or overwhelming the student with suggestions.
Before the conference:
- Ask the student to bring 2 copies of what he or she is working on
- Arrange the chairs in the office so that you are able to sit next to the student. This encourages a collaborative approach to the paper. It also means that the student doesn't hand over the paper, as if to be judged, but instead looks at it with you.
- If you have asked the student to attend office hours to address a particular writing need, ask him or her to prepare in advance. For example, if you know you are working on comma usage, have the student circle every comma in the paper. If organization is the problem, have the student reverse outline the paper in advance. Or if supporting the argument in detail has been an issue in the past, ask the student to highlight the evidence in one color and the analysis in another color.
Beginning of the conference:
- If you only have one copy of the paper, encourage the student to hold the paper and do the writing. Try not to grab the paper from the student's hands. Encourage the student to take notes at the beginning of the conference, or work out a strategy whereby the student talks and the teacher writes down everything he or she says on a scrap sheet of paper. No matter what you decide, briefly mention the importance of writing something down during the conference.
- Review the assignment. Ask the student to explain the assignment in his or her own words. Especially focus on the verbs in the assignment--what does it mean to analyze, describe, explain, compare, or evaluate ?
- Set a goal for the conference. Usually there is only enough time to target one writing area. Ask the student what he or she is most concerned about with the paper. Emphasize the role of the audience by asking, "What do you want me to pay attention to when we read?" If the student doesn't have an answer, ask what he or she usually struggles with as a writer? Or, what writing trends have surfaced in draft workshops or teacher comments?
- If the student hasn't written anything or seems especially frustrated/overwhelmed, take some time just to talk about the paper or the writing process. You can use the entire conference to brainstorm, suggest ways to jumpstart the writing process, or motivate the student. It also can be fruitful to ask the student to tell you about his or her paper because sometimes a disconnect exists between what a student intends to convey in a paper and what makes it to the page.
- Consider reading the paper aloud. Reading aloud can help the student detect awkward or sentence structure, choppiness, or wordiness. It also reinforces the importance of writing for an audience. Ideally, reading aloud underscores the importance of voice ; writing a paper becomes as much about making and communicating meaning as it does fulfilling a class assignment.
During the conference:
- Respect the student and how much she knows about her own writing. One way to do this is to ask for the student's response after reading or hearing the paper. The teacher's primary role in a conference is to ask good questions, and leave time for the student to answer the questions. Here are some questions to consider:
a. What do you think now that you hear the paper aloud/read the paper again?
b. What's your favorite part of the draft? What part do you think needs work?
c. How has your draft changed?
d. What did you learn about your writing by hearing it aloud?
e. What are you trying to say in this paper? What is it about? What's your argument?
- If the student doesn't have much to say, choose one area that you feel is most pressing, and make a comment regarding the effect on you as a reader. There's no escaping the fact that eventually you will be grading this paper under discussion, or at least you will be assigning a grade in the class and so the student will be anxious for your opinion. Still, avoid prescriptive statements that fix issues in the particular paper but don't help the reader learn to recognize and address these issues independently. There is a subtle, but important difference in terms of the effect on the student between saying, "This paper has organization problems on page 4" vs. "I was following you until the third paragraph, and then, as I reader, I wasn't sure where you were taking me."
- Throughout the conference, ask the student to justify certain writing decisions. Reinforcing the idea that writing is about choices gives the student confidence to take control of the process. So, instead of saying, "It's confusing that you waited to tell us the argument until the conclusion," consider asking, "How did you decide where to place the argument?" If the paper seems lacking in depth, ask the student about his or her writing process. A lack of pre-writing is often the reason for a lack of evidence in the paper itself.
- Keep asking yourself: "Who is doing the work?" You might be exhausted after a conference because you have been formulating useful questions and actively listening, but don't wear yourself out trying to "fix" the student's writing. It doesn't help the student in the long run for you to tell him or her to delete the extraneous paragraph on page 5 and combine the paragraphs on page 2 and page 4. Instead, what strategies can you provide that help the student address the organizational issues in the paper? If we communicate our struggles as readers at certain places in the text, what we are left wanting to know and why, then the student can figure out what to revise to help us understand the direction of the argument more clearly.
- One useful technique is to try to close your mind as you are working on a particular writing area and focus only on questions you can ask the student. So, when you are brainstorming about a thesis, you might give sample theses that have nothing to do with his or her topic and ask questions, but otherwise don't strain yourself coming up with the perfect thesis in your head. Of course you can write a thesis--you are getting your PhD in English, after all-- but your keen thesis crafting ability doesn't help the student. Ultimately, our job as writing teachers is to make ourselves obsolete.
- Ask the student to write during the conference (brainstorm, circle the first word and verb of each sentence, add analysis, re-work the introduction, thesis, or conclusion, re-write topic sentences so that they more explicitly identify the subject of each paragraph and the relationship to the thesis).
- Try to say something positive and specific about the paper. "This is good" is vague and unconvincing. Instead, focus on a single writing area (e.g. transitions, diction, or thesis) or a sentence or paragraph that you thought was thoughtful, well-argued, or well-written.
At the end of the conference:
- Ask the student what his or her action plan for revision is. Have the student write out a few bulleted points to guide the revision.
- Go over briefly what you learned during the conference. Ask the student if she or he has any questions. Remind that student that the paper might need further revision than what could be covered during the conference. All writing issues cannot be addressed in a single conference, and an office hours visit does not guarantee the student an "A." Encourage the student to seek feedback from a peer, the writing group, or the Writing Center.
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