Meghan McKinney

Dr. Dom Ashby

ENG 800

7 May 2019

A Genre Analysis of Records of Consultations

An important facet of writing center pedagogy involves the record of consultation

(RoC), otherwise called tutor notes, client report forms, session notes, or session

records. Many writing and communication centers have consultants complete RoCs

during consultations to keep track of topics discussed in a consultation, and these are

often used to keep records for writing center administrative purposes. While some

writing centers do analyze the data on RoCs, the sheer volume of records and the

complexity therein make analysis of content difficult. Because of these difficulties,

“writing center administrators are often left ‘reinventing the wheel’ whenever the need

for new documentation arises” (Giaimo et al. 227). Thus, this bibliography will compile

sources that allow for analysis of the RoC as a genre. I posit that conceiving of RoCs as

a genre can first provide a set of standards for RoC completion from writing center to

writing center, thereby making record analysis more plausible. Such analysis of RoCs

can reveal the value of writing center work as well as the rhetorical function and value of

RoC content, and allow for better training to account for weaknesses at specific writing

centers. Further, some writing centers still fail to consider tutor notes necessary, so

perhaps defining a clear RoC genre can persuade these centers to incorporate RoCs

for the benefit of their students, faculty, and administrators. Perhaps most importantly, I
aim to analyze the genre of RoCs specifically in opposition to tutor notes. The latter of

these are written only after a consultation and employ full sentences, while RoCs

achieve a more collaborative, student-focused rhetorical purpose by being filled out

throughout the consultation and in any number of ways by different consultants. I

admire this fluidity and freedom for consultant expression, but many consultants find

this possibilities intimidating/daunting. This underscores the need for a genre analysis of

RoCs; defining the conventions of an RoC will allow consultants to visualize the

possibilities without constraining them, as tutor notes might.

 Annotated Bibliography

Bugdal, Melissa et al. “Summing Up the Session: A Study of Student, Faculty, and Tutor

Attitudes Toward Tutor Notes.” ​The Writing Center Journal​, vol. 35, no. 3, 2016,

pp. 13-36. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43965689.

In this study, Bugdal et al. seek to determine what value tutor notes provide to a

variety of audiences. They conduct a study, first classifying a set of session notes

into five categories based on the style: the reporter note, the bro note, the coach

note, the cheerleader note, and the quick note. By surveying students, faculty,

and tutors on factors of tutor notes including length, style of comments, content,

and general purpose, the authors determined that tutors and professors favor

reporter notes while students favor coach notes. All groups consider tutor notes

useful and altogether a valuable practice, and all agree that these notes, in

conjunction with tutor training, can plausibly meet the rhetorical situation of

appealing to multiple audiences at once.

Bugdal et al.’s study provides quantitative data on the usefulness of RoCs,

but more to the point of my research focus, the authors identify important

rhetorical trends of tutor notes. These recurring rhetorical moves help identify

conventions of an RoC genre, with a useful eye toward audience and which of

these functions of tutor notes successfully meet—and which fail to meet—the

rhetorical situation of student writers, tutors, professors, and writing center values

at large. However, like many of the other studies included here and in writing

center journals, the tutor notes the authors speak of are not quite the same as an
 RoC; the ones assessed here are written by tutors after the consultation as a

summary rather than a collaborative document that can serve as a resource to

help the student learn.

Cogie, Jane. “In Defense of Conference Summaries: Widening the Reach of Writing

Center Work.” ​The Writing Center Journal, v​ ol. 18, no. 2, Spring/Summer 1998,

pp. 47-70. ​JSTOR​, jstor.org​/stable/43442047.

Cogie defends conference summaries (tutor notes/RoCs) by arguing that they

are valuable in their pedagogical value, particularly how they incorporate process

and collaborative pedagogies. She first provides several exemplary summaries

and a discussion of their various rhetorical functions, then Cogie conducts a

survey of instructors, tutors, and students to see if each population found

conference summaries valuable. All but one of the 60 surveyed instructors

indicated that the summaries have pedagogical value, and all but two of 30

students surveyed listed any negatives of conference summaries. As more

intimately involved in the process, tutors’ answers involved a fair mix of positives

and negatives, though they, too, overwhelmingly found the practice valuable.

While this study, too, focuses on post-consultation write-ups, Cogie’s

explicit attention to the pedagogical aspects of conference summaries makes it

easier to extrapolate her results to​ in-consultation​ RoCs. Cogie’s examples are

also useful in that she points out specific rhetorical functions in a wide range of

examples, then she offers ways to incorporate these into tutor training and how

to compensate for less-than-effective methods. For example, Cogie gives

 suggestions based on the practices in her own writing center, such as shifting

consultant schedule to allow more time to write conference summaries. To this

particular point, consultant time working with the student is This study was

published in 1998, so this could be a benefit in its foundational status, or its age

could detract from the value of tutor notes in the more current rhetorical situation.

