Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 19, No. 2 (2022)

Making What We Know Explicit: Perspectives from Graduate Writing Consultants on Supporting Graduate Writers

Stacy Wittstock
University of California, Davis
snwittstock@ucdavis.edu

Lisa Sperber
University of California, Davis
ldsperber@ucdavis.edu

Gabi Kirk
University of California, Davis
gekirk@ucdavis.edu

Kristin McCarty
University of California, Davis
kmccarty@ucdavis.edu

Karen de Sola-Smith
University of California, Davis
karen.desola@ucsf.edu

Jasmine Wade
University of California, Davis
jhwade@ucdavis.edu

Mitchell Simon
University of California, Davis
msimon@ucdavis.edu

Lauren Fink
University of California, Davis
lkfink@ucdavis.edu

Abstract

While scholarship on supporting graduate writers in the writing center has increased in recent years, guides outlining best practices for writing center consultants rarely speak to graduate students working with other graduate writers. In this article, we present a practical guide for graduate writing consultants. Written collaboratively by graduate writing consultants and a program coordinator, this guide represents our collective knowledge built over several years of conducting writing consultations and professional development in graduate writing support. Inspired by Adler-Kassner and Wardle’s “threshold concepts,” our guide is organized around two fundamental ideas: 1) that positionality plays an important role in interactions between consultants and graduate writers, and 2) that consultants must cultivate disciplinary awareness to be successful graduate writing coaches. In each section, we synthesize our own experiences as graduate writers and consultants with writing studies scholarship, and present concrete strategies for conducting graduate-level writing consultations. Through this guide, we demonstrate the mutual benefit of involving graduate student writing consultants in the production of knowledge in writing centers.

Introduction

Graduate students occupy a unique position in institutions of higher education in that they are simultaneously considered emerging experts in their areas of research and trainees learning professional norms within their fields. Often, this dichotomy manifests most clearly as a struggle to meet expectations for writing in their academic discourse communities. Just as norms for writing differ across disciplines, so too do the experiences graduate students have with writing support. Research indicates that attrition in graduate programs is often related to challenges completing a thesis or dissertation, suggesting that graduate programs and committee chairs may not always offer adequate advising or writing support to students (Brady and Singh-Corcoran; Madden; Rigler et al.). This issue is compounded for graduate students from marginalized or underrepresented communities; even as graduate programs across the US have broadened their admissions to include more graduate students from international, multilingual, first-generation, and racially minoritized backgrounds, graduation rates for these students have remained much lower than their peers from more privileged groups, with attrition often occurring during the thesis or dissertation stage (Madden).

Several misconceptions drive a mismatch between the types of support needed by graduate student writers and the types of support they may or may not receive from graduate programs and advisors. One prevailing assumption is that reading complex academic articles and books is sufficient to prepare students to write in such genres—a false belief arising from the fact that many graduate advisors have largely tacit knowledge about writing (Lawrence and Zawacki; Madden; Paré et al.; Rogers et al.). Another related assumption, one that often disproportionately impacts multilingual writers and writers who use marginalized dialects of English, is that “fixing” students’ grammar and language will address concerns that may in reality be linked to students’ underdeveloped knowledge of genre conventions within their academic discourse communities (Madden; Rogers et al.). This latter assumption also fails to account for the ways that writers may make deliberate choices about language that are counter to the assimilationist drive of Standardized Edited American English (SEAE) (Green; Matsuda and Cox). Writing centers are uniquely suited to address the consequences these assumptions may have on graduate writers by helping them gain access to knowledge of disciplinary writing conventions and develop a sense of how such conventions shape scholarship in their fields.

Research focused on writing center pedagogy and practices for supporting graduate student writers has steadily increased alongside the volume of graduate students seeking consultations over the last decade (Lawrence and Zawaki). A 2016 special issue in WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship focused on the institutional partnerships and resources necessary to bolster graduate writing across the university. However, guest editors Lawrence and Zawaki note that perspectives on multilingual graduate students were absent from the conversation. A 2016 Praxis special issue on “Access and Equity in Graduate Writing Support” amplifies the need to consider the intersections between graduate writing support in writing centers and the cultural experiences and identities of graduate student writers, particularly in regard to race (e.g., Alvarez et al.; Burrows; Martinez; Inoue), language and marginalized dialects of English (e.g., Green; Cirillo-McCarthy et al.), and dis/ability (Keedy and Vidali). In the introduction to their 2019 edited collection on writing centers and graduate writers, Lawrence and Zawaki note that both consultants and writers agree on the necessity of re-examining whether current best practices in writing center pedagogy are appropriate for graduate students writing in advanced, disciplinary genres. Their book also importantly expands on the ways that writing centers can address the needs of domestic and international graduate students for whom English is an additional language (see Simpson; Turner; Cox).

