Authority of the Student Writer and Tutor

Adrienne Biondo

WritingCenter Term Paper

4/20/05

Authority of the Student Writer and Tutor

Composition: Questioned and Defined

According to composition theorist David Bartholomae, composition is “the institutionally supported desire to organize and evaluate the writing of unauthorized writers, to control writing in practice and to define it as an object of professional scrutiny” (Bartholomae 327). This complicated definition poses many questions about composition writing when applied to a University setting. If the student writer who enrolls in a composition class is unauthorized, is it guaranteed the professor of the composition class will be authorized? What exactly does authority imply, and who determines such a process as authority? These provocative questions suggest that the definition of composition is under much scrutiny.

Authority of an Unauthorized Writer:

To become authorized as a writer would suggest the writer has harnessed a supreme amount of knowledge of the English language and is able to properly apply and transfer the language to paper. Possessing this ability would then suggest the authorized writer would have the ability to properly transfer their knowledge to others.

It is commonly understood among students that the professor would be the authorized writer, the source of knowledge for the particular composition course. It is assumed by most students, that if a professor is employed to teach, the professor will have more knowledge on the subject than the student. This idea then becomes further complicated because a student would also assume that since the professor will be the ultimate word in dispensing a grade, the professor has the ultimate authority in the classroom.

“It is in this way,” as said by University of South Florida Writing Center peer tutor Jason Palmeri, “the beginning writer’s image of the professor as authoritative and all knowing actually holds him or her back from writing the type of clear, analytical paper which the professor requires” (9). This interaction between the student and professor compels the student to write for the professor, not write to understand the process of writing. When the student writes for the professor, rather than extracting their own ideas and developing their own writing style, the system of teaching composition can become problematic for both college students and composition professors.

Power Shifts Between the Student and Professor:

It was proposed by Sharon Crowley in her 1991 essay “A Personal Essay on Freshman English” that the requirement for freshman composition be abolished. She was not necessarily asking for the entire course to be ousted from the university setting; however, she was proposing that the necessity of the course be abolished. She suggested that students should approach composition as an elective, not as a requirement for graduation. Crowley feels as if “the technology of disciplinary power that is the universally required composition course has not been considered to produce a post disciplinary subjectivity that might be called ‘the writer…’” (Crowley 216).

According to Crowley, it is rare for the student to complete the freshman composition course fully prepared to execute the writing process. Her sentiment on having composition as an elective has been seen as the New Abolitionist movement which confronts the composition world in a college setting. This sentiment is still permeating in English departments. The New Abolitionist movement is running on a new idea that “writing can be taught, and that experts are needed to teach it, but that the required freshman course is not the most effective forum for attaining the ends we seek” (Bloom, Daiker &White 60).

Crowley feels as if composition professors are currently in a conservative movement where the methods of teaching are extremely traditional. “Current traditional pedagogy is teacher centered: the teacher dispenses information about the rules of discourse and evaluates the students’ efforts in accordance to those rules” (Crowley 218).

A method of teaching composition that deviates from displaying the teacher as the dispenser of knowledge is called process pedagogy. “Teachers who have adopted process pedagogy encourage novice writers to write as though they are free and sovereign individuals who have unimpeded access to their (supposedly unique) ‘selves’” (219). This liberal theory of teaching implies that the student is fully capable and aware of the decisions and actions that he/she is making. Process pedagogy assumes the student to balance and mediate between human impulse and reason (219). “Process-oriented teachers view students as naturally capable writers whose abilities have for some reason lain dormant prior to their encounter with the process-oriented classroom” (220). In this method of teaching, the “natural ability” of students to freely exercise their thoughts into writing would then suggest that these students are able to write for themselves, and not for the professor.

However ideal this method appears, Crowley’s previous assertion of a student’s inability to fully execute the writing process challenges the process-pedagogy method. According to Crowley, a freshman student who has completed the composition course, despite what method of teaching is used by the professor, remains unable to exemplify the rules of discourse in writing, unable to balance between human impulse and reason, and unable to conjure their dormant written abilities. Despite what method of teaching is applied in the classroom the result remains the same: a student will not be fully prepared to execute the writing process.

What is keeping the student from properly executing and demonstrating the writing process then if it is not the method of teaching? It is not necessarily due to a student’s inability to write but by the student shifting their power as an authorized writer to the professor as an absolute authority over writing. “By granting authority to their professors rather than to themselves as writers, students fail to develop the ability to write in the authoritative academic style that will give them recognition within the university system” (Palmeri 9). This power shift between the student and professor is actually inhibiting the professor to properly transfer knowledge to the student and inhibiting the student from demonstrating the knowledge that is being supplied.

