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Eliza Roesler

Professor Krane

ENGL 113EL

3 May 2021

Unmuting Your Voice

The most powerful tool that a writer can have is their voice. A strong voice can only

come from confidence, support from peers, and independence to showcase it. A writer’s voice

should set them apart from everyone else. I have always felt that writing is a passion of mine,

and teachers have more or less encouraged it and fostered its growth. Except one teacher did not

encourage it or its growth. Or should I say they didn’t encourage my voice and my voice’s

growth? This teacher had a war on “it,” nobody could say the cursed word, and instead had to

shuffle around nouns and adjectives and invent new phrases for the excommunicated pronoun.

In doing this, I felt a pressure to mute my voice, and tailor my style to fulfill a grading

requirement, sacrificing variation for repetition and backwards phrases.

I admit, personal voice isn’t appropriate in every aspect of writing. Your audience doesn’t

need to chuckle at your sarcastic quips or be on the edge of their seats with vivid descriptions for

you to get your point across about the history of the American Revolution. Research papers

require their own format, and you can waste space by offering your opinion and even discredit

yourself. However, we should still have autonomy in how we present our facts. A microscopic

lens into word usage seems like a waste of review, and an unnecessary critique to lose points on.

I remember distinctly the grimaces on a friend’s face during a peer review session after I had

willingly defied my teacher’s decree on the banishment of “it.” The only benefit I seemed to gain

was the ability to look closer at sentence structure to find areas where I could simplify my
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language or elaborate further. These areas, however, had nothing to do with “it” and took up a lot

of my time. Although the word “it,” to me, wasn’t the problem, I was able to comb through my

conventions and find small areas of improvement. I think this could be a good tool when

working with other students, but only if they have small sentence structure or grammar problems.

I don’t think it is worth the unsuccessful feeling they might have as a writer from having their

work under a microscope.

A closer look in revisions is a helpful tool, but the cost was too high. I felt my confidence

as a writer diminish as I received low grades on assignments that I thought were witty, smart, and

well-put. Why? Because I couldn’t erase all traces of “it.” Maybe this meant I was stubborn, or

that I didn’t revise enough, but I felt that I was being punished for not conforming to a standard

that I personally did not agree with. Nobody argues about if a MLA citation is incorrect, because

there is a right and wrong way to do it. Grammar, for the most part, has a correct and incorrect

form, but I learned more and more that it is not so black and white. One person can say the same

thing as another, but in two completely different ways–I tend to use longer sentences, more

punctuation, and interrupting ideas–and neither are wrong. This also means you can’t necessarily

compare two pieces of writing, and determine if one is “better” than the other, and therefore

more deserving of a higher grade. Seeing my peers receive higher scores than me consistently

told me that I was not a good writer, even though I felt I was. I probably shouldn’t have been

comparing myself to others, but it was hard not to. The corrections I was getting felt like an

attack on my style and my voice, instead of tangible things, like spelling or fact representation.

I have learned from this experience that when tutoring other students, it is important to

not come in immediately with things to change. If you do feel like there could be improvement,

you should first have a sense of who they are as a writer and how they feel about their work. In
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Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” she details her mother’s unique way of communicating, and how it

helps her understand her more vividly. In writing form, her mother would likely need to edit for

grammar mistakes, but her direct observations and abrupt details better encapsulate her

experiences with the world. If someone forced her into strict English, she would lose nearly all of

her personality. You can’t sense right away whether their seemingly unconventional writing is

part of their unique voice that distinguishes them as a writer, or a topic of possible improvement.

Helping a student also means you need to build their confidence, and engage them in the

topic. In Newkirk’s “The First Five Minutes: Setting an Agenda in a Writing Conference” he

describes a writer who seems unsure of their work, and he makes an effort to compliment their

writing and engage them by asking questions. I never felt as if my teacher asked me about my

writing, and had a sense of how engaged I was about the material. It seemed like she took my

persistence to not change my style as insubordination, and consequently, grounds for mediocre

grades. In my class, it felt like we immediately jumped into peer critiques. Getting my paper

back full of red marks hurt, especially since this person was practically a stranger. I wondered,

was I the bad writer, deserving of these corrections? To avoid this while tutoring, tutors should

ask questions like, “where do you think you can improve” and “what are you trying to say here”

to gauge a student’s intent with the writing. Maybe they want to write as if they are in

first-person narration the whole time, or maybe they don’t know how to put it more formally, and

this was the way of writing that felt easiest. They won’t be able to tell you this if you don’t ask,

and you may be bulldozing their independence and confidence as a writer under the guise of

helping.