Giaimo, Genie N. et al. “It’s All in the Notes: What Session Notes Can Tell Us About the

Work of Writing Centers.” ​Journal of Writing Analytics, ​vol. 2, 2018, pp. 225-256.

wac.colostate.edu/docs/jwa/vol2/giaimo.pdf.

Giaimo et al. conduct a corpus analysis of tutor notes from four large universities

to determine recurrent keywords, frequency of their use, and collocated terms.

Using data from Ohio State University, Michigan State University, Texas A&M

University, and University of Michigan, the authors used the data analysis

program Voyant to ascertain trends in word usage on tutor notes, receiving fairly

similar results for each university’s dataset. The study shows that writing,

grammar, paper, and comments were some of the most commonly used terms

on session notes. This corpus analysis allows writing centers to determine how

their training and values are represented in practice, to trace consultant growth,

and to determine how well students are being served.

This study, in its magnitude and specificity, is a valuable one that explicitly

reveals patterns that could outline conventions of a clear genre. However,

similarly to most entries in this bibliography, the study only takes into account

tutor notes written post-consultation. The authors’ use of Voyant is intriguing and
 useful, but this program only assesses word usage and patterns; RoCs utilize

visuals and more bullet-point entries than full sentences, so the rhetorical moves

in tutor notes might not be as applicable to the form of RoCs I plan to study.

Hall, R. Mark. “Commonplace Rhetorical Moves of Session Notes.” ​Around the Texts of

​ P of
Writing Center Work: An Inquiry-Based Approach to Tutor Education, U

Colorado/Utah State UP, pp. 76-104. ​JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pd2km7.9.

Hall’s chapter on session notes is particularly effectively organized in its

discourse analysis of RoCs. Hall considers session notes a genre from the

beginning, then focuses on the “rhetorical work” they engage in by studying

example session notes (78). By coding these notes to suss out rhetorical

patterns, such as recommending next steps and giving specific advice, Hall finds

evidence of rhetorical patterns across tutor notes, which he narrows to 10

strategies. Most prevalent in his data are building rapport with students,

differences in primary audience dependent on varying institutional cultures, little

attention to redirecting to outside resources, more addressing of higher-order

concerns than lower- order concerns, and a high prevalence of suggesting next

steps for after the consultation. Interestingly, Hall also notes that through tutor

notes, consultants tend to express their personalities and identities. He then goes

on to conduct a brief discourse analysis of three session notes to more deeply

determine what these rhetorical strategies accomplish, the findings of which

reinforce the presence of individual consultants’ identities.

 Hall’s conclusions provide some rhetorical functions of RoCs that can

serve to explain the conventions of RoC as a genre. Moreover, discourse

analysis allows writing center assessment committees/administrators to see and

analyze the importance of tutor notes and the work they do. This source is

incredibly pertinent to my own topic in that Hall outlines and assesses specific

conventions of tutor notes through a solid study, and his coding and discourse

analysis provides a useful model for my own future research. Hall ends the

chapter with an assignment for the reader to mimic and study on a smaller scale,

which could be applicable to assess the specific function of RoCs at particular

writing centers.

Lerner, Neal. “Writing Center Pedagogy.” ​A Guide to Composition Pedagogies,​ 2nd ed.,

Oxford UP, 2014, pp. 301-316.

In his chapter on writing center pedagogy as a composition pedagogy, Lerner

summarizes the history and main foundations of writing centers. Based initially

on laboratory instruction, writing centers focus on collaboration and conversation

with students about writing, the social nature of writing and teaching writing,

process pedagogy, writing across the curriculum, and more. Writing center

pedagogy, as Lerner illustrates, employs many composition pedagogies and

serves many rhetorical purposes.

Lerner’s exploration of writing center pedagogy is formative to my

research in that he explains the purposes and values of a writing center. These

functions are essential to know in order to determine how RoCs function within
 writing centers. Lerner also connects writing center pedagogy to many

composition pedagogies, demonstrating the writing center’s value as part of

student writing development. I can use this chapter in my own argument to

situate RoCs and their rhetorical value within the function and purpose of writing

centers. This will foremost demonstrate to writing centers that RoCs are in fact

valuable to their purpose, and I will be able to connect the pedagogical value of

RoCs to those of the writing center to further this point.

Malenczyk, Rita. “‘I Thought I’d Put That in to Amuse You’: Tutor Reports as

Organizational Narrative.” ​The Writing Center Journal, ​vol. 33, no. 1, 2013, pp.

74-95. ​JSTOR, ​www.jstor.org/stable/43442404.