These various forms of authority affect the classroom and the relationship between the student and professor. The first form of authority lies in perception. The student possibly perceives the professor as an intimidating force of authority that knows the “right” way to articulate the written word. The authority of the professor to then dispense a graded evaluation upon the student manipulates the student’s own perception of their authority as a writer. A student may feel as if they must write for the professor because the professor is the one who will ultimately have the final say on student’s work. In a college setting, the evaluation of the professor over a student’s writing is set to a professional critique. The student feels their written abilities must match that of a professional in order to be taken seriously or maturely. The language a student uses might be forced, and improperly used, to match the authority of the professor. These various forms of authority, and perception of authority, have the immense possibility to dictate the knowledge and voice displayed in a student’s writing, and therefore have the possibility to hinder the student’s exploration of the writing process.

So where then, is the student able to feel as if they posses some authority over their own thoughts and writing? Where is a mediator found between the student and professor?

Tackling Authority in the WritingCenter:

The UniversityWritingCenter provides services for the students in assisting with the process of writing. Typically, the WritingCenter staff is composed of faculty members at the university and peer tutors. The peer tutors are students, undergraduate or graduate. The title of “peer tutor” signals a distinction in age between the faculty tutors and the student tutors. A peer tutor is typically the same age as the students who attend the writing center seeking help. The peer tutor working at the WritingCenter is meant to provide the student with a sense of authority over his or her own writing in the university setting.

What separates the peer tutors from possessing the authority that a professor possesses in the classroom is that the tutors at the WritingCenter demonstrate and practice the standards of the writing process in order to assess the writing process. Rather than placing a grade upon a student’s work, the peer tutor suggests what is expected in terms of acceptable standards for a paper.

As a student writer and peer tutor in a university setting, I feel inclined to question whether I myself am an “authorized” writer and tutor. What separates my compositional abilities from that of another student who does not work at the WritingCenter? What exactly establishes one to become an authorized writer? Upon completing my freshman composition course, am I able to properly execute the writing process? If so, what have I gained that allowed me to harness such ability, and where did I learn it?

These questions play to the term of authority in the writing process. While Barholomae asks us to consider if there is a distinction between an authorized and unauthorized writer, I feel as if authority dangles between one’s ability to write and one’s perception of writing. The term perception dangles between how the writer perceives the writing process and how a professor or tutor perceives the writing process. During a tutoring session, the student and peer tutor are both working under their own perceptions of authority: the student perceiving the peer tutor as a credible authority of knowledge over the writing process, and the peer tutor perceiving the student writer as possessing authority over their own writing. Rather than the student seeing the peer tutor as a sovereign authority over the writing process, given the age of the tutor, the student feels as if the peer tutor is a link between the authority of their own writing and the authority of the professor. While a peer tutor may not have the supreme knowledge as the professor, the peer tutor has the capabilities to assist the student in finding their own authority and voice with their written work.

“The role of the peer tutor cannot be reduced to either the position of the student or of the teacher. While my current location as a student in the university hierarchy prevents me from truly taking on the authority of the professor, my position as a tutor who has been empowered to help students master their writing skills which I have ostensibly already mastered prohibits me from functioning as a peer as well” (9). Palmeri suggest that although the peer tutor shares an equal status with the students at a university, the tutor and student are on different levels of ability in terms of executing the writing process. And, although the peer tutor is temporarily in a position of power over the tutee, the peer tutor is not granted the authority of the professor. A peer tutor is there to recommend and evaluate the work of a student, not grade the work of a student (10).

During a semester, I am asked to reinforce, practice and teach the writing process. My composition studies did not end when freshman composition was over, but instead, just began. Does that qualify me as an authorized writer? Not necessarily. But I am able to properly execute the writing process and assist others in executing standards of writing into their papers. This is exactly why a WritingCenter has been established in a campus setting; to reinforce the practice and teaching of the writing process for the student body and for faculty. While not ensuring or guaranteeing the achievement of each student to culminate the writing process, the WritingCenter stands as a continuum for writers who are still grappling with their authority in the writing process.

Works Cited

Bartholomae, David. Writing on the Margins: Essays on Composition and Teaching. New York, Palrave Macmillan, 2005.

Bloom, Lynn Z., Donald A. Daiker, and Edward M. White. Composition in the 21st Century: Crisis and Change. Southern IllinoisUniversity, 1996.

Crowley, Sharon. Composition in the University: Historical and Polemical Essays. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998.

Palmeri, Jason. “Transgressive Hybridity: Reflections on the Authority of the Peer Writing Tutor.” Writing Lab Newsletter 25 (2000): 9-11.

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