By: Matthew Sanscartier
As teaching assistants (TAs), we may think of ourselves as at the halfway point between student and instructor, often embodying both roles interchangeably. Simultaneously, we act as gatekeepers to knowledge and academic discourses, disciplining the way that our students read and write through the provision of grades and feedback. However, effective post-secondary writing instruction faces two large obstacles. First, since it is taken for granted that students know how to read, it tends to focus entirely on composition without reading strategies, often neglecting different strategies or styles of reading in which experts are engaged (Bean 2001, 134). Second, it imposes categories like “plagiarism” and “academic dishonesty” that draw on moral discourses to regulate student identities, discrediting important work that is done on the path to learning effective writing (Valentine 2006, 102).
At the intersection of student, teacher, and gatekeeper, TAs are, I contend, advantageously positioned to confront these challenges by integrating teaching strategies into tutorials. First, I will briefly elaborate on these issues, followed by innovative strategies we can incorporate into labs, tutorials, and individual meetings with students that go beyond conventional writing instruction.
Students often learn how to read difficult texts and sophisticated writing techniques through experience. While we expect students to know to be literate, being literate and knowing how to read effectively—that is, engaging with texts strategically—are different, with the latter often being overlooked in classes. As John Bean (2001, 133-136) notes, students often assume that they should be reading quickly, have difficulty developing variegated reading strategies, fail to “chunk” texts into recognizable rhetorical strategies (“what is author doing here and why?”), or lack the technical vocabulary needed to read complicated texts.
When undergraduate students are expected to conduct research and write an original paper, they often have great difficulty differentiating between what they are saying from what the authors are saying (Graff, Birkenstein, and Durst 2009). In short, as new writers, they do not fully grasp the art of entering into a scholarly conversation, notwithstanding however rudimentary their arguments may be. These misunderstandings can and often do lead to poorly written papers with confused ideas, unclear thesis statements, and, too often, reliance on “patchwriting.” Patchwriting occurs when students, in an attempt to paraphrase authors, quote and substitute a few words in their sentences, but without substantially altering the syntax or voice of the text. And to be fair, how would we expect them to know a practice that is rarely explicated?
To make matters worse, patchwriting is often considered a form of academic dishonesty and/or plagiarism by post-secondary institutions (Howard 2000, 80). While “plagiarism” is an umbrella term capturing several practices we often think of as “dishonest,” in actuality it unites several very different behaviours under an umbrella of immorality, serving to regulate not only writing norms but the identities of students who are learning how to write (Valentine 2006, 90). The student who patchwrites because she has difficulty understanding complicated texts and the student who purchases a paper off of a website, for example, are both considered “plagiarists.” The issue here, Valentine suggests, is that the patchwriting student given little to no room to negotiate her identity by being placed within the same administrative and moral category as those who have purposefully breached academic regulation. Patchwriting, when understood as a learning strategy of students beginning to engage in scholarly conversations, is a “pedagogical opportunity, not a juridical problem” (Howard 1995, 788).
As TAs, we exist in a position between student and instructor that allows us to provide a neutral space within which students can better negotiate identities. While we must respect the rules of the institution by reporting any and all instances of academic dishonesty according to Carleton’s Academic Integrity Policy, we can work proactively to prepare students for the writing process in labs, tutorials, and one-on-one meetings. This can include going over the reading and note-taking strategies that we use as experienced students and readers with newer students. Teaching by example through our own habits can be much more effective than generic tips (Bean 2001, 137). We can discuss, for example, when we skim for the gist of an article and when we read for detail, weighing the importance of each source in our own work. Further, we might discuss note-taking strategies that include summarizing chunks of complicated articles, and using features like “track changes” in word processors to separate out what they think about the text from what the author is saying.
Patchwriting happens when students find texts too difficult to paraphrase effectively. This issue could be combatted near the beginning of the term by incorporating paraphrasing exercises into tutorials, labs, or office hours with students encountering challenges. Online tutorials such as those hosted by Indiana University can help make students aware of what patchwriting is and why it happens. As TAs, we can take advantage of our more neutral position by taking these quizzes with students, either together or individually. In addition, specific paraphrasing exercises—i.e., activities that ask students to put complex text into their words—can be found on the OWL Purdue website. These should also be done in tutorials/labs near the beginning of the term, before major deadlines. Allowing students to patchwrite outside the scope of formal assignments, without penalty, will aid in their self-construction as novice writers rather than dishonest students. For TAs who are afforded more autonomy in tutorials, the creation of voluntary or marked assignments that break the writing process down—such as short paraphrases of one or two paragraphs—can be remarkably instructive for the beginning writer.
Last, directing discourse away from plagiarism’s moral underpinnings in tutorials can be helpful in creating safe space for students. Essentialist terminology like “committing plagiarism” or “plagiarizer” can promote anxiety and prevent identity negotiation, especially if some students have been accused of plagiarism in the past. Instead, focus on “effective use of sources” to re-iterate that students are primarily learning how to write, not how to avoid plagiarism.
In sum, by de-mystifying the writing process and affording students more room to negotiate who they are as novice writers, we can use our positions as TAs much more effectively. Implementing small exercises in our labs, tutorials, and office hours can help to initiate students in the art of scholarly conversation through small steps.
References
Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas. San Francisco, CA: Wiley, 2001.
Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russell Durst They Say, I Say: Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2009.
Howard, Rebecca Moore. “Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty.” College English 57, no. 7 (1995): 788-806.
Howard, Rebecca Moore. “The Ethics of Plagiarism.” In The Ethics of Writing Instruction: Issues in Theory and Practice, edited by Michael A. Pemberton, 79-89. Stamford, CT: Ablex, 2000.
Valentine, Kathryn. “Plagiarism as Literacy Practice: Recognizing and Rethinking Ethical Binaries.” College Composition and Communication 58, no. 1 (2006): 89-109.