Genie: For me, why writing centers matter is actually that it demystifies the process for students who often times don’t necessarily understand why they’re even doing what they’re doing.
Evan: We’re going to record for…we’re calling it Write.Think.Teach, right?
Genevieve: I think that’s the right order.
Evan: Yeah, okay.
Evan: Welcome to Write.Think.Teach, the podcast produced by Writing Across the Curriculum, one of the initiatives of The Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing. I’m Evan Thomas.
Nora: And I’m Nora McCook.
Evan: You just heard Dr. Genie Giaimo. The new director for OSU’s Writing Center.
Nora: Listeners may not know it, but the Writing Center has multiple locations on campus and online and works with all writers at all stages from brainstorming to revision.
Evan: Genevieve Ritchie-Ewing and I sat down with Genie Giaimo a couple of months into her new position to hear her thoughts on how OSU instructors can best use the Writing Center and why writing centers matter for today’s writers. We’ll start off by listening to one of Genie’s bottom line recommendations.
Evan: What’s one thing, if you had to narrow it down to one thing, you would recommend, what would it be?
Genie: Well, I would suggest scaffolding the use of the Writing Center into the assignment. You know, so not necessarily just saying okay everyone, you’re writing a paper on whatever, xyz, it could be plankton or…
Evan: Geology
Genie: …geology of some sort, you know, carse topography, that’s great so go to the Writing Center and they’ll fix things. You know, I think, really for me, understanding intentionality is one of…and usage of the Writing Center is one of things that makes for a really positive interaction both in session between the consultant and the writer, but then also encourages the writer to come back for other courses or other longer term writing projects. And so, that would mean saying something to the effect of perhaps okay, we’re going to be using the Writing Center for our long-term writing projects this semester. First, I’d like for you to write a short paragraph of what you expect at the writing center or if you’ve ever been there or if you haven’t and then go in and work on x, y, and z, whether it's brainstorming, prewriting, revision, integrating quotes into the research, dealing with how to talk in third person, passive voice for a STEM lab report, whatever. And then come back in and do a post-paragraph reflection. Something like that that again is scaffolded into the assignment so it doesn’t just seem like a routine of going through the motions.
Nora: So, Genie has a really comprehensive view of how writing instructors can engage with the Writing Center in any course that involves some kind of writing.
Evan: Yeah, the two words I really noticed in her recommendation are intentionality and scaffolding, which is how she says the Writing Center consultants can factor into these writing-intensive courses.
Nora: Unfortunately, that’s not what most people think of when they hear Writing Center.
Evan: No, and Genie had some thoughts about how writing centers can intervene on some of those misconceptions as well as assumptions that someone is a bad writer and that international students don’t know very much about writing. She ends this next section with some more recommendations for instructors. Let’s hear what she has to say.
Genie: You know, I constantly hear ‘I’m a bad writer’ ‘I hate writing’, where do you think that got that from? They didn’t get that from nowhere, right? So, I would say that in a lot of ways, what the Writing Center session might offer them is a place to talk about these types of things too. You know, ‘I don’t understand this because of x’ or ‘I’m really feeling frustrated because of y’ or you know, ‘I’m a bad writer’. Well, no, I don’t know that that’s actually true, here’s why I think that. We work with a lot of non-native speakers. I think that a lot of non-native speakers think of themselves as having very little grasp of English and that’s actually not true, especially because learning other languages is hard. And if you asked non-native speakers what they know about English, they will tell you so much more than when you ask native speakers. And, you know, they can talk in that language of grammar. They can talk about past participles or about different types of conjugations or they can talk about passive versus active voice. They have a better language typically with which to talk about these types of mechanics than native speakers do. And so I would say that in a lot ways, it’s about a session reaffirming the fact that they actually are in control of their learning processes and can engage with the material and enjoy it. Really enjoy it.