Yet, even as scholarship on graduate writers in the writing center has increased, resources for writing center consultants outlining best practices remain primarily geared toward supporting undergraduate writers. Guides aimed at graduate students, such as Swales and Feak’s series English in Today’s Research World, or Karen Kelsky’s The Professor is In, provide practical guidance for graduate writers but are designed for personal or classroom use. Similarly, while the chapters in Lawrence and Zawaki’s 2019 book do address pedagogy and strategies for training tutors and consultants to work with graduate writers, most are primarily aimed toward an audience of writing center directors and staff and not at consultants themselves. This article attempts to bridge this gap in resources by presenting a practical guide with strategies for working with graduate writers based on our experiences as graduate writing consultants and the knowledge we have synthesized from scholarship on graduate writing support. That is, we present a guide written by graduate students, for graduate students. 

Our Process: How We Constructed this Guide

Our Graduate Writing Fellows Program is located within an established WAC program at a large, doctoral degree-granting institution in Northern California. Graduate Writing Fellows (GWFs) are graduate students who provide writing consultations, retreats, and workshops for other graduate students and postdoctoral researchers across disciplines. GWFs come from a wide range of disciplines (e.g., neuroscience, education, geography, computer science) and participate in an annual training retreat, followed by a monthly practicum. Though our GWFs come to us as strong writers, they usually have little knowledge about writing consultation best practices, writing studies, or WAC. Unlike undergraduate writing centers where many tutors are on staff for relatively short periods of time, most of our consultants stay on for at least two years, often longer, allowing for ample training.

The process for writing this guide was scaffolded by the GWF Program Coordinator and the guide was collaboratively written by a cohort of seven GWFs. During 2018-2019, several of the fellows who had been in the program for many years were graduating; we wanted to find a way to capture their experience and knowledge, while using the process to train new consultants. We also considered that although our GWFs are skilled writers and effective coaches, most of them had not had the opportunity to articulate and consolidate their knowledge about writing and consultations. As Yancey et al. note, the practice of writing does not necessarily lead to conscious, conceptual knowledge about writing. Research on transfer suggests that when writers have deeper conceptual understandings, they are better able to transfer their knowledge to other contexts (Salomon and Perkins; Yancey et al.). We wanted both our new and experienced GWFs to gain conceptual knowledge to draw on in writing consultations, their own writing, and their future professions, especially since some would go on to academic careers in which they might mentor their own graduate students.

With that in mind, we chose Adler-Kassner and Wardle’s Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies as one of our core readings and as inspiration for our consultation guide. According to Meyer and Land, “a threshold concept can be considered akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something” (1). Threshold concepts are ideas central to disciplinary thinking that can often be counterintuitive, difficult, and transformative for learners. As one new fellow remarked in response to a TC in writing, “this is true, but I never thought about it before!” From an undergraduate writing center context, Nowaceck and Hughes argue that a threshold concepts framework in writing can help consultants “conceptualize their own work with writers” (171). Therefore, TCs provided us with theoretical frameworks that GWFs could use to organize their knowledge into practical guidance for future consultants. Further, like Nowacek and Hughes, we found that engaging with TCs of writing helped us to better articulate the goals for our program.

Our guide centers on two intersecting threshold concepts: 1) the crucial role that individuals’ positionalities play in graduate writing and the impact these positionalities might have on interactions between the consultant and the writer, and 2) the importance of cultivating disciplinary awareness in both graduate writing and the consultation space. While we acknowledge that both of these concepts are key to undergraduate writing center work as well, we argue that they take on an additional layer of significance given the high stakes nature of graduate level degrees and graduate writing by proxy.

In writing each entry, we synthesized our own experiences with writing studies and writing center scholarship, and adapted advice from several undergraduate tutoring handbooks for a graduate context. As advocated by Yancey et al., constructing our consultation guide also included systematic reflection to help consultants connect theory with practice. Each week throughout the academic year, we wrote reflections on readings and consultations, often connecting what occurred during a consultation to the readings we discussed in our monthly professional development meetings. Toward the end of the academic year, we re-read everyone’s reflections and collaboratively identified core concepts for graduate writing support, focusing on ideas the fellows thought were most important for new consultants.