Scrutinous editing took a toll on my confidence as a writer, and I felt as if I had to tailor

my work for a grade. Receiving my marked up paper in class told me I had a lot to change to get
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a good grade, even though I had felt my draft was well done. However, part of me wondered if

the student just felt the need to mark things up, because the assignment was to “help” their

partner revise. After all, these were graded revisions on both sides. I lamented if they even took

an interest in my paper, in what I had to say. Then I worried, if I don’t change anything, will I

fail? I had heard preachings from other teachers that your draft should be wildly different from

your final work because it showed you incorporated the best of all of your feedback and really

strived for the best version. As tutors, we can feel pressure to produce changes so that we can

make progress, and students we work with can feel the same. If the student has a draft to work

on, they may depend on the notes you give them for a good grade instead of their own instincts

This can be remedied by starting off by getting to know them. A sense of what they are trying to

say is vital to creating an open dialogue, and discovering the places they need support. They

might be uninterested in their work, and merely sticking with it because someone told them it

was right, or they didn’t feel like they had the freedom to go outside the safety guidelines of the

prompt. In “Too Smart to Fail” by Holtgrieve, he warns of the negative effects that come with

working for a grade. Students lose their passion for their writing in trying to adhere to what they

think they need to get an A. The fear of a bad GPA can hinder a student’s creativity and

engagement in their work. In addition, focusing on tiny details can take time away from more

important aspects of their paper. In class, I would usually spend a chunk of time finding and

replacing all of the times I used “it” instead of seeing bigger points of revision. Was my message

clear? Is there a good flow to my essay? Eventually, I learned to censor myself when writing–to

automatically replace “it”–so I didn’t have to go back to change it later. This led to more

confusing sentences for my reader, as well as a diluted and sometimes disorganized message in

my work. I had lost my sense of self-revision and, most importantly, my voice.

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A student should never feel as if their writing is wrong, or that the way they write should

be different. A tutor must walk a fine line between supporting the student–getting to know them

and their style, showing an interest in their topic and building a relationship–while also still

helping them improve their work. Fixing grammar and convention mistakes are important, but

collaborating to clarify and refine their main idea is more important. In “Reshaping Students in

Our Own Image, the author reflects that his teachers “couldn't help noticing that everything I did

was wrong—the shapes, the angles, the proportions—but I found myself wincing at their careful

comments” (Blaisdell 1). His teachers only saw his work as a product of their teaching; he

needed help and guidance for his work to be a success, which meant similar to their idea of the

final product. Similarly, if you jump in with an idea of what the paper should be, you might as

well write the paper yourself. Instead of fixing things to reflect your idea of right, you should

give the student the tools to identify places for improvement and how to better shape their work

into their own image. What might not look like a clear improvement to you might be a huge step

for them. They might have always struggled with clarity, and after a conversation with you, they

were able to see a sentence to cut out. The student has just demonstrated their ability to revise

their writing to better portray their message. This is a skill they can practice for the rest of their

writing careers and make them independent and confident writers. If you took over and corrected

their paper, you have robbed them of the opportunity to learn and improve their writing process.,

Only the writer knows exactly what they want to say, which means that they are the only ones

who can know exactly what they need to do to get there.

As a tutor, you should do everything you can to support a writer’s voice. Getting to know

them, asking questions, and letting them have autonomy are essential. Over inserting yourself

can lead to weakening their confidence as a writer, muting their voice, and enforcing the idea that
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there is a right and a wrong way to do things. A writer should never feel pressure to conform for

a grade or take a tutor’s suggestion over their own instinct. You should work to establish a

relationship with the student, understand their writing style, and take cues from them on what

they need. Supporting the writer in their autonomy in deciding what to cut, add, or change will

lead to the best version of their work and the most growth for them as a writer. After all, it is

their work and their ideas that need to shine through to their audience.
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Works Cited

Blaisdell, Bob. Reshaping Students in our Own Image. The Chronicle of Higher Education, The

Chronicle Review, 31 Mar. 2014 10:54.

Holtgreive, Joseph. Too Smart to Fail. Inside Higher Ed, 16 Aug. 2016,

www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/08/16/students-focus-too-much-grades-detriment-lea

rning-essay.

Newkirk, Thomas. The First Five Minutes: Setting the Agenda in a Writing Conference.

University of New Hampshire, 1989.

Tan, Amy. Mother Tongue. The Threepenny Review, 1990.