Although generally optimistic about the effect of writing center instruction, writing center staff commonly remain frustrated with the "fix-it shop" role that writing centers so frequently must assume, a role that presses staff to spend disproportionate time with the cosmetics of writing and to neglect the thinking/ writing skills that build confident, competent writers. Drop-in, last-minute service will always be necessary and important. However, both writing-across-the-curriculum research and the projects to be reported here suggest that writing center instructors can better solve fundamental writing problems if they spend some of their time outside of the writing center,

Published on 01/01/85

Our advanced degrees in English did not train us for all these roles, and many of us enroll in courses and seminars in everything from grant writing to computer literacy in an attempt to make up for what we have missed.But there is one important

In a recent article Peter Elbow posits that good teaching affirms and practices "two conflicting obligations in the job: we have an obligation to students but we also have an obligation to knowledge and society."1 Elbow characterizes the stances in this conflict as "paternal" and "maternal" versions of teaching. Paternal teaching, good for students in the long run, represents "standards and firmness" on behalf of society and knowledge, while maternal teaching, good for knowledge and society in the long run, avows nurture and support of the student (E, 329-330). Elbow suggests that in order to resolve this conflict and to help students, instructors must move back and forth to "function as ally or coach" preparing students for the rigors of achieving "deep knowledge and skills" while "role play[ing] the enemy in a supportive setting" (E, 336, 337). Such an alternation of stances is both nurturing and critical, creating a teaching environment where the student can flourish creatively and critically.

Though the tutoring of students is an ancient tradition, the tutoring of student writers in writing centers is a fairly recent phenomenon. Though certain teachers have always used their offices as informal writing labs, a place where students could come for help with a paper or a writing problem, the formal writing center began in the 1960's when English

Taking tests have always made me nervous, especially when it comes to taking writing tests, like the writing I took for 021 . 1 thought I had passed because I thought my composition was good. But apparently it wasn't. I don't think that my writing is really bad, I just have to learn to write more details and explain everything I say. But I think I will do very well on the retest because I am

Among a number of scholarly interests, he is exploring further uses of ethnographic techniques

Published on 01/01/83

The classic rhetoricians divided the art of rhetoric into at least three main stages: invention, disposition , and elocution (also memoryand delivery for oratory). Today, we continue to recognize this tripartite division of the composing process but prefer to substitute a more modern taxonomy for the latinate terms: pre-writing , arrangement, and style. The advancements in rhetorical theory in the past decade and a half are impressive; however, despite this growing insight into the writing process, many of us who teach composition still seem to disregard observations made centuries ago by Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. We are speaking specifically of the inattention paid to the first stage of the tripartite writing process: invention. It is a fad currently to attend conferences in order to discuss heuristics and the invention process, but it seems that most of us fail to do anything about prewriting in the classroom or writing center. Although we were encouraged by Tom Nash's description of invention-oriented methods used in several writing centers ("Hamlet, Polonius and the Writing Center," Writing Center Journal , vol. I, No. 1, 80), we sensed that these experiments with pre-writing were probably the exception not the rule.

Muriel Harris suggests that writing laboratories have an "image problem":

Initially I considered composing my own essay in order to describe how peer tutoring in writing at New York University came about, the roles played by the peer tutor in the already established Writing Center, and the techniques I used to train the tutors. But then the tutors wrote their own essays on some of these topics. They said what I'd wanted to say and more. So together we chose three of their essays which we thought best represented our collective feelings, the approaches we shared, and above all, our common enthusiasms for peer tutoring.

Peer tutoring can be a viable part of the writing lab or the classroom in both high school and college. Ideally, once tutors are selected, they should be able to enroll in a course, but in reality most high schools and colleges do not have such a course. An alternative is to offer a workshop of several short sessions to prepare them for tutoring. Training tutors in skills will obviously vary with the types of tutoring they are expected to do and the services the writing lab provides. How students are acquainted with the resources and trained to teach composing skills are problems that English teachers or writing lab directors are easily able to handle. However, we, as teachers, may sometimes forget the obvious. If tutors have not had courses in education or psychology, for example, they may lack knowledge of some principles of learning and of strategies that would enhance their ability to tutor. Training tutors in areas other than cognitive skills becomes a prerequisite to a successful program.