Genie: So really any writer with a pressing or present writing need, right, can benefit from coming to the Writing Center. We’re really trying to embrace all of OSU and all of the types of learning that take place here, not simply learning that takes place in one department or one college or one disciplinary field. I actually worked with a couple of students recently because of some scheduling issues who were working on philosophy papers for an ethics course that was tethered to engineering. And they were talking about Mills and they were talking about Kant and they were talking about whether or not it makes sense to, you know, pursuit of happiness over the good of others and I think for me this was, this very much hit home how writing can be grounded and applicable, while still quite theoretical. And so, yeah, writing happens at all levels at OSU. We see dissertations and Master’s theses and professional documents like cover letters and personal statements for graduate school and medical school, but there’s also publication writing that’s occurring as well as finishing up grant proposals and things of this sort. And there’s, I think, a little bit less pre-process stuff than I would like. I would like to see more brainstorming or early stage writing. I think that a lot of people come in assuming that the Writing Center is only there to work with a sort of semi-finished product, which is actually not true. So, I would say that it’s kind of a give and take. Be aware of the services and what they actually do and how they function before suggesting that students use it, but then also be open to the fact that writing centers can support non-course based writing and also writing at more advanced levels as well.
Evan: One thing that really struck Genevieve and I when we interviewed Genie was her personal passion for writers who aren’t yet insiders in the academy. So, for example, for first-generation college students, writing for academic audiences and in academic settings has all of these challenges and all of these hidden rules. There’s this huge invisible curriculum. This last portion of our interview shows how big Genie’s vision is for OSU’s Writing Center. While don’t you listen, and hear what she had to say.
Genie: Part of what I experienced when I came to college was that disciplinary knowledge was this sort of black box, you know. It was kept up on a shelf and I tried to access it and sometimes I would successfully repeat it back or engage with it, but I think there can be a lot of problems with not understanding that it is one kind of vernacular, it’s one kind of dialect that we use in order to engage in a very specific and admittedly privileged space. And I think once you move out into the world, the language shifts again into professional language and I think seeing some of the students that I’ve worked with in the past who don’t know how to write emails or who don’t know how to engage in a site report or evaluation or write a memo or deal with, you know, your sort of basic day-to-day writing tasks of trying to reach out and connect with other people in other departments or other members of the same professional community. That to me suggests that writing matters on many different levels and that it’s about this disciplinary, academic convention is just sort of one portion of that. But really learning about the sort of larger rhetoric of writing and why it can change and shift with audience and context and purpose, really opened my eyes to where I was going academically and then also professionally. And it no longer made me feel as if I didn’t have the keys to this kingdom that that really was set up for very specific types of cultivation and perpetuation of ideas. You know, because it is, it’s a…it’s a power structure as much as it's anything else. And so, for me, why writing centers matter is actually that it demystifies the process for students who oftentimes don’t necessarily understand why they’re even doing what they’re doing. And admittedly, a lot of students don’t know why they’re writing that lab report, they don’t know why they’re engaging in that SWOT analysis, they don’t know why they’re talking about, again to go back to, you know, plankton or carse topography or oil spills. They only know that these ideas are something that they’re being asked to demonstrate through this type of disciplinary boundary and knowledge structure. And so, you know, part of what I hope our Writing Center here at OSU can do is to again demystify that process for them.
Nora: Thanks so much to Genie for letting us talk to her about writing centers and thank you for listening. If you want to learn more about the Writing Center, to schedule a consultation, or to meet with Genie, visit cstw.osu.edu.
Evan: This has been Write.Think.Teach, a production of Writing Across the Curriculum and the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing.
Nora: We’re also happy to work with instructors. We offer workshops on writing instruction topics for instructors in different disciplines and webinars. We can also meet individually to discuss your needs or questions related to writing in your courses. Visit cstw.osu.edu to learn more.
Evan: Or contact Dr. Chris Manion at manion.12@osu.edu
Nora: Thanks
Evan: Thanks