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The intended audience of this paper is my ENGL 395 professors, my ENGL 395 intern peers, the UMBC Writing Center tutors, and The Writing Center Newsletter audience published by the University of Purdue Writing Center. The purpose of the paper is for possible submission to The Writing Center Newsletter of Purdue. This news article intends to analyze a failed tutoring attempt, to gain knowledge from lessons learned looking back on the failed attempt, and to creatively inform and entertain readers.
I failed in my attempt to tutor. When the tutee left, I saw the little glimmering light at the end of the tunnel. No, it was not an oncoming train. Inspiration struck me instead. The Persian, ESL student and Computer Science major determined to graduate, held an internship report in her hand. She had returned back to the wonderful world of academics after working as an intern in a computer junk yard salvaging code for 15 weeks. Although I knew nothing of the writing conventions of her language, I did know how to speak her third language fluently; Computereeze. I too, once lived in the Zero state or was it One... I flip-flopped between the two states so often I couldn't remember which I lived in.
The assignment sheet from the Internship Center read like a list of commands from the great and powerful Oz. His voice echoed in my head as I read:
Write a 20-page paper detailing specifically what you did during your 15-week assignment. Detail the problems you encountered. Detail how you resolved problems. Cite what you learned working on the project. Use headings and sub-headings within the paper. Get thee to the Writing Center if you need assistance. The great and powerful Oz has spoken!
My tutee's 20-page document detailing her efforts working for the Amalgamated Fuzz and Lint Company sounded like what she did during her summer vacation. The paper represented her only means of communicating with the great and powerful OZ about her numerous accomplishments. The tutee's entire grade for interning rode on this one and only paper. I realized computer science majors are required to take only one semester of English, freshman composition. Quickly, I computed the probability of her having taken the junior level technical writing course as an elective and found the probability of winning the state lottery more likely. I thought, as a non-native speaker she must have avoided technical writing. Why write anything if you can avoid writing. Besides, Computer Scientists don't write English, they write computer code, a language more foreign than Cryptology.
I knew she needed to write a technical document in English, but in what form? What style? What kind of paper will appease thee oh great and powerful Oz? The great and powerful Oz remained silent. We stood out on the wide open plain of genres, styles, and forms. Which to choose? No time to loose! I asked the tutee the due date of the paper. She said it was not due till December 16. She had four weeks to write so time was on our side. I explained we would need several sessions and informed her of my days and hours. So how does a tutor salvage a technical report that sounds like a junkyard in desperate need of repair?
After the tutee left I had a satori. I could hear my Calculus III math Professor "Mad Dog" La Dandé in my mind with his grovely voice barking questions as he smoked his Chesterfield in one hand and in the other a fresh piece of chalk scratching out my responses on the chalk board. "Mad Dog" La Danté loved his Chesterfields with chalk. The way to attack the paper was in the form of a 15-week case study.
Introduce me to the project. What's your thesis? What's your methodology? What's your forecast? ...
Mad Dog La Danté's fired his questions in spray and pray-offensive mode reminiscent of the Viet Nam war. As he smoked and chalked the board, the reign of bullets continued:
What were your solutions to their problems? What were the solutions to your own problems? What can other companies learn from your experience? What do you suggest we do in the future? What lessons did you learn on this project? ...
Unfortunately, these thoughts came to me after the fact due to my lack of experience. Many times, one only learns from failed attempts.
The potion of the paper I could salvage the body of the report describing the work she had done. Here I praised her work. The body described how the tutee manipulated information in Excel manually. The tutee also detailed how she could have (note could have, for she also failed in her attempt at interning) automated many of the actions by writing code in VBA-Visual Basic Applications language if the tutee knew the programming language. The question is "What did the tutee's failed attempt of a paper look like?"
The tutee could not decide whether a computer action within the software should be capitals or lower case letters. I found variations such as MS instead of Microsoft, VB, vb, visual basic, Visual Basic, FISK, Fisk, and other random choices. I suggested to the tutee just write out in full what she meant, if the tutee chose to spell visual basic as Visual Basic, keep it consistent. I explained just establish a convention and use it throughout the paper.
Another problem was headings and subheadings. This may have her first paper using headings. I explained a paper should have three basic headings: an introduction, process, and conclusion. In the introduction, introduce the project to the reader, forecast coming attractions within the paper, and forecast the conclusion of the paper. The tutee wrote full sentences for headings. I used The Practical Tutor textbook as an example and showed the tutee a few headings demonstrating headings should be a brief phrase indicating the contents of the paragraphs. Some headings had colons some did not. I informed the tutee headings consisted of one word or a phrase, therefore remove the colons.
The tutee wrote in active voice and switched between first person "I" and third person "we." Once in a while she used the second person "you." The use of "you" did not repeat, so I think the tutee's voice slipped. I asked the tutee "Are you allowed to use "you" in science papers?" The tutee turned the question back to me, but I think she knew the answer from my body language. I told the tutee not to use "you", "I" or "We" as a technical writing convention.
In some places the text became wordy. I would have to devote time for this task because I found the tutee's writing slipping into passive voice and hunting for the perfect verb. I combined two assumptions that the tutee as an ESL writing in the sciences, the tutee's wordiness stemmed from a lack of vocabulary and passive voice. The tutee represented a challenge for me: an ESL writing a long science paper. Instructing someone else how to write a strong 20-page paper clearly and concisely represented a challenge. I gave my tutee a few conventions of technical writing, but failed my tutee in not seeing the big picture. Sometimes one only learns from failed attempts.
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