What to Do, What to Do…

I would like to revisit the “Writers’ Corner: Policies and Procedures” document that Mike sent us a few weeks back.  In short, this document identifies a series of expectations for both writing tutors and student writers.  One concept challenged me: “…when offering advice about arrangement/organization, tutors should use models with different content than that of the client’s assignment.  However, tutors may also refer to client’s drafts when working on arrangement.”  I understand that the writer’s ideas and effort should be visible in the paper, but I can’t quite grasp the concept that using another topic may be the key to understanding.  For clarity’s sake, I am not undermining creative analogies and various teaching strategies to help students with obscure learning capabilities.  I am, however, unsure of how to confidently incorporate poignant advice for a student when I am perpetually concerned that I may be plagiarizing by using their exact, written words. 

I understand that the document I am referring to is not one that we have in Wittenberg’s Writing Center, but I do know that plagiarism is an issue that all writing centers must avoid.  With that said, I would like to incorporate the writing sample from today’s class in hopes of learning how to handle this situation.

It’s obvious that the foreign student who wrote about soccer is very talented.  The way his ideas seemed to flow (when read aloud!) and the imagery he utilized was captivating.  The issue was not content, but rather, the paper’s overall structure.  His ideas were not separated properly, and several sentences went on a bit too long.  How then, do tutors effectively explain where to use punctuation and separate ideas without using his exact words?  I feel like the whole advising session would be a jumble of different topics unrelated to his personal story.  To me, this would not be successful.  It’s hard enough to explain grammatical conventions to a native speaker, let alone a foreign student.   

I know one way to approach this dilemma is to do what Kari said: make an outline from the preconceived text.  Ok, so we’re not plagiarizing by organizing ideas using his words.  The next issue is addressing grammar.  I’m curious, what do you think we should do?