Playing To Your Strengths: On the Importance of Inspiring Confidence When

Working as a Curriculum-Based Peer Tutor

Sam van Etten

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Professor Ben Ristow
Spring 2015

van Etten 2
Playing to Your Strengths
With few exceptions, no-one like doing things theyre bad at. From menial, everyday
tasks to larger career goals, if you struggle with something you are unlikely to get excited about
doing it. Luckily, the inverse of this statement is also true: if youre confident and comfortable
with an activity you are much more likely to enjoy it. So, focusing on improving things one
excels in can inspire a sense of confidence and mastery, as opposed to the self-conscious,
cautious approach taken when dealing with weaknesses. While this is a universal lesson,
Curriculum Based Peer Tutors (CBPT) would do well to pay it extra attention while working
with students on their writing. By focusing on a writers strengths, or the aspects of writing a
student enjoys, a CBPT will inspire confidence in their students. This approach transforms
writing from a challenge into an opportunity to excel at something, which will help students
develop a stronger written voice and improve their overall written communication. Or, in another
sense, by surrounding a student with their strengths as opposed to their weaknesses, the student
will gain the confidence that can help to develop their voice, as well as improve their overall
written work.
Of course, like any concept, there are some assumptions embedded in the notion of
focusing on a writers strength to inspire confidence and improve their writing. The primary
assumption in this particular case is that confidence in a writer will directly equate with an
improvement in their writing. Admittedly, this is a dangerous assumption to make; misplaced
confidence can be disastrous. Because of this danger, the CBPT must act as a guide, ensuring
that a writers confidence stems from the best aspect of their writing, and not necessarily the
writings easiest or most entertaining elements. However, if the CBPT does their job well, and

van Etten 3
emphasizes the strongest aspects of a students writing, the confidence that ensues should result
in an overall improvement in the students writing.
The relationship between confidence and quality of communication in the field of writing
has been established by Frank Pajares and Margaret J. Johnson. In Confidence and Competence
in Writing: The Role of Self-Efficiency, Outcome Expectancy, and Apprehension, Pajares and
Johnson conclude that what people do is often better predicated by their beliefs about their
capacities than by measures of what they are actually capable of accomplishing (Pajares,
Johnson 313). Raising a students confidence in their writing will encourage them to take more
risks; helping students to discover what strategies work best with their written voice and develop
their own tendencies or traits as a writer. Inspiring confidence, however, is easier said than done.
Luckily, several strategies exist for facilitating this boost in self-esteem, as well as for dealing
with the roadblocks that a CBPT may face while pursuing this endeavor.
The CBPT/student relationship is a complex one because it is neither a teacher/student
relationship nor a student/student relationship, but rather somewhere in-between. This can create
awkwardness and uncertainty in social expectations, which can undermine the CBPTs efforts to
inspire confidence by instilling a sense of discomfort in the student. Luckily, the University of
South Carolina Aiken analyzed this issue and created several strategies for combating this
awkwardness in the presentation Tutoring ESL Students: Everything You Need To Know. It
should be noted that this presentation focuses primarily on ESL (English as a Second Language)
students, however the strategies the presentation proposes are universal, and apply in this
context. These strategies include be sure to emphasize what they (the student) do right When
offering criticism do your best to sandwich it in-between praise Speak positively [and]
reflect on how students have improved over time. This type of positive re-enforcement can help

