Flexibility and Nontraditional Writers

After reading for weeks about the challenges that nontraditional students face, I finally observed the dynamics of such a consultation in action. The student who arrived at the Writing Center was from the School of Continuing Studies. It was clear when the consultation began that she was uncertain about what she would face at her consultation. She continually stressed that the work she had brought to the center - citations, paper, outline - was just a draft that needed to be changed. She apologized several times for having forgotten her paper's prompt although from her explanation, it was a straightforward assignment: an argumentative paper that needed support and citations. She was so concerned that her consultant see the exact prompt that she asked to access it on Blackboard to show him.

Even just from the first ten minutes of the consultation, a main theme of the hour emerged: flexibility. Watching the interaction between the consultant and the student, it struck me about that minor issues that may seem fixable to a traditionally-aged student can seem insurmountable to an older student who is adjusting to being back in the classroom. This student first explained to the consultant that her professor had commented on her lack of transitions in a previous paper. As he read this paper, it was clear that her transitions were fine, and he told her that. However, the student was skeptical. Although he tried to address other aspects of the paper, it was evident that her first concern was her transitions. After reading the topic sentences of each paragraph aloud, we realized that to this student, transitions meant transitional phrases. When she did not have these, she assumed that she did not have good transitions.

When the consultant recognized this, he commented that her natural writing style linked the ideas between paragraphs in a way that was effective and clear. The way she had organized her paper made her ideas link and flow gradually throughout the paper, building on each other without the need for superfluous transitional words. In this way, the consultant acted as an interpreter of the professor's comments and gave her much needed praise. The student was so distracted by what she thought was problematic that she was unable to concentrate on anything else on her paper. After the consultant was able to show her that this obstacle was easily overcome, she was able to see other aspects of her paper as fixable.

Similarly, the SCS student was much more concerned about following specific rules. When we read Hjortshoj earlier in the semester, we discussed how not every grammatical rule was set in stone. This student, not confident in her writing ability, was afraid to stray from the conventional rules of grammar: not ending a sentence in a preposition, starting a sentence with "because", etc. She feared taking academic risks, and doing things that were, in her words, "not academically appropriate." I believe this is a challenge for many SCS students. Because they are less comfortable in an academic setting, they are also less comfortable with the flexibility of the English language.

As writing consultants, we should be guides in helping students see possibilities in their writing. With nontraditional students, this task is even more crucial. By helping these students see that writing does not have to be a set of formal rules and convention, we allow them more freedom to expand their writing, and their ability as writers.