Conferences:
Make them participatory and productive
"Some students have come to expect teachers simply to tell them what is wrong with their writing and how to fix it."
-St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing 41What I enjoyed was "talking about what helps the writing process."
-WIP student comment, Fall 1999 surveys"Getting constant feedback helped me to change my ideas as I went along."
-WIP student comment, Fall 1999 surveys"Getting students to ask questions and then to try new answers in their writing pushes them toward self-evaluation and independence."
-St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing 41
Conferences are an important but misunderstood and often under-utilized part of writing process pedagogy. They provide one-on-one contact with an expert -- individual professional advice about one's writing and one's writing process -- that has a high market value and that has become increasingly rare in the academy. As short and informal meetings, conferences are one of the most useful ways to be involved in students' writing process and to give them more interaction with instructors about their writing that they would get in a non-writing intensive course. Combined with staged assignments, opportunities for revising, and written feedback, conferences provide a valuable way of teaching in a writing intensive course. However, conferences are only useful if students understand how they contribute to their experience in the course and if they take advantage of them.Problems in perceptions of conferences
The roadblock to using conferencing as a pedagogical resource is that many students and instructors are reticent about getting together in "conferences," which might be better named less formally in a WIP course. For their part, students tend to think that one has a conference with the teacher only if there is some problem with their work. They are understandably reluctant to sit across from an expert whom they believe is going to point out mistakes in their writing or ask questions they can't answer. Furthermore, instructors may be reluctant to add conferences to the design of the course. They may think that conferences require tedious and exhausting explanations of errors in student writing and that conferences double their workload: not only do instructors feel they have to comment on the papers, but they also have to explain their comments individually -- often repeating the same message."Face-time" about student thinking/writing: A powerful combination
Most WIP TAs come to see that more useful information can be communicated in a brief meeting with a student than in extensive commentary on a paper -- and that a few focused written comments and a short meeting offer the most powerful pedagogical combination. For conferencing to be useful in a writing intensive course, students need to understand its purposes and the benefits, as well as what to expect in a conference. Instructors need to follow a few guidelines designed to get students to see that conferences are not about mistakes but about ways to proceed and achieve more on writing assignments.Like effective feedback, effective conferences are counterintuitive
When considering your teaching opportunities in a class, consider this advice from the Bedford:"A great deal can be accomplished in fifteen or twenty minute conference" [or in shorter conferences] if the instructor [emphasis ours]: 1) avoids reading or "going over" what the student has written: 2) lets the student do most of the talking; 3) "never picks up a pen except to write what the student has said" (35).These main guidelines encourage revision as re-seeing. They cue students and instructors to think about the process of developing and refining ideas, instead of miring both parties in words already committed to a page. Some considerations for using conferencing effectively in a WIP course:1) If enrollment allows, make at least one conference mandatory.
The most frequent complaint of WIP TAs is that students do not come to conferences. The obvious remedy, if class size permits, is to require one or more conferences a semester, and to give some kind of incentive/credit for participating. This says that we believe that conferencing, as teaching one-on-one or in small groups, is valuable. Tell students how it will help them, how long their conference will take, and what to expect.2) Consider where the student is in the writing process.
This will determine conference goals or activities and whether to focus on global or sentence-level revisions, for instance.3) Remember that conferences about getting started, planning, and outlining can be useful.
Students need not to have written a draft in order to have a productive conference. A conference can start the writing process, which actually begins once the student gets the assignment. As the Bedford points out, "If the student is 'stuck' " or hasn't started an assignment, we can ask him or her to tell us what has been troublesome, "jotting down what the student says" (35). Then, together in such a "planning conference," the student and the instructor can look over these notes, identify promising areas, and come up with next steps.In addition to planning conferences, brainstorming conferences can help students find options at various stages in the writing process. Conferencing can help students make decisions that can hamstring writers if such issues are faced without feedback or left unresolved.
4) Depending upon the purpose of the conference, don't read the paper before the conference or make reading it with the student the main event during the conference.