van Etten 4
to combat any shame or awkwardness a student might have about bringing a CBPT their paper,
as well as inspire the confidence that will help a student develop a strong written voice.
Additionally, focusing on the strengths of a students paper will help the student to identify what
their strengths are, and will help them to focus on these strengths in future papers. This will make
writing more fun (or at least palatable) for the student, as well as facilitate an overall
improvement in the students written voice. The theoretical backbone supporting the use of
positive reinforcement to improve written communication is clearly established, but what
strategies can a CBPT take to actually inspire this sense of confidence in the field?
Theories are a useful first step towards inspiring confidence in students, however
developing a list of physical actions or strategies that educators or CBTPs can use to inspire
confidence in their students is perhaps the most important and useful aspect of this process.
Luckily, many strategies for inspiring confidence already exist. Frank Maguire explores several
tactics educators can use in his article Eleven Strategies for Building Self-Confidence in
Student Writers. This article focuses mainly on strategies for professors, however Maguire
clearly values the effects peer-tutoring can have on students confidence. Maguire discusses
several actions for building confidence in student writers that a CBPT could capitalize upon, and
emphasizes the potential benefits of peer-tutoring programs when outlining strategies for
inspiring confidence in writing. These strategies include broad actions like respond to the
content in students papers before correcting errors or find a positive comment to make about
students writing that can function as more general objectives for CBTPs (Maguire 257).
However, Maguire also takes the time to fully develop actions tutors can perform in meetings to
help facilitate a sense of confidence. Little elements like avoiding red ink, emphasizing that the
reader is interested in what a student says (as opposed to how a student says it), or

van Etten 5
complementing a strong metaphor can help a student to see whats working in their papers, and
avoid the I-cant-do-anything-right syndrome that can be so cancerous to student writers
(Maguire 257). This focus on the positive will not only help a student to be more receptive to
constructive criticism, but will encourage them to take the elements of writing they feel
confident with and expand them. This confidence will translate to a students written voice, and
thus improve the piece as a whole. Critics of this approach would likely argue that, while this
strategy might improve a students narrative voice, it will weaken their analytical writing, and
thus be detrimental to a students development as a writer. However, writing is not simply
divided into self-contained sections; each genre of writing encompasses aspects of every other
written genre, and any improvement to one aspect of a students writing is an improvement to
their entire written voice.
In the larger sense, writing is simply a form of communication. Thus, placing arbitrary
restrictions, or categorizing writing into smaller subsets, serves only to qualify different aspects
of writing, not to entirely separate one genre from another. An analytical essay, for example, still
employs elements of a narrative essay, and vise-versa. By improving the aspects of writing a
student excels at, the student will, inevitably, improve their writing as a whole because the
distinctions or genres of writing (like narrative and analytical) are arbitrary. Emma Link, a CBPT
at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, experienced this effect firsthand while working with
student who exceled at detail oriented, creative writing, but struggled with more focused research
papers. Link focused on making their research papers detailed and engaging, and in doing so
played to the strengths of her student. Just knowing theres even one thing they excel at really
gives a student that confidence, Link elaborated.

van Etten 6
Other peer tutors have had similar experiances working with undergraduate students.
Nina Prescott, also a CBPT at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, has worked with students
who struggle with confidence in their writing, and has also found that focusing on a writers
strengths not only improves the quality of the students writing in that particular genre, but the
tutoring process as a whole. Students who lack confidence are often quiet and unresponsive
during meetings, says Prescott, while students who feel more confident in their writing seem to
be more willing to ask questions and deal with the elements of their writing they struggle with.
The expression confidence is key may be a tired clich, but in the field of writing it is
remarkably relevant.
Self-confidence is not an easy thing to inspire, especially given the complexity of the
tutor-student relationship. However, when exploring student feedback on CBPTs, Muriel Harris
found that the idea of confidence is one of the most-mentioned areas students saw improvement
in. Harris discusses this phenomenon in her essay Talking in the Middle: Why Writers Need
Writing Tutors. She begins by exploring how students lost their confidence in the first place and
points to students feeling unsure a paper or assignment is well-written, excessive corrections
by teachers and anxiety about being evaluated as being responsible for this loss of confidence
(Harris 35). All of these activities focus on the weakest aspects of a students writing, and in
doing so aim to help a student recognize areas that need improvement, thus improving the
students overall writing. However, this focus on a students weaknesses will often result in a loss
of confidence, which, often times can be more detrimental to a students writing than the errors
the teacher was trying to correct in the first place. Harris argues that CBPTs can be used to
counteract this loss of confidence, and that their hands-on approach to working with a student on
their writing can help a student to feel confident in their written work. Harris explains that

