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Ali Valerio

Dr. Tripp

UWC Seminar

14 October 2016

What Do You Think?: Negotiating Concerns using Directives

and Nondirectives in Writing Center Tutorials

In writing center sessions, tutors are constantly making decisions about which tutoring

strategies are appropriate for which situation. Directive and nondirective tutoring are two

common approaches that tutors take to their consultations. Some sessions call for heavy directive

tutoring, and some call for heavy nondirective tutoring. Most of the time, tutors use a

combination of the two in the same session. While its helpful to know that this is a generally

suitable practice, the challenge comes from deciding when to switch from one strategy to the

other, while being fully prepared to switch back at any moment if the need arises.

In the session I observed, tutor Chris G. was working with writer Carly on an article

critique for her Humanities class. Carly came into the session stating her concerns clearly: she

wanted to work on content and grammar. These may have seemed to Carly like typical,

acceptable concerns, but in reality, these are both vague and nebulous concepts. Chris found it

difficult to set an agenda during the consultation, but he navigated the session with an explicit

approach to establishing priorities for their time together.

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Chris varied his approach by using directive and nondirective tutoring strategies at

different times in the session. Specifically, he used nondirective tutoring strategies for higher

order concerns and directive tutoring strategies for lower order concerns. Carly responded to

these practices and demonstrated learning by elaborating on the concerns she had with her

writing, talking through her revisions as she made them, and relying on her memory to explain

her work instead of reading from her paper.

The first way that Carly showed learning was communicating more concretely the

concerns that she had in her work. When Carly first told Chris that she wanted to work on

content and grammar, Chris tried to dig deeper and figure out what she really meant by this.

Carly felt comfortable reading her piece out loud, and when she finished reading a section, Chris

would ask her how do you feel about this? Several times Carly would say she felt like

something was missing, or that she needed to add more information. When Chris asked her what

she needed or wanted to add, she said she didnt know. Chris would then ask her a series of

questions to get her thinking about what she already wrote. Once she talked more about what she

had written and what she was supposed to have, she realized what was missing and was able to

articulate more clearly what she needed. Chris could have evaluated her work up front and told

her what he thought, rather than ask her what she was feeling.

The second way that Carly demonstrated learning was through discussing her revision

decisions with Chris as she made the changes in her work. In times like these, Chris would

sometimes use directive tutoring, because it was clear that she had already figured out what she

wanted. In those moments, what she lacked wasnt the decision of the move she wanted to make,

but rather the precise language that she felt was most appropriate to communicate that move
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effectively. As Carly grew more confident in her word choice, she would move from looking for

affirmation to explaining what she would do to improve her work. Chris could have used

nondirective tutoring in these moments, trying to draw out information from the writer instead of

providing her with suggestions that spurred on her thinking.

The third way that Carly indicated learning was from initially explaining her thoughts by

only reading her work out loud, then transitioning to actually think about her words and explain

her work from memory. Early in the session, Chris asked Carly to tell him about what she wrote.

Carly looked right at her paper and began to read parts out loud. It was clear that Carly wasnt

connecting her own thoughts to the writing, but rather regurgitating information so that Chris

would be on the same page. Chris continued to ask Carly to talk about her writing, and in time

Carly decided to look away from the computer and speak from her memory. Later in the session,

Chris asked Carly to tell him about other sources she had read in the class, and since she didnt

have the information in front of her, she had to rely on her memory. Chris could have only asked

Carly to read from her paper, and not ask her to talk about it with him directly.