the joys of focus and clarity

I must admit, preparing for this consultation, I definitely felt I was in my element. Although I am not always confident in my own writing abilities, I have always had a knack for helping others through their writing endeavors (hence my decision to go the teaching route), and after reading Lee’s paper, I was certain I could help her with broader issues of focus and clarity. It was only a matter of deciding how...

As I have realized during my consultation observations, preparation is critical to a successful consult, and I think my methods of preparation positively shaped my consultation with Lee. After reading her paper numerous times, I hammered out my priorities: focus and clarity. Following Bartholomae’s lead (from his article “The Study of Error”), I tried to place myself in Lee’s brain and understand her thought processes so I could better estimate how to approach presenting her errors and the ways they could be corrected. I recognized that I was guessing and that I would have to ask Lee herself what she was thinking as she wrote, but to prepare myself, I considered what I thought to be the most probable causes of her errors. To my relief, much of my estimations of Lee’s thinking were accurate, thus throughout the consultation I was confident in what I needed to address as well as how to address it.

My main goal with Lee’s consultation was to ensure the focus of her paper answered the prompt. In my review of the prompt and her paper, I sensed that the prompt was asking a slightly different question than Lee’s paper was answering. The cause of this disconnect, I guessed, was a misunderstanding of one crucial word in the prompt: “compatible.” The prompt asked Lee to investigate whether or not Abraham Lincoln’s actions were compatible with a particular Lockean theory. Reading the prompt myself, I was unsure of the meaning of “compatible” within this context. What kind of relationship between the actions and theory does “compatible” imply? Seeing that Lee’s paper spoke more about whether Lincoln’s actions exemplified the Lockean theory, I guessed that she experienced a similar misunderstanding of the implications of “compatible.” For me, the difference between the two concepts was great enough to warrant a change in the focus of Lee’s paper.

To help Lee see why her paper did not answer the prompt directly and to help her redirect her paper, I used a handful of strategies. I first asked Lee to explain the prompt to me, so I could gather whether she misunderstood the prompt in the way I had anticipated or if other issues were in play. When she struggled to find an alternate way of describing “compatible,” I realized that, like me, Lee did not understand the definition of the term within this context. To assist her, I read the term’s definition and a sample sentence I found on merriam-webster.com that paralleled the prompt almost exactly but provided a clearer sense of the definition. I then explained how this information heightened my understanding of the prompt and asked her whether it did the same for her. When Lee came to the same conclusions about the prompt as I did, I knew that she was prepared to review her thesis.

In working with Lee’s thesis, I drew from Shaparenko’s “Focus on Focus.” I first asked Lee to read over her thesis and explain it to me verbally. I then described to her what I saw as the difference between her thesis and the prompt. Because Lee agree with my analysis, I asked her to rewrite her thesis to more directly address the prompt. As she rewrote her thesis verbally, I took notes and then reread my notes to reiterate how I perceived her articulated ideas. She corrected me on a few points (which I took notes on) and the process repeated itself. Eventually Lee produced a thesis that we both agreed satisfied the prompt. I definitely modeled my approach to helping Lee with her thesis off Shaparenko’s description of his writing class. Like the other students in Shaparenko’s writing circle, I critiqued Lee’s thesis and then collaborated with her as she formulated a stronger one.

For the remainder of the session I used similar strategies to help Lee with clarity. I would show her an example of a conflicting or otherwise unclear sentence and explain to her why it was confusing to me. She would then rework the sentence paying attention to the issues I had highlighted. I would take notes and read them back to her, she would comment, and eventually she constructed a new sentence in which her ideas were more clearly articulated. Not only did this strategy improve Lee’s immediate paper, but I think that it provided Lee with some insight that will guide her through future papers.

Learning from Bartolomae and Shaparenko, I approached this consultation as a guided discussion. It is often very difficult for writers to step outside their own heads and read their work from the perspective of the reader, so I tried to focus on helping Lee do just that. Giving her my interpretations as a reader and guiding her through a rewriting process helped her to better focus and articulate her writing (or at least I hope it did.)