“It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it”: Writing Center Tutors and Their Conceptualizations of Academic Writing in Tutoring Sessions

Faith Thompson

The Peer Review web Open Access

“It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it”: Writing Center Tutors and Their Conceptualizations of Academic Writing in Tutoring Sessions

Faith Thompson

Abstract

In this embedded case study of a mid-Atlantic writing center, I interviewed and observed 3 writing center tutors regarding their academic language ideologies and conceptualizations of academic writing. I found that tutors focused on “grammar” when discussing academic language, and tutored in adherence with “rules” they expected professors to enforce. This demonstrated that tutors may hold a standard language ideology regarding academic writing. However, tutors also focused on student voice through style and word choice, and were concerned with overriding student voice through their tutoring practices. Because of these two conceptualizations of professor focused rules and student centered voice, tutors shifted between prioritizing the two in their tutoring sessions. Ultimately, I argue that tutors need to reimagine what it means to “sound academic” for a more linguistically just tutoring praxis.

Journal: The Peer Review
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Open Access: OA PDF Gold
Topics: writing centers peer tutoring qualitative research grammar and mechanics
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