Alongside the multitude of purposes tutor notes can have, Malencyzk lobbies for

an additional function as a community-building document, encouraging bonding

within the writing center. With an eye toward organizational rhetoric, she

assesses how consultants aim their comments toward writing center directors

and other tutors, which she argues can build collaborative ethos in writing

centers and allow consultants to form narratives. These narratives, according to

Malencyzk, can reveal a great deal about the environment of a given writing

center, what tutors value, and how a center can direct its future training and

goals.

This article is important to my genre analysis especially in its focus on a

common internal audience of tutor notes that many of my other articles do not

explore in much depth. RoCs certainly can and should be used within the context
 of the writing center, not just in a consultation and handed to the student with no

reflection. This is another valuable rhetorical function of the RoC, so Malencyzk

provides useful insight into the rhetoric tutors use to achieve these functions. As

is common with my sources, she, too, restricts her focus to tutor notes and not

RoCs. However, I find this useful in this case, as she builds a strong case for the

validity of the rhetoric employed in tutor notes that I could extrapolate from in my

own research on RoCs.

North, Stephen M. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” ​College English, ​vol. 46, no. 5, Sept.

​ ww.jstor.org/stable/377047.
1984, pp. 433-446. ​JSTOR, w

One of the foundational texts of writing center theory, this article by Stephen M.

North declares the main precept of writing centers, even decades later: “Our goal

is to produce better writers, not better writing” (438). He outlines what a writing

center is, following a brief history and rejection of others’ ideas of what writing

centers should do. North emphasizes process in the writing center, which he

claims should also be student-centered, recursive, and conversational.

Like Lerner’s chapter on writing center pedagogy, North provides a useful

exploration of the defining characteristics of the writing center and its function.

This helps to build an idea of the rhetorical situation in which RoCs function. In

particular, North’s discussion of the rhythm of a consultation. He notes a

consultation is centered on speaking, but tutors cannot fall into a set rhythm but

should instead adapt to each writer. This idea applies to RoCs, which should

likewise depend on the individual student and conversation within a consultation.

 Because of this variance, the RoC differs rhetorically from tutor notes, which

generally follow the same format across the board. Thus, North’s article is

important to my research in a number of ways.

Raymond, Laurel and Zarah Quinn. “What a Writer Wants: Assessing Fulfillment of

Student Goals in Writing Center Tutoring Sessions.” ​The Writing Center Journal,

​ ww.jstor.org/stable/43442382.
vol. 3, no. 1, 2012, pp. 64-77. ​JSTOR, w

Raymond and Quinn seek to find whether or not students’ goals and needs are

met during tutoring sessions, conducting a study of tutor notes to find out. They

look for what tutors address in the notes compared with the initial concerns of the

student, which they narrow to no concern, grammar, clarity, argument,

assignment fit, citations, organization, textual flow, generating content, and focus.

Raymond and Quinn’s data suggests that tutors tend to focus on different

concerns than students express, revealing a tutor focus on higher order concerns

and a student focus on lower order concerns. The authors suggest writing center

tutors find a balance between what they aim to focus on and what the student

expresses as a main concern.

While this study is not directly focused on RoCs, I find it useful in that it

does study tutor notes, showing that these records can be used to assess a

number of rhetorical uses. Their method is also interesting, as they coded tutor

notes based on the narrowed list of concerns they developed. While this is

plausible in purely textual tutor notes, RoCs contain extratextual elements and

may not be assessed in exactly the same way. Nonetheless, Raymond and
 Quinn’s coding method is useful in the case that I do conduct a future study on

RoCs. The authors also conclude that students should be the focus of the

consultation and, by extension, the tutor notes, which aligns with my conception

of the rhetorical function of the RoC.

​ edford/St. Martin’s, 2013.

Sommers, Nancy. ​Responding to Student Writers. B

In this handy guide, Sommers offers advice for instructors responding to student

writing, mostly in the margins and at the end of drafts. She suggests mindfulness

of the purpose of writing commentary—to teach students beyond the classroom

and help them improve their own writing—and provides various methods of

commentary to achieve this purpose. Sommers discusses appropriate tone,

language, amount of feedback, marginalia, end comments, and the value of

different forms of feedback, both oral and written. Though Sommers writes to an

audience of teachers with a few nods to tutors, writing consultants can certainly

implement Sommers’s ideas into RoCs, which are written comments on student

writing. Perhaps most useful for consultants is Sommers’s suggestions for

engaging students with comments by responding constructively, which can avoid

alienating students with critique. In this chapter, Sommers also provides useful

exercises to encourage students to engage with comments directly, which could

fit well into consultations to ensure students read and interact with RoCs to

maximize their effectiveness. The type of commentary on RoCs is important to

analyzing RoCs as a genre, so Sommers’s advice is important in forming an idea

of what goes onto the RoC. I also value Sommers’s attention to process
pedagogy, as the RoC can be part of a student’s writing process and/or trace

their process within a consultation, which is certainly a rhetorical function.