Thus, entries in this guide are organized around three interrelated sources of knowledge: 1) what we know based on what we’ve read, 2) what we know based on our experiences as graduate writers, and 3) what we know based on our experiences as consultants, including concrete strategies to enact this knowledge in consultations. Following the mandate from the 2016 special issue of Praxis, our guide also considers issues related to inclusion, access, and equity, particularly as they pertain to working with domestic and international multilingual graduate students, graduate students of color, and first-generation graduate students. Each entry is written in the consultant’s own voice, producing a tapestry of different tones, approaches, and points of view. When deciding on the organization of this guide, we found that as we looked for themes across our collection of entries, awareness of the role of disciplinary conventions and individuals’ positionalities emerged again and again as key to successful consultations. Thus, these two concepts served as broad umbrellas under which each entry was organized. In this way, this guide represents a collaborative approach to theory-building and reflects the distillation of our program’s knowledge and practices.

Positionality Plays an Important Role in the Consultation Space for Both Writers and Consultants

Much of graduate school is an ongoing process of developing a disciplinary and professional identity, often primarily through writing. At the same time that students are building new professional identities within their disciplines, they are also navigating how that new identity interacts with and impacts their existing positionality. Indigenous Initiatives at the UBC Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology define positionality as referring to “how differences in social position and power shape identities and access in society.” Luis Sáchez contends that positionality is “the notion that personal values, views, and location in time and space influence how one understands the world.” Both the writer and the consultant bring to the consultation space their own positionalities shaped by their experiences as members of diverse disciplinary, professional, class, cultural, racial, linguistic, etc. communities. These positionalities may impact both the writing itself and the interactions between the consultant and the writer during a consultation; navigating that impact can be difficult.

Estrem argues that “For many people, the idea that writing is not merely a matter of recording one’s research or thoughts, but is in fact a process linked to the development of new, professional identities, is troublesome” (56). Yancey further contends that writing is “inherently paradoxical” in the sense that “we write both as individuals and as social beings, and that helping writers mature requires helping them write to others while expressing themselves” (53). Like faculty and advisors who may not recognize that writing in graduate school is a complex negotiation of identities and expectations, graduate writing consultants who do not consider the role positionality plays in writing consultations may struggle to adequately identify and address the actual needs of graduate writers. For example, writing coaches may not recognize when a writer is experiencing challenges that are rooted less in the writing itself than in understanding an advisor’s implicit expectations. They may also miss when students are struggling to map their own cultural experiences or linguistic identities onto the established norms of their discipline which have largely been dominated by white, upper-class, native English-speakers.

Writing consultations with graduate writers are often a negotiation between the expectations of the writer and those of the consultant; it is the consultant’s job to attune themselves as much as possible to the ways conflicting positionalities might influence either the writing a graduate student brings to the consultation space or their ability to articulate what they need help with. The entries below address examples of several distinct positionalities graduate writing consultants may encounter in the consultation space. We want to note that the experiences represented here are influenced by our institutional context, in which first-generation and domestic and international multilingual students make up a significant proportion of the graduate student population.  

Because Graduate Writing Is Tied to (Often Fraught) Identity-Building, Coaching May Involve Emotional Labor

Graduate writing can be uniquely tied to a student’s identity and professional aspirations. Students may come in for consultation after their mentor tells them the quality of their writing makes them unfit for graduate school. Others may have received harsh feedback from members of their qualifying exams or dissertation committees and need help addressing them. Sharing these situations and pieces of writing with a consultant is a vulnerable act, possibly tied to an internalized sense of inadequacy, fear, and/or shame. As one consultant noted,  

“I assumed the consultations would be strictly about writing. […] I didn’t understand that I would spend an equal or greater amount of time empathizing with, validating, and reassuring writers, as working with them on writing. Some of the stories about relationships with mentors, family background, etc., are tough to hear and it becomes easy to understand the prevalence of mental health issues in grad school.”

During consultations, as we navigate the relationships between ourselves and writers, we also need to consider the potentially complex relationships graduate students have with writing.

Several elements of writing consultations are potential points of conflict between the consultant and writer, requiring emotional intelligence to navigate. Such tension points include understanding what the writer wants help with, as well as negotiating expectations for the appointment, especially if they are unrealistic given time or other constraints. Most importantly, consultants must communicate suggestions clearly and gently. As consultants, we can also mediate the often-fraught relationships graduate students have with writing, which may be exacerbated by unhelpful mentor feedback. Normalizing writers’ experiences and offering encouragement can help repair these relations.

Consultation strategies:

• Acknowledge an aspect of the writing you like before offering constructive feedback or suggestions.

• Normalize writers’ experiences—graduate school can be isolating and struggles with writing can feel unique. Remind writers that they are not alone and that writing is a process that most people, including yourself and perhaps even their mentors, struggle with.

• Provide information about mental health and peer-support groups on campus. 

