Hello, fellow consultants. It’s been nearly two months since I started working at the Writing Studio, and as an advocate of reflective practices, I’ve been thinking a lot about my experiences with different writers. More specifically, I’ve been reflecting on the way in which my “researcher self” and the areas I investigate influence how I understand the sessions, the writers, and my own “consultant self”. My main area of research is related to students’ individual differences (especially learning strategies and beliefs) and how they impact second language learning. Even if the context of the Writing Studio is different in the sense that the sessions are not classes, and our role is not to teach, I still found interesting associations.
As I shared in the mentor meeting, one of the greatest difficulties I had at the beginning was being able to work at a paragraph level. I had to get used to this, and especially communicate the writers that this would be the way we would proceed in the sessions, so that they knew what to expect from each session. In some cases, writers easily agreed to work in this way. However, there are other writers who go to the Studio to have their papers proofread, and in such cases, it becomes quite difficult to get them to understand the way of working is different. After a couple of weeks I started getting comfortable with working paragraph by paragraph. Perhaps one of my greatest concerns in working at paragraph level was that it implied not being able to finish revising a piece of writing in a session. I felt that not reaching to the end of the paper would lead to writers’ disappointment and feelings of frustration. However, after all, I began realizing our most important contribution as consultants is providing writers with strategies so they can work on different aspects of the revision process. By explicitly stating they could make use of those tools in subsequent paragraphs, I observed writers left the sessions with a sense of satisfaction, feeling that what we had discussed could ultimately help them become more autonomous and critical of their own work in other situations. As I mentioned previously, strategies is one of my research areas, and the opportunity of working at the Writing Studio enabled me to incorporate some of the aspects I investigate, into my work practices.
A second aspect on which I have reflected both during and after my consultations is also related to one of my main research interests: beliefs. I have observed that writers react to the approach we follow at the Writing Studio in different ways. Those writers who think that our job is to be in charge of their papers and ideas, tend to get a bit frustrated when they find out they need to participate actively in the sessions. Instead, those who believe that writing is a process done in collaboration involving various steps, seem to have a more positive attitude during the sessions. As research has documented over the past 20 years, the beliefs students hold about a task or phenomenon impacts greatly on the actions they take to perform the task, and thereby, on the performance of such task. The experiences I have observed at the Writing Studio are no exception. Even if I don’t have empirical evidence, I was able to see that writers have various beliefs about their role, our role as consultants, and about the writing process itself. Such insights seem to influence the way the session flows, involving their attitude, and our reaction to those attitudes.
Reflecting on these first months at the Writing Studio was an enriching and enlightening experience. As I mentioned above, I was able to see the importance of giving writers tools for them to become more autonomous when working outside the Studio, and to be able to go over the revision process on their own and at their own pace. Moreover, I could see that similarly to what happens in the second language classroom, each writer has his/her own beliefs about the process of writing and about their roles as writers, as well as of our role as consultants. I think it is important to consider these aspects, as this will impact what they end up taking from our sessions.
By M. Matilde Olivero, PhD in Second Language Acquisition and Instructional Technology
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