Student Writing Mentors

During the academic year 2006-2007, London Metropolitan University and Liverpool Hope University are piloting a Student Writing Mentor Project through which undergraduate students are trained to collaborate with and support fellow students in their disciplines in the development of their academic writing skills. The mentors work closely with the Writing Centres at both institutions and are supported through a programme of team meetings and individual supervision. London Metropolitan has recruited eleven mentors in Psychology, Design and Humanities and Liverpool Hope has recruited ten mentors in Law, English Language, Fine Art, Special Needs Education, Music and Psychology.

The project draws upon the experience of Jonathan Worley and Matthew Martin at St. Mary’s University College Belfast (members of the CETL in Critical Thinking and Analytical Writing), and we are very grateful for their input into our own training programmes.

Background to the project

The effectiveness of “students helping students” has long been recognised, especially in North America where it has for many years been a typical part of most students’ academic experience. Learning, especially at university, has traditionally been seen as an isolated act, with a lecturer filling the “empty” student with knowledge or a student reading alone in the library. But it is increasingly recognised that learning is also a social process, with students collaborating with each other to come up with their own views and to create their own knowledge. Many feel that the latter approach helps to bring about deep learning, learning that really becomes part of the student.

Kenneth Bruffee (1984) famously showed how collaborative learning of this kind has a particular relevance to the teaching of writing. Bruffee applied to writing Vygotsky’s insight that reflective thought is public or social conversation internalised:

If thought is internalised public and social talk, then writing of all kinds is internalised social talk made public and social again. If thought is internalised conversation, then writing is internalised conversation re-externalised.

It follows that engaging students in constructive conversation about all aspects of the writing process is likely to lead to better thinking and better writing. Often students will need to converse with an expert in writing or in their academic discipline. But fellow students, who are peer collaborators rather than authoritative teachers, can also be effective participants in this conversation.

UK universities have been somewhat cautious about this approach to writing instruction. Indeed, recently doubts have been raised about whether “students helping students” is appropriate to the UK context (Devet et al., 2006). The Write Now CETL Writing Mentors scheme supplements existing writing provision at London Metropolitan and Liverpool Hope Universities and provides an invaluable opportunity to consider the efficacy of such programmes in a UK context. We hope that our experiences and research in this area will be of interest to other universities which are grappling with finding effective ways to improve their provision in writing instruction.

Aims of the project:

To enhance students’ academic writing skills
To encourage students to discuss and explore the challenges of writing at university
To promote engagement with writing issues that are specific to their subject discipline
To provide the opportunity to gain experience of facilitating student learning and development
To provide students with paid work that will enhance engagement with rather than draw them away from their academic studies
To give students the opportunity to develop valuable transferable skills for their future careers
To foster a greater sense of student cooperation and collaboration, enhancing the sense of student community at both institutions

Initial feedback

Here is some initial feedback from London Met students, where the undergraduate Writing Mentors conducted 300 writing tutorials in Autumn 2006:

The session was quite enlightening and helped me to understand better the focus of my essay and report. It has helped me to understand how to answer questions better. I will use the knowledge gained today to review my essay and report and structure them better.
This has been an interesting session and I am starting to understand how written English works.

It was a tremendous help to me. I gained more understanding of the type of structure I should use and it made me more aware of my own mistakes, which I could work on. Overall, it was a good tutorial (I will definitely take more advantage of that).
The session was very useful for me. I do know now that I can be confident about my English writing. However, I also know how to further improve my writing style. The mentor went through a part of my text and pointed out some points that could be improved which was exactly what I was hoping for. Furthermore I learned that I can improve my writing through reading things out loud. Than you for your help!

A very helpful and informative session, especially the introduction to freewriting, which made me realise that I did have an idea as to what to write. This has boosted my depleted confidence in doing coursework. I will come again and recommend to other students.
I felt that my session went very well and am very pleased. Before attending the tutorial I didn’t believe that I could write a coherent conclusion. By the end of the tutorial I have a new found confidence in my ability. I also found that I understood more about the module than I did initially.

I’m very pleased. This mentor is great. We had a long session today, probably longer than either of us expected but we made it through and I’m well on my way with my essay.
Brilliant! And very friendly!

I was pleasantly surprised at how helpful it was. It opened up my mind to the feasibility of this assignment. Thank you!
Discussing these concerns with someone has helped me to get to a point where I can start and has helped me to structure my essay. I now know how to start writing and what I want to say.

For more information on the Writing Mentor initiative at London Met, see the following article available online:

O'Neill, Peter. (2008, March 29). Using peer writing fellows in British universities: Complexities and possibilities [Special issue on Writing Fellows]. Across the Disciplines, 5.

Further information

For London Metropolitan University, please click here.
Or contact Dr Peter O'Neill, Writing Specialist.

For Liverpool Hope University, please contact Julian Brasington.

References

Bruffee, K. A. (1984). Collaborative learning and ‘the conversation of mankind’. College English (46), pp. 635-52.

Devet, B., Orr, S., Blythman, M. and Bishop, C. (2006). Peering across the pond: The role of students in developing other students’ writing in the US and the UK. In L. Ganobcsik-Williams (Ed), Teaching Academic Writing in UK Higher Education. Houndmills and NY: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 196-211.