Strategies for Editing and Sentence-Level Consulting

Authors: Kimberly Hoffman, Kanaka Sathasivan, Scott Blackwood, Lisa Leit

Date: 11 August 2008

White Paper Series Number: 080811-01

Keywords: Editing, proofreading, sentence-level, non-directive

Abstract: This white paper discusses strategies that consultants can use to balance non-directive consulting methods with addressing sentence-level concerns. It explores the idea of editing within the writing center and the student population as well as the role of editing within consultations.

Introduction

The philosophy of writing centers, including the University of Texas's Undergraduate Writing Center (UWC), is to provide advice for writers seeking help with all parts of the writing process. As peer-tutors, writing center consultants foster a relaxed environment, approaching students and their papers in a non-authoritative and collaborative manner. Because writing is traditionally and practically a solitary process, consultants learn to collaborate while allowing the author to retain control. At the UWC, our non-directive consulting style supports this balance. Rather than instructing students on how to improve their papers, consultants encourage students to create their own solutions. Furthermore, consultants help students identify recurring issues and find patterns in their writing, enabling them to better identify and correct problems on their own.

Given this non-directive philosophy, UWC consultants are often apprehensive when students ask for help in sentence-level editing. To many consultants, "editing" means simply telling the student to correct mistakes rather than working with the student to improve her relationship with the writing process. Often, consultants may even feel they must refuse to edit or proofread papers in order to avoid being prescriptive. However, editing is a necessary component of, and as important as, the rest of the writing process. In this white paper, we encourage a shift in perception to allow consultants to confidently address local-level concerns with collaborative strategies. We will consider the context in which this perceived conflict between non-directive consulting and sentence-level consulting arises; discuss the writing process, especially editing, and its role in consultation strategies; address specific concerns that arise during sentence-level consulting; and suggest non-directive techniques for local-level consultations.

The Writing Process

In consultations, topics addressed are often divided into global-level and local-level, or sentence-level, concerns. In broad terms, global-level concerns deal with content and overall argument and paragraph structures, and local-level concerns deal with sentence-level structure and grammatical problems. Defined in terms of the writing process, global-level concerns include brainstorming, drafting, and revising, while local-level concerns include editing and proofreading. Generally, students who are experiencing problems with global-level concerns should address them before moving on to local-level concerns, as reorganization may completely change the individual sentences in a paper, thus rendering any local editing unnecessary. Unfortunately, this leads to the idea that local-level concerns are unimportant, contributing to the avoidance of editing. Another contributing factor is the alternative terms used to describe these topics: higher- and lower-level. These words connote the idea that sentence-level problems are inferior to global concerns, an inappropriate and misleading distinction. These misperceptions frequently prevent consultants from discussing strategies for approaching sentence-level consulting.

Misperceptions of the Editing Process

Many students who visit the writing center tell their consultants that they want to work on proofreading or “editing,” which consultants often hesitate to do. This attitude may come from a misunderstanding on the parts of both the students, who often expect consultants to edit the paper for them, and the consultant, who wants the student to retain ownership. The problem stems from an incomplete understanding of the editing process and a belief that revision only entails identifying and focusing on sentence-level problems. In actuality, the editing process consists of two types of editing: copy editing and substantive editing. Copy editing focuses on proofreading and grammatical problems, while substantive editing covers paragraph-level problems and organizational concerns. While consultants and teachers may make this distinction intuitively, many students who come into the writing center seem to associate “editing” with copy editing alone. They seem to get this idea because they are familiar only with the prescriptive approach of their teachers, and have come to associate editing as a whole with grammatical rules. Few have had the opportunity to work in a non-prescriptive, peer-tutoring environment, such as that of the writing center, and may not understand what editing encompasses. Likewise, students may not be used to taking an active role in the revision and editing process.

Directive vs. Non-Directive Approaches

As consultants, our role in fostering better writing is less authoritative than that of teachers. We first help students understand the way they use language and how to identify problems; we then encourage students to brainstorm numerous approaches and solutions to these problems. While consultants, being peer tutors, are on the same level as students, teachers usually assume an authoritative role. In guiding students, teachers often become prescriptive and proscriptive with corrections for specific problems within an assignment; they tend to identify problems and provide solutions through standardized rules. Consultants, however, limit their prescriptive advice by encouraging students to develop a deeper understanding of their writing and the writing process as a whole. In this sense, consultants and teachers play different roles in helping students develop their writing skills.

The purpose of non-directive consulting is to allow students to maintain control over the direction and voice of their work. To this end, consultants tailor the consultation to address issues the student would like to work on. In non-directive consulting, consultants use open-ended questions to prompt students and encourage them to explore their ideas; leading questions help consultants guide students to solutions that they may not otherwise have been able to reach. Other techniques, such as reading papers out loud, also allow consultants to stress their concerns without being prescriptive. Although from the outside it may appear that the consultation is structured around only the student’s concerns, the consultant necessarily shapes the discourse by choosing which topics to pursue and by asking leading questions. Consultants must strike a balance between using their experience to assist students and allowing students to retain ownership of their papers.

Sentence-Level Strategies

Consultants naturally and intuitively use non-directive strategies to approach substantive editing and address a myriad of higher-level concerns, such as organization. However, in sentence-level consulting, we face a different challenge. Since most proofreading errors and grammatical problems stem from a student’s lack of knowledge about standardized rules, many consultants think the only way to approach such issues is through prescriptive and proscriptive advice, which is necessarily directive. Another concern consultants have is the possibility of imposing their own style preferences on the student's work, altering the voice of the paper. Furthermore, a paper with numerous mistakes can often take an entire session to address, leaving little time to address broader concerns.

Some of the same non-directive methods used to address global-level concerns can often be applied to sentence-level problems. For example, reading problem sentences aloud helps the student recognize grammatical mistakes often missed when reading silently. However, when students simply do not know a grammatical standard, open-ended questions and leading questions can only serve a limited purpose. In such cases, many consultants resort to copy editing, striking out mistakes and writing in corrections with little student participation; alternatively, some consultants simply instruct the student on how to correct mistakes.

As the purpose of the writing center is to improve the student's understanding of writing, a better approach would be to help the student identify recurring sentence-level problems; teach the student the rules and reasons behind the correct syntax using examples from their paper or fabricated examples; and then allow the student to identify and correct remaining mistakes. Once the student has a reasonable understanding, the consultant may feel more comfortable in discussing global-level concerns.

Conclusion

Though consultants are often sensitive to perceived tension between the writing center environment and the editing process, this apprehension is unnecessary. There are a number of strategies available to consultants and consultees alike to address this problem, and a deeper understanding of the issue should allow consultants to comfortably address sentence-level concerns. While bearing in mind the differences between global- and sentence-level concerns, consultants can still remain non-directive when helping students edit papers and maintain the distinction between the prescriptive advice of teachers and the collaborative style of consultations.

It is often helpful to bear in mind the difference between global- and sentence-level concerns; editing, then, has its own place in the writing process and should be considered a legitimate skill in the repertoire of an experienced consultant.

The ability to navigate sentence-level concerns with ease has far-reaching applications within the writing center. ESL consultations often deal almost exclusively with these issues; familiarity with the ideas and strategies explained here will facilitate productivity in ESL situations. Conversely, consultants may find that students place a higher priority on editing than they feel comfortable with and must be able to respectfully address the discrepancy.