Working with Multilingual Writers Requires Sensitivity to Systemic Biases

Often, writers may come to our consultations completely discouraged by dissertation advisors who focus on line editing for grammar, rather than providing helpful comments about the organization of ideas or merit of research questions. International students, Generation 1.5 students, and students who use non-dominant dialects of English (Green) may encounter advisors and reviewers who confound supposed issues with grammar with a students’ scholarly merit. We acknowledge the issues around students having to assimilate their language to fit the scholarly mold, which has problematic political implications and may result in the erasure of the student’s unique voice or perspective (Matsuda & Cox). Graduate students and faculty alike are often not aware of such issues, nor the repercussions their focus on grammar and language may have. Writing well academically is a skill to be developed and not a reflection of intelligence (Roozen).

Matsuda and Cox outline three orientations toward understanding differences in multilingual writers’ texts: assimilationist, accommodationist, and separatist. The assimilationist stance reads differences as errors and therefore focuses on helping multilingual writers assimilate to the language of the dominant culture by erasing their differing language patterns. Accommodationists and separatists both read differences as simply that—differences in language uses. However, the two differ in how they approach supporting multilingual writers in addressing those differences. Accommodationists help multilingual writers identify and enact writing styles and patterns of Standardized Edited American English (SEAE), while still maintaining their own linguistic and cultural identities. Separatists argue that multilingual writers’ language differences should be preserved and that readers should learn to value multilingual texts.

When it comes to approaching a consultation with a multilingual writer, consultants should try to be aware of their own orientations toward multilingual texts, as well as the positionalities of the writer and their audience(s). The assimilationist perspective can often be particularly ingrained in the ways that many advisors across the curriculum approach graduate students’ writing. As a consultant, you may have consultations with multilingual graduate students who have received feedback from their advisor or course instructor that treat differences in their use of English as deficiencies. In these moments, it is important to get input from the writer themselves on how they wish to address that feedback—that is, “‘how much like a native speaker’ [they want] to sound” (Matsuda & Cox 45). In this way, while consultants must be mindful of the various, often conflicting agendas in writing consultations, at the end of the day, the goals of the writer should be what matter most in a consultation.

During consultations, we try to be mindful of systemic biases while also acknowledging that addressing grammar can be an important exercise in making the writing center an inclusive space for all graduate students (Cirillo-McCarthy et al.). We have found it helpful to remind non-native speakers that academic writing is a skill that native speakers also struggle with and to point out that sometimes advisors are not well-trained in how to give effective writing feedback.

Consultation strategies:

• Ask the writer what goals they might have for how they would like their writing to “sound” by the end of the consultation. Then, have them identify places in their writing that do not currently achieve those goals and focus the consultation on those areas. 

• Help the writer to identify patterns of difference in their own writing that might be perceived as errors by native English speakers.

• If the writer has received feedback about their use of language, have them articulate what they think that feedback means. You might then tell the writer your own interpretation and what suggestions you would make based on that, while also helping them identify strategies they can use to address feedback on their own.

• It can be helpful to discuss with the writer how they approach their mentor with regards to feedback and give them language to ask for what they need: “I still need to edit this draft for concerns like grammar and punctuation, but I was hoping that you could give me feedback on the organization of the paper.”

• Some non-native speakers come into consultations incredibly stressed about grammar and may become frustrated when consultants assert the impossibility of line-editing an entire paper or dissertation. We have found it best to say something like “In this half hour, we can probably only get through a few pages. Let’s pick a section you are most concerned about, read it out loud, and find patterns of error that you can then recognize and correct in other sections.”

Consultants and Writers Must Negotiate Goals Regarding Grammar Early in the Consultation

Copy-editing is a common request in consultations, particularly but not exclusively from multilingual writers. In these moments, it is valuable to dig deeper into what brought the writer to the room. Often an advisor, journal reviewer, or editor has identified grammar issues as a barrier to publication or even graduation. Such high stakes can make it difficult to negotiate other goals for the consultation. Additionally, the hierarchy between “lower order” and “higher order” concerns in writing may be complicated by expectations for grammatical correctness in graduate-level writing from graduate advisors and programs (Rogers et al.). Ranking the importance of concerns can be particularly tricky for multilingual students since “for many ESL students, grammar may in fact be a higher-order concern” (Bruce 36). This reality explains why some writers may be pushy about proofreading (Bruce). But, as Cirillo-McCarthy et al. argue, refusing to address writers’ grammar-related concerns can perpetuate deficit discourses about multilingual graduate students by suggesting that their writing may be “too deficient for the writing center,” potentially discouraging them from seeking help.

As Bruce discusses, it is important for both consultants and writers to agree on common goals for the consultation, particularly as they pertain to grammar and proofreading. Graduate students may have had different access to formal academic help before graduate school and may be new to consultations on writing (Bruce). Goal-setting is, therefore, especially important for setting expectations for both the writer and the consultant. The first five minutes could be used to explain to students that when working on grammar, we may read aloud to listen for problems with phrasing or syntax, or focus on patterns of error, rather than spend time on line-editing throughout. This process will also give writers a chance to direct the consultant’s attention to areas they are nervous about or that their advisors have criticized, giving them agency in setting goals as well.

