Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Jenna's Response to the MWCA Conference

Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend the Michigan Writing Centers Association (MWCA) conference at Grand Valley! Aside from spending the day in the most glorious library I’ve ever seen, I also learned a ton and was super grateful for the opportunity to attend. The presentations that I took the most from were in regards to rhetoric. It’s typical that students will come in for an appointment with concern for only the grammatical components of their drafts, but what about the paper’s rhetorical value? The presenter made an excellent point that I think consultants can easily forget: rhetorical value > grammatical value. This was a great reminder for me (and hopefully you!) that even if the client says he/she wants grammar corrected, rhetoric should always have precedence. The following presentation was about one option we can use to reform our methods as to ensure the product has significant rhetorical value to it. According to the presenters, consulting without a paper is the answer. Speaking with the client about what he/she is hoping to accomplish in the paper, taking notes of what is said, and then finally reading the paper to see if the student has indeed accomplished the stated goals is an excellent way to measure how effectively the student is using rhetoric. Since the conference I have implemented this strategy into multiple sessions, which have resulted in great success. I recommend everyone push the paper aside at least once and see what they can accomplish without it.

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