Bedford Guide Chapter 2: "The Writing Process"

Main Points:

Writing is not linear; writers go through a process of writing that includes the steps listed in the Longman guide. The big difference between this text and Longman is the description of the revising process, which is split into two stages in the Bedford Guide, global revision and sentence-level revision. When a writer is doing global revisions, they are making major changes to the overall structure of the piece. This is where writers move paragraphs and cut out or expand parts of a draft in order to clarify points or alter the flow of the entire draft. Sentence level revision is when a writer makes changes in word choice and the structure of sentences in order to clarify that individual sentence or paragraph. Like Longman, the Bedford guide stresses that writing coaches must be able and prepared to assist writers no matter what stage of the writing process they are in at that moment. They must also be able to identify the stage that the writer is in so that they can be effective.

What I Got:

“Please edit my paper” may mean, “help me make global or sentence-level revisions” to a writer who does not have the vocabulary to talk about writing, which many writers coming into a center will not have.

Questions:

What are some ways of figuring out what stage the writer needs help in?

How do you direct a writer away from editing if they are trying to fix grammar and really need global revisions or more work drafting?

What a beginning coach needs:

The information in this is essentially the Cliffnotes version of the information in Chapter 2 of the Longman Guide. The exercises, however, seem to be useful for a beginning coach, especially the exercise that suggests that a beginning coach go to the writing center as a student writer and be on the other side of at least two sessions. This can give the new coach an idea of what it feels like and what may or may not work in certain situations.

Best For:

Like the last chapter of this guide, I don’t know if there’s a lot of information in this that a more experienced tutor would be interested in, because the subject is covered in a much more in-depth way in the Longman guide. The more practical approach of this book does, however, give a beginning tutor a better idea of the kinds of problems that occur with the different stages of the writing process.

Bedford Guide, Chapter One: “The Writing Center as Workplace”

Main Points:

This chapter is all about ethical behavior in a professional setting, which a writing center is. This chapter discusses how a person should behave towards writers, other coaches and teachers. The most important thing they stress is that a coach should respect the others that they encounter while working at the center.

What I Got:

I understood that coaches should behave in a professional manner and never say or do anything that could be taken as disrespectful towards either writers or faculty.

What a Beginning Coach Needs:

This whole chapter is geared towards beginning coaches, as it deals with professionalism and how to act while at work.

Best for:

I doubt that an experienced tutor would get much out of this chapter, since it is basic information about professionalism. The exercises at the back of the chapter also work very well for beginners, although there is a lot that wouldn’t work for our writing center (such as learning the history of our particular center, since we are a new center and are making the history).

Prefaces and Introductions to the Guides

McAndrews & Reigstad (Pink Book)

It seems that one of the main points of this introduction is that writing tutoring doesn’t just occur in collegiate settings, and that it can be useful in other areas. The authors talk about how they have led workshops in business and worked with parents in secondary schools to help their students tutor at home as well as worked in a college setting. As a tutor, that is not the most interesting thing that I got out of this introduction.

The thing that fascinated me the most was that they referred to tutoring as a process. I’m familiar with writing being referred to as a process, but I had never thought of tutoring to be a process. I can only hope that this is expanded on further in the book, as it wasn’t explained in the introduction. They also briefly say the kinds of things that will be covered in the book, such as what tutors do, and what they don’t, which would be helpful for beginning tutors, but there also seems to be a lot of emphasis on theory rather than practice, which may not be helpful to a tutor just starting out.

From the introduction, I would think that this book might not be the best for beginning tutors, as it seems to have quite a bit of theory in it. Not all beginning tutors are going to need theory in order to help students, even if it is useful. Also, according to the introduction, there is a chapter on how to conduct a course on tutoring, which is obviously geared more towards instructors than student coaches.

After reading the introduction, if I was reading this book independently in order to improve my effectiveness as a tutor, I’d probably only read chapters 4 through 6. These chapters are listed as being the ones that have the most direct importance to actual tutoring sessions.


Longman

This introduction seems to want to bring the focus to the coaches more than the authors, and talks about the structure of the book mirroring the training process for a writing tutor. This focus on the tutor seems to be more in keeping with a guide or a handbook for tutors than the previous book, which read more like the introduction of a textbook, with an overview of theories used. The authors also stress that writing centers are a growing field and that means that needs more experienced, able tutors.

The most interesting thing that I got from this introduction was that there’s a chapter in this book on conducting writing center research. This makes me think that this book might be a good choice for experienced tutors looking to expand their involvement with their center, rather than a beginning tutor. This is supported in that the book seems to cover a lot more in-depth subjects, at least from glancing at the chapter overviews, than the other two guides.

Bedford

The introduction for tutors is simply two anecdotes told about tutors the authors have worked with. These anecdotes stress the kinds of issues that new tutors have, namely the desire to help writers write a “perfect” paper and the idea that they have to follow all the guidelines all the time. These anecdotes work well because they provide concrete examples of what a coach may face when they start working with writers, and right from the beginning too.

To me, this guide seems like the most simplistic, since they seem to take a more “how-to” approach rather than a theoretical one. This might be the most helpful for beginning tutors, but there drawbacks because as a tutor gains experience, they may want to explore the research and logic behind tutoring methods, and those might not be explored in this book.