Another important aspect of the first five minutes of a consultation is addressing the social niceties of brief introductions, which are vital not only in building comfort and rapport, but also because conversations often veer towards issues beyond the writing itself: how to navigate advisor or reviewer feedback; how to make time for writing in a hectic graduate student life; what it even means to write as an academic. Showing writers that we are peers navigating these or similar issues offers us as resources, not experts. It allows us to give advice to the writer, but also to create new knowledge about writing. We can commiserate over how the intense focus some advisors and reviewers place on grammar can feel punitive, while also illustrating how issues with grammar may co-occur with other writing concerns. 

Consultation strategies:

• Establish a protocol for yourself for the first five minutes. You might decide what information is most relevant to share and what you want to know about the writer. See Bruce for suggestions.

• Try asking if you can address other concerns while also discussing grammar: “I hear your concerns about grammar. Let’s read this out loud together and see if we notice patterns. Would it be ok if we also talk about other things we notice while we read, like places where the meaning is unclear? Or ways we might improve the organization?”

• Develop a repository of handouts on common issues, like article usage or verb tenses, to reference during consultations and give writers to take home.

• Take a few moments to reflect on how you work to build rapport in sessions, and how you can successfully co-create consultation goals, so that you can be intentional moving forward. 

Navigating Cultural Capital Is an Important Part of Serving First Generation Students

Both Casanave (“Literacy Practices”) and Whitcomb discuss the importance of understanding that writing in graduate school is a socialization process in which students must learn how to “do” graduate-level writing. Being a student is different in every context, with the norms and expectations differing sometimes drastically by discipline. Being a student and a student writer is a performance, with roles, stage directions, and an intended audience. As a graduate student, it is often expected that we should be able to learn these things on our own. But what about the experiences of first-generation graduate students who have a different set of cultural tools with which they approach this new role? How can we best serve them? One of our consultants described the situation aptly:

“As a first-generation graduate student myself, learning how to navigate this new style of writing, and my new identity as a graduate student writer, was complex and took place over the course of many years. While my peers were often able to dive right in, I felt much more timid in my new role and at times lesser for not having the same resources as other writers with more dominant cultural capital. I didn’t know how to ask for help without ‘exposing’ myself for the fraud that I felt I was. I already felt like I wasn’t ‘supposed’ to be in graduate school because no one expected it from me, like I had stumbled my way into being admitted while others had guidance and help. Acknowledging that I needed help with writing seemed like just one more way I was lacking.” 

As Denny and Towle note, “For first-generation and/or working-class students coming to a writing center, who often lack assumed economic, cultural, and social capital for college success, help-seeking behavior represents both risk and reward.” As writing consultants, we have the privilege of working with first-generation graduate students and should be prepared to confront feelings of insecurity not just with writing, but also with seeking help. Perhaps a student has been told by their advisor that they need to work on their writing, but they are not sure where to start or how to ask for further clarification. In these situations, it is important to acknowledge that the student already feels at a disadvantage and that the same things that we may take for granted as more experienced graduate writers may not be intuitive to them. An important part of any writing consultation is guiding the writer to find their voice, confidence, and ability to assert themselves as they grow into their new roles. 

Consultation strategies:

• Approach consultations with empathy for the culture shock that many students experience and their ongoing battle with imposter syndrome. Empathy builds rapport and helps lay the foundation for long-term writing success.

• At the beginning of consultations, make it clear that the consultation space is not remedial; it is for students at all skill levels and stages of graduate school. Break down the myth that seeking help indicates a deficiency; instead, show how the consultation room is a space for development.

• Suggest books, articles, or other resources that may provide additional tools for continued development, such as Bolker’s Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day or Casanave’s Before the Dissertation.

• As Bell and Hewerdine note, writing centers may not always be ideal spaces for meeting the intense writing needs of graduate students. Make sure writers are aware of any additional resources or writing communities that may be available on campus.

• The consultation can also be a space to help students advocate for themselves. For example, if a student is struggling to understand what is expected of them, you can use the consultation time to help draft an email or develop language to get clarification from a professor or adviser.

