Group Discussion

Group 4 (Humaira, Jane and Natasha) focused our discussion around Kristin Walker’s article, “Difficult Clients and Tutor Dependency: Helping Overly Dependent Clients Become More Independent Writers.”

Initially we summarized Walker’s points: the dependent tutee is overly insecure and latches onto the tutor for the whole writing process and thus the tutor and the writing center become a crutch for the student. Another point Walker made is not to speak of the tutee as dependent; the goal is to help them become independent and feel more self confident with writing. Writers at all levels of ability benefit from seeking help from another writer. We are not ever independent but inter-dependent.

Walker seemed to be primarily looking at adult learners returning to school and feeling uncertain about how to perform academically and also about their ability to perform. They don’t know how to judge what instructors want and are afraid of failing at being a student. At the same time these adult learners are highly motivated, thus in their anxiety and fear of failing they latch onto their tutor.

It was at this point that our discussion began to veer off track (or perhaps to evolve) as ideas stimulated by Walker’s article sprang into our conversation. Jane brought up a particular tutee of hers at the Writing Center where she works as a writing consultant. For the past few weeks, the student writer is coming to her with increasing regularity for help with her papers. The student appears to be very shy and insecure about her writing, so Jane, remembering what this uncertainty and insecurity feels like, is concerned she overcompensated and “did too much of the work.” Now the tutee seems to expect to be hand fed.

Responding to Jane's concern about her over dependent tutee, Natasha brought up Walker’s discussion of providing nourishment for students so that they can become self-sufficient. Walker suggests tutors complement and encourage students on their strong points and work with them to edit their own writing. In addition, Natasha commented, it is the role of the tutor to help format and develop a system for the student so they will not be so dependent on the tutor and the writing center. This can be done through encouragement and skill developing. If the student learns how to format her own paper and make her own corrections and revisions she will be less dependent on the tutor and writing center.

Humaira then pointed out that Walker covered only the students who really care about learning to write but don’t do well and become fearful. There are several typical types of dependent writers that were not covered. Humaria mentioned first the entitled writer who doesn’t bring anything with him (no assignment, no draft, nothing but his attitude) to his tutoring session and appears to assume everyone in the writing center is there to take care of him. A second example is the lazy writer who is content to just scrape by with an attitude of “just tell me what I need to do, don’t make me work for it.” And last, Humaira continued, there is the belligerent student with a chip on her shoulder that demands service and gets angry if you say “I won’t edit it for you but I will help you edit your paper.” We all agreed that these types of dependent tutees are difficult to deal with and we would have liked Walker to cover these types of dependent writers as well. Unfortunately our conversation ended before we could offer each other some suitable responses for each other.