Start of Paper 1

Emily Zurhellen

Frank Gaughan & Ethna Lay

Writing Consultancy

1/6/10

Symposium: Bruffee’s Concepts

On January thirteenth, 2010, Hofstra held a “meeting of the minds” in order to determine how to run their newly refurbished writing center. The Administration suggested that the current and future writing tutors attend the meeting in order to learn more from the members of the conversation.

Three Critics:

-North

“Our goal is to produce better writers, not better writing.”

(Used by North) “The first thing college writers need to know is that they can improve as writers and the second is that they will never reach a point where they cannot improve further.”-Charles Cooper

-Lunsford

“Writing centers pose a threat as well as a challenge to the status quo in higher education.”

-Brooks

“The goal of each tutoring session is learning, not the perfect paper.”

“When you improve a student’s paper, you haven’t been a tutor at all; you’ve been an editor. You may have been an exceedingly good editor, but you’ve been of little service to your student.”

Plot Overview:

North begins pushing his frustrations with "fix-it" shops. He discusses the writer as opposed to writing and condemns most writing centers for concentrating on the grade.

Brooks agrees, calmly, that tutoring should be about the student not the paper. However, he brings up his point that the tutor should not be equal with the student, the tutor should be somewhat silent or off to the side.

North comes back by saying that the two should be equals and truly collaborate on the work. He starts condemning normal concepts of learning.

Lunsford jumps in and says that they need to slow down and we can't jump right into collaborative learning because of its negative points. She says that it doesn't always work and that we cannot completely condemn the idea of the paper.

North and Brooks disagree with her by praising collaboration.

Lunsford explains that she does not disagree with collaborative learning, she just thinks it needs to be done correctly. She introduces her first two models & why they don't work. (North & Brooks interject). Then she introduces her third model and why she believes it would work.