Disciplinary Awareness Is Crucial to Effective Coaching

Because graduate writing coaches consult across disciplines, our awareness of writing as discipline-specific is crucial. While many disciplines share the broader academic genres of graduate school, such as literature reviews, research articles, or dissertation chapters, these genres can have very different conventions across disciplines. For example, in the helpful and popular Telling a Research Story: Writing a Literature Review, Feak and Swales discuss general expectations in the literature review genre while frequently distinguishing between expectations in different disciplines. Literature review readers in engineering, for example, may not expect an historical overview, while such moves may be more common in other fields. Writing consultants, therefore, need to develop genre awareness and disciplinary awareness. If a consultant from neuroscience assumes that a research article in geography requires the same style of argumentation, she may struggle to ask useful questions or provide helpful feedback.

Genre and disciplinary awareness play an especially important role for consultants who coach graduate students across the curriculum. We are in a unique position to assist other graduate students in “learning how to learn” in their disciplines, a key practice to aid learners in moving from novice to expert (Elon Statement). For example, the third sub-section below reflects our consultants’ consensus that disciplinary awareness is crucial to effective coaching. Awareness of disciplinary conventions, even across the same genre, helps consultants ask questions that raise writers’ awareness of discourse communities, helping them to “learn how to learn” in their fields. Consultants also benefit from this knowledge, as they learn to ask the same questions when approaching writing in their own fields.

We find Casanave’s “Learning Literacy Practices in Graduate School” helpful for understanding the rhetorical situation and challenges faced by many graduate student writers. Drawing on her own experience, Casanave (“Literacy Practices”) describes the anxiety-filled endeavor of trying to participate in an academic community of practice as a novice. Most professors have been fully acculturated to their disciplines for many years, and, therefore, may have a difficult time making what they know explicit to their graduate students, such as how to situate one’s work through citation and why it is so important to do so. Usually, neither professors nor graduate students understand that “learning to write is always ongoing, situational, and involving cultural and ideological immersion” (Scott).

When consultants understand that graduate students are in the process of forging disciplinary identities within new communities, they can normalize some of the struggles graduate students face as they try to participate in the writing practices of these communities. As coaches continue to emphasize the disciplinary nature of graduate writing, they can help guide graduate students in asking useful questions about their own writing and about the texts they read.

Graduate Student Writers Are in the Process of Constructing Disciplinary and Professional Identities

Learning to write in graduate school is a difficult adjustment for many new graduate students. While undergraduates typically encounter writing as part of coursework, graduate students are beginning to enter scholarly conversations and contribute new knowledge to their field. Because getting accepted to graduate school in many ways feels like the apex of student-hood, many graduate students and their advisors feel they should already be experts in writing. As Casanave (“Literacy Practices”) describes, graduate students may be afraid to admit that they need help, let alone ask for it. Some attempt to hide their ignorance (Casanave “Literacy Practices”), which may result in a vicious cycle of feeling like they are inadequate or unproductive but unable to ask for help. 

During consultations with earlier stage graduate students, it can be helpful to make sure that the writer has a grasp on the larger context in which their writing takes place, referred to as the rhetorical situation (audience, genre, purpose, context). Like undergraduates, many graduate writers want to prove their knowledge to their advisors or peers; rather than thinking about what a specific piece needs to accomplish within the context of a larger research trajectory, some writers attempt to add all possible relevant information. We see this particularly in consultations regarding literature reviews; some graduate students have trouble focusing specifically on the research relevant to their niche and often paint a broad or unfocused picture. Similarly, with genres like the dissertation, graduate students may have trouble remembering who the actual audience is (their committee) and the function it serves (enabling completion of their graduate degree). Consultants can help graduate students make the transition to disciplinary writing and gain perspective on the rhetorical situation of graduate school. In addition, it is important for consultants to recognize that academic genres like literature reviews or research articles have discipline-specific expectations.

Part of being a successful graduate writer involves constructing a public, scholarly identity within one’s department and larger disciplinary community. The majority of our consultations involve high-stakes documents, like journal articles for publication, cover letters for jobs, or grant applications to fund research. We have found it beneficial to ask students how a document may fit into their professional identity or what function it might serve in helping them achieve their career goals. This enables students to see the larger context in which they are writing and is hopefully a motivating factor towards completion. We also think it is important to note that writing can have different meanings for students trying to break into academia vs. those transitioning into industry or other professions. For some, publications will define future career prospects, while for others, publications are simply a requirement for graduation. We try to keep the writer’s particular writing context in mind and use it to inform our guidance during consultation.

Consultation strategies:

• Ask writers questions about aspects of genre, like audience, context, and purpose, and set goals for the consultation based on their responses.

• If a writer is unsure about the conventions of the genre, including discipline-specific expectations, help them locate samples of the genre in journals in their field.

• Consultants can also help writers ask discipline-specific questions about genres and craft language they can use to approach their advisor or seminar professor with questions.

• If writers are having difficulty understanding how to situate their research within the literature, review sections of Feak and Swales with them.

