Brooks,+Jeff.++Minimalist+Tutoring..+Making+the+Student+Do+All+the+Work

Brooks, Jeff. "Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work." //Writing Lab Newsletter// 15.6 (1991): 1-4. Reprinted in Barnett 219-224.

The argument for a generalist tutor can be supported by Jeff Brooks’ Writing Lab Newsletter piece, “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work.” In this article, he suggests that our job is almost exclusively to ask students questions, usually about their rhetorical choices (“what’s your reason for putting Q before N?” [223]). Brooks advocates this position because it allows all of the focus to be on the writer rather than on the written product. If tutors make statements about the paper, then they are operating as editors rather than tutors. Brooks describes the “central difficulty” of writing center work as the contradiction that “we sit down with imperfect papers, but our job is to improve their writers” (219), not the paper itself. He suggests basic and advanced strategies for employing minimalist (sometimes known as non-directive) tutoring, as well as strategies for working with resistant writers. Though not explicitly stated, this article suggests that anyone who knows enough about writing to ask questions about a writer’s rhetorical choices can be an effective tutor—probably a more effective tutor than someone with disciplinary knowledge who may attempt to “teach” this knowledge to the tutees.