Reading [and marking ] student work before or during a conference disposes instructors "to point out problems and tell students how to correct them." Reading the paper makes it too easy to become embroiled in word choice, grammar, punctuation,or usage issues rather than the global concerns that are the focus of WIP conferences (at least early-stage ones) and writing in the disciplines instruction. (If you only have fifteen minutes a semester with a student, would you rather explore comma splices or interesting ways to develop ideas?)5) Help students prepare for conferences so the meeting agenda is theirs.
You might ask them to submit two or three questions with their drafts or bring a list of specific questions to the meeting (St. Martin's Guide 41). You might ask students to attach a cover memo or note to their outline or draft, explaining what they wanted to do in a certain part of the assignment and stating what they think they need direction on. Such activities involve students in monitoring their own writing process and can be especially helpful, not to mention time-saving, when you plan to scan or read the draft before the conference.6) During the conference, "avoid writing on the student's paper" (Bedford 35).
If you do, the conference can quickly turn into an editing or proofing session, with you doing all of the work. That is not to say that a conference about proofing strategies, focusing on a sample paragraph, for instance, is not a good experience for some students; it is simply a task that is considerably farther along in the writing process. The Bedford puts it bluntly: "Watching the instructor revise does not teach the students to make their own revisions" (36).7) Use the conference to listen and learn how students are responding to an assignment, to get feedback from them, and to help them set goals and next steps.
Avoid using the conference for mini-lectures, which often leave a student passively nodding and mystified. "The most successful meetings," the Bedford argues, "are usually those in which the student does much more talking than the instructor, whose best role is to help the student articulate goals and explore options" (35).8) Make sure students leave the conference knowing what to do next.
The St. Martin's Guide advises instructors to conclude conferences with "a task assignment" (44). This helps students see that the meeting has accomplished something. Students should know how to proceed in the writing process, what steps come next and why, as well as feel inspired or motivated to stay with the writing task.9) Give students something concrete to take away.
Relevant to the advice in # 6 above, a conference is more likely to produce useful information if the instructor takes notes and gives them to the student at the end of the session. By writing down what the student says, rather than re-writing the student's paper, and by making such notes available as a concrete record of what has been achieved, the instructor saves time and keeps ideas flowing. Ask a student what his or her plans for a paper are, and write them down for the student: the student leaves with a rough writing plan. Ask a student what things he or she is trying to decide, plot them in a pro and con charting, and the student leaves with a rough but clarifying analysis of his or her options.10) Timing of conferences and logistical concerns related to class size can be handled with forethought.
Conferences are most effective shortly before a paper is due, but seeing every student individually and/or teaching the class as a whole at the same time can be problematic for instructors and TAs. Anyone who has met for fifteen minutes with four or five students in successive, individual sessions knows that conferences intensify instruction. To accommodate individual meetings, you may want to schedule them in place of one or two regular class meetings or regular office hours. The Bedford states firmly that "The pedagogical value of conferences is generally well worth the loss of one or more class periods" (36). Students not only welcome the break from routine, but also come to appreciate the attention that a conference setting allows.
11) Consider small group conferences for some WIP class settings.
Furthermore, small group conferences work well as an alternative or supplement to individual conferences, especially in classes that are too large to permit individual meetings. In small group conferences, you might meet with several students to talk over topics or strategies for an assignment, to revise a thesis, or to help students get started on other revisions. Such small group meetings help students feel "less on the spot" (Bedford 36). Students find out that their peers have some of the same concerns that they do, and they "feel less isolated in the writing process." This sense of learning together and from each other may carry over to other class activities and reinforces the use of peer feedback: the most effective small group conferences foster "a problem solving rapport that extends beyond the conference" (36).For more advice on teaching with conferences, see the Bedford (pp. 35-37) and the St. Martin's Guide (pp. 38-43 and 324-346). To be most useful, information in the St. Martin's will need to be generalized to a writing intensive course in the disciplines.