Genre Awareness Is Essential for Graduate Writing; However, Expectations Are Not Explicit and May Serve a “Gatekeeping” Function

For graduate students to succeed, it is critical to develop an awareness of genres specific to graduate school, like theses and dissertations, as well as the genres in one’s specific discipline. However, instruction on the features and typifications of these genres is often implicit, with the expectation that graduate students will simply “pick up” knowledge of these genres along the way to becoming professionals. Clark notes that advisors often fail to provide students with explicit instruction or even useful models from which they can draw. When talking about her own experience, one GWF noted that “it was never made clear to me what the expectations were [of the prospectus], what needed to be in it, and how I should write it. Could I figure out how to write that thing on my own or not? If not, then I wasn’t fit to be an academic.”

John Swales calls documents like thesis proposals and dissertations “occluded genres,” or genres that are “typically hidden, ‘out of sight’” from outsiders or apprentices (46). Occluded genres are problematic, particularly in graduate school, because there is a faulty expectation that apprentices will simply osmose knowledge of them by virtue of entering a discourse community. Advisors often have trouble articulating genre typifications, perhaps in part because they were never directly taught those typifications themselves; thus, they have little conception of how to teach students genre-specific conventions and expectations (Clark). With this in mind, graduate writing consultants can play a vital role in making occluded genres more transparent.  

Consultation strategies:

• Develop a collection of models for commonly occluded genres in graduate school like the dissertation proposal. The collection should include examples from a variety of disciplines since these genres often have different expectations based on the discourse community. The consultant can then use these models to help point out typifications and genre features to writers during consultations.

• When working with writers on genres they may not be familiar with, have them create a list of things they have heard about the genre. Sometimes having writers think about what they know can help them get past the initial inertia and imposter syndrome that comes from admitting you don’t know something in graduate school. After the writer lists what they know, the consultant can add their own knowledge to the list as well.

Graduate Writing Consultants Can Provide Useful Writing Help Within and Outside Their Disciplines

Graduate students often assume that writing consultants need a working knowledge of their field to understand their writing and provide useful feedback. Their skepticism about our ability to help is usually proportional to the distance between our respective fields of study. However, consultants who have developed awareness of how disciplinary expectations influence writing can use their knowledge of the rhetorical situation and common genres of graduate writing to cut through disciplinary boundaries and provide useful feedback to students in fields much different than their own.

The goals of writing in graduate school are similar across the disciplines: get funded, get published, or get signatures to graduate. While these are highly consistent, the particulars of the projects that students bring in are highly variable. Thus, when working with students outside of our disciplines, we spend time at the beginning of the session learning about the audience, purpose, length, structure, and other conventions of the project. Even without an expert understanding of the piece’s content, we can usually assess whether the writing is achieving the goals outlined by the writer. By collaborating with the writer and gathering information at the beginning of the session, consultants can provide a variety of responses without having discipline-specific experience or knowledge. For example, consultants can evaluate the strength of an argument and indicate how to shore up weaknesses, or they can indicate to the writer areas where the writing strays from a given purpose or goal. Consultants can also identify inappropriate or inconsistent use of tone, language, or grammar, or help writers operationalize feedback from advisors.

It’s also important to be aware of ways your own disciplinary expectations may influence your response to writing from another field, including whether you are giving writers feedback because of something you have assimilated from your discipline or because of something a general reader would need. Your field may require you to use evidence in particular ways or ask particular kinds of questions. However, when you are working with a writer from another field, those conventions may not be appropriate. It can be helpful, in this way, to craft a consultant persona that is both rooted in your discipline and in your own professional pedagogy (giving feedback as a reader, etc.).

When working with writers from your discipline or an adjacent one, you can use your own experience in your academic discourse community to offer more discipline-specific feedback. A consultant at the School of Nursing reflected on her session with another nursing graduate student: “I found myself getting away from a writing-specific focus to a broader look at his research process, using local knowledge of Nursing School faculty and resources [...]. Through the appointment, the overall scope of the project became more clear and he was able to articulate a couple of research questions.” Drawing on your own disciplinary expertise, you may be able to provide more explicit feedback on discipline-specific conventions, including tone, use of jargon, organization or structure, genre features, etc. You might also be able to suggest additional sources or provide models that you have used in your own writing or research. Your disciplinary knowledge may even help you to ask valuable questions about things like methodological approach or use of evidence. However, if you do provide research-specific guidance, be sure to suggest that writers check with their advisers before making significant changes.

Consultation strategies:

• Determine early in the consultation whether the writer is in a field closely related to yours. If you are working in very different fields, get a solid understanding from the writer of the audience, purpose, and conventions of the piece you are working on, at the beginning of the consultation.