van Etten 7
asking the writer some questions or requesting more details often results in the writers seeing
what else he should have included or where (or how) the paper drifted away from the intended
goal (Harris 35). This emphasis on the strength of a students idea can inspire the student to feel
confident in the intelligence and quality of their thesis, and thus improve the piece as a whole.
This method indirectly deals with issues related to a students confidence by addressing aspects
of their writing. This indirect approach can be very effective when addressing issues of
confidence with a student. However, strategies do exist for CBPTs to deal with students
confidence more directly.
Sometimes, the indirect method simply will not work. Luckily, Jan Eldred, Jane Ward,
Kay Snowdon and Yanina Dutton all recognize the importance of inspiring confidence and
provide some concrete strategies tutors can use when working with pupils in their piece
Catching Confidence. The authors begin by outlining the importance of a tutors ability to
inspire confidence, stating that tutors should have insight into the study of confidence,
particularly the relationship of confidence to learning, including strategies that can be used to
support the growth of confidence through the learning process (Eldred et all 4). They then go on
to illustrate several strategies that can be used to inspire confidence in adults, like the Post-it
Method, which involves outlining aspects of the activity (in this case writing) that the student
feels confident in, neutral about, and less confident in. This activity, which is designed to think
about what confidence means (Eldred et all 12) might sound childish at first, but it will not only
help the CBPT understand how their student feels about their writing, but may also help the
student to understand their relationship to their written work. Almost all of the strategies
proposed by Catching Confidence involve the use of physical objects and visual
representations of emotional states, like Post-it Notes or stickers. The use of visuals serves to

van Etten 8
remove the communication barriers created by spoken language, and take the pressure off the
student. Making activates like this easy and comfortable for the student can help to cut down on
social awkwardness while outlining the areas the CBPT should focus on and helping the student
to be more self-aware. Of course, the Post-it method might not work for everyone, and because
each student will communicate differently each CBPT must be patient and understanding of a
students unease in discussing this matter. However, using visuals (or other nonconventional
communication techniques) to establish a students level of confidence is one of many strategies
a CBPT could employ to help boost a students confidence.
Human beings are defined by the things they excel at, not the things they struggle with.
By encouraging a writer to focus on their strengths, a CBPT will help them to discover what
makes their writing unique and powerful, inspire confidence and help students to develop their
written voice. CBTPs can use visual tools, complements and positive reflections on a students
growth as a writer to help students establish what their written strengths are, and can then
emphasize these aspects of a students writing during their meetings. This approach, along with
making positive comments, avoiding red ink and focusing on a students ideas, will improve a
students writing as a whole, and make the writing process more enjoyable for students who
previously struggled with their written voice.

van Etten 9
Works Cited
Eldred, Jan, Nina Dutton, Kay Snowdon, Jane Ward. Catching Confidence. Adults Learning.
Vol. 16 No. 2 (2005): Web.
Harris, Muriel. Talking in the Middle: Why Writers Need Writing Tutors. College English.
Vol. 57, No. 1 (1995): Web.
Maguire, Frank. Eleven Stratagies for Building Self-Confidence In Writers. The Clearing
House. Vol. 62, No. 6. (1989): Web.
Pajares, Frank, Margaret J. Johnson. Confidence and Competence in Writing: The Role of SelfEfficacy, Outcome Expectancy and Apprehension. Reaserch in the Teaching of English.
Vol. 28, No. 3 (1994): Web.
Tutoring ESL Students: Everything You Need to Know University of South Carolina Aiken.
2015. Online Presentation.
van Etten, Samuel Interview with Nina Prescott, Emma Link. 2015: Print.