When a student gives a professor and a classmate a draft of a writing assignment, it is usually returned with scribbles of amendments and suggestions. This feedback is meant to help the student make revisions that can strengthen their writing ability. Of course, the writer has the right to choose whether or not to incorporate these changes. Nevertheless, we tend to seek approval and critique from others and use that to improve and grow in some aspect. Students can get this feedback for their writing from tutors in the Writing Center.
As writing tutors, it is our priority to help students become better writers by providing feedback on the assignments they bring with them to appointments. We are told to praise the positives and to guide the student in fixing the negatives. The comments we make, written and oral, can impact what tutees take away from their appointments. In psychology, this learning process is called operant conditioning. Through “reinforcement” and “punishment”, tutors can influence the modification of a writer’s writing habits to make it more appropriate for a specific situation.
What are Reinforcement and Punishment?
A behavior can be strengthened or weakened in response to a stimulus that has the ability to control that behavior. “Reinforcement” is the strengthening of an action that occurs when the action is rewarded. In the field of psychology, “punishment” has a slightly different definition than our common idea of punishment. It is the weakening of a behavior that occurs when a behavior leads to an unpleasant consequence or response.
Applications in the Writing Center
Our goal as writing tutors is not to make anyone feel bad about their writing, but to assist them with improving it. The Writing Center promotes an environment where any student can come to receive helpful, and not judgmental, feedback on their writing. We do not aim to diminish or “fix” the student’s voice, but to help enhance it in their writing through words of encouragement and critique.
Many stimuli that we don’t even realize can shape someone’s behavior. For example, the feedback writing tutors give student writers can be considered reinforcers or punishers. As we sit down with a tutee and review a writing assignment with them, we voice our remarks on things that catch our attention, the good and the bad.
Telling the writer what they did well is a reinforcer. This will encourage them to continue doing what they’re doing in that respect. Say, after reading a memoir, a tutor tells their tutee, “This opening paragraph is great. I can really imagine the scene in my head.” With these words of affirmation, the tutor is using reinforcement to let the writer know what is acceptable to their audience.
Criticism of something a tutee did that was considered incorrect or not necessarily appropriate given the situation is considered a punisher. For instance, a tutor says to their tutee, “These sentences seem kind of flowery to me. Are they really necessary for your overall message? I suggest getting straight to the point.” Tutors do not have to be harsh when using this approach. In fact, we are encouraged to be suggestive and not authoritative.
Effectiveness of Both Methods
One of the main reasons why students come to the Writing Center is to get an objective, second opinion on their writing. They want us, the tutors, to tell them if their composition is “good enough” or needs improvement in some areas. People, in general, like to be told what they did well. Reinforcers can boost a tutee’s confidence a great deal because, according to the tutor, their work is acceptable to their audience. On the other hand, there is no such thing as perfection, and (hopefully) students know that their composition isn’t perfect. They are coming to writing tutors to get ideas on how they can make their writing better. Tutors say punishers with comments like, “You should probably change/add/remove this,” to propose ideas on how students can positively revise composition. Tutors use both approaches to accomplish their number one responsibility: to aid students in becoming better writers. Students should recognize that these psychological techniques are not meant to change them into someone they are not but to assist them in the writing process.
Contributed by: Chika Nwakama
The Writing Corner 
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