• Defer to the writer as the expert in their discipline and try to help them become more aware of the disciplinary expertise they already have. It can be helpful for both the writer and for your own professionalization to identify the conventions of the writer’s field and to speak in terms of discipline. “In my field of _______, I might write ________ because of our conventions. Does your field have similar or different conventions?” “As a reader with a background in _______, I am noticing ________ and that affects me in these ways…”

• If the writer is unclear on their disciplinary conventions, consider spending time looking up models of discipline-specific genres with the writer.

• Ask the writer if they have received any feedback on the piece from an advisor or peer in their discipline; if so, see if that feedback can help you guide the writer through revision. 

• Be transparent about your limitations and direct the consultation toward areas you can help with.

• If you are in similar fields, determine at the beginning of the session whether the writer wants discipline and/or content specific feedback, or wants a more general response. This discussion helps constrain the scope of advice that could be given to a concrete set of priorities.

• If you are providing disciplinary feedback, determine whether the writer would benefit from discussing their research focus, methods, and other research-specific issues. 

Serving Graduate Writers in Professional Programs Requires Special Attention to Professional Norms and Knowledge

Whitcomb describes the situation for graduate students in professional programs, noting that “there is currently very little research that addresses graduate students who do not aspire to academic careers.” In Masters programs such as Nursing, Social Work, and Business, many students return to school from the workforce with already established professional identities in order to expand their professional practice or horizons, not become academics. While doctoral students with academic career goals probably have a sense of how research and writing fit the purpose of their academic program, for those seeking professional degrees, the relationship between academic writing and professional goals can be unclear. For example, one consultant working with professional nurses found that for these students, there is often no obvious link between the writing they do in graduate school and the professional roles they would be qualified to assume with their degree. This discrepancy makes the socialization process of graduate school and graduate-level writing particularly difficult for both students and faculty, whose backgrounds and goals may differ (Whitcomb).

Writing coaches must recognize that for students in professional programs, a writers’ professional identity and goals have a significant impact on the relationship they have with writing, and by proxy, their expectations for a writing coaching session. One consistent problem for professional students is audience awareness. The audience for professional students is often not conceptualized as a larger scientific community or even a community of like-minded professionals, but instead may be the faculty member(s) in charge of approving their written work. We have found ourselves frequently acting as disciplinary guides for students, helping them understand the purpose of each part of an assignment, to identify their audience more broadly, and asking them to articulate connections between their graduate work and their professional identity and goals. Framing specific assignments within the larger purposes of the program and discipline creates space for “higher-order” thinking and making sense of faculty feedback while also helping students connect their own sense of themselves as professionals to those purposes.  

Consultation strategies:

• Professional students may have little familiarity or fluency with the standard form of scholarly journal articles, such as the IMRD format. It can be helpful to use relevant scholarly paper formats and models to anchor consultations to the research process.

• Empathize with students as they experience the flood of new information and writing conventions that define graduate school. Such empathy can help to disrupt writer’s block and anxiety spirals.

• Offer concrete help on “lower-order” concerns as a way to build trust with students who have such issues at the top of their list. Once addressed, there is usually plenty of time to discuss “higher-order” issues.

• Identify when issues in a consultation may originate from students navigating their advising relationships. What might seem like an audience problem may actually be a mentoring issue or a need for students to exercise self-advocacy. If possible, direct the student to resources on campus to help in communicating with advisors.  

Conclusion

In the process of showing up for other graduate students, relating to their struggles, and helping them grow, we ourselves have grown. We have witnessed benefits to our own writing, emotional awareness, and communication style. We believe it is important to consider the whole person coming in for a consultation—their disciplinary context, professional goals, and individual positionality—in relation to ourselves. The consultation room should not be another location where graduate students are made to feel inadequate. During consultations, we seek to build trust by offering empathy, and a kind, supportive example that empowers writers to build confidence in the knowledge they already have and to be unafraid to seek help in the future. As consultants, we act as ambassadors of scholarly ideals, conventions, and occluded knowledge, and we provide resources writers need to which they may not previously have had access. Because of the unique nature of our work, we are in a position to help students not only with their academic writing but with acculturation to graduate school and to their discourse communities. When we build our own conceptual knowledge of writing, we are able to mobilize that knowledge in consultations and help build writers’ knowledge, not just about how to work on the document at hand, but how to think about writing in a larger context, and how to pose questions that will continue to help them learn independently.

The existence of this guide speaks to the potential value of reflecting on one’s individual and institutional writing consultation practices. The process of developing our own conceptual guide for graduate writing support has been a valuable learning experience for us as writers, consultants, and graduate students. We believe that graduate writing consultants have knowledge to offer writing centers based on our disciplines and our tutoring experience, and we hope other writing center directors consider involving their writing consultants in the knowledge production of their centers.

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