So I just got done shadowing... AND writing a blog post, but it got deleted when I was spell checking. So this is blog post #2 for tonight's shadowing experience. Anyways, after waiting approx. 11 minutes for our student to arrive, we found a plethora of grammatical errors and instead of focusing on global issues, we had to point out individual grammatical errors. Yes, this runs the risk of creating a lazy writer who thinks he or she can book appointments at the writing center and have us "proofread," but at a certain point, we must consider what is in the best interest of the writer.
This student was writing for an FYS, something to do with science. The writing reflected this, and I found this to be refreshing in a number of ways. It seemed like we didn't have to focus on the facts - we trusted that the writer of the paper was correct. With an English paper, it seems like the analysis is more prone to subjectivity and therefore us consultants must keep a watchful eye for weaker assertions. Then, we must let the writer down in the gentlest of ways...saying things like... "consider...." and "why don't you possibly think about maybe possibly slightly changing..." It's nice to be able to take a piece of writing at face value for once. To me, this demonstrated the bare bones of what it's like to be a consultant in terms of considering how writing functions and the messages being conveyed. But again, for this paper, we had to focus on grammatical issues, mostly.
Michael, I am very interested in the point you made about scientific writing in the Writing Center. I have yet to see someone come into a session with a piece of writing that does not come from the humanities. At first I thought I would be a little overwhelmed in reading a paper from the sciences but you are right in saying that we are able to trust the facts rather then delve into the analysis of the paper. In English papers for example, we are looking more for problems with the analysis and organization rather than grammatical errors. However with a biology paper for example, we are less concerned with the content because most of it is factual. Rather we can focus on the grammatical errors instead. Must have been nice to do that for a change!
ReplyDeleteI feel like as a consultant it would be very difficult to help a scientific writer. Most of these scientific writers are using facts rather than their own ideas. I would maybe focus on their organization and explanation of facts? this is rather interesting
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