Published on 01/01/09

Published on 01/01/09

Who doesn't love a good story?A tale of triumph or woe, of frustration or longawaited success.Such classic narratives are familiar to us all, and versions of them occur in the writing center with relative frequency.These stories we tell -whether of current successes or challenges, passed from veteran tutors to newbies, from directors to faculty and back again -teach us about our work, helping us to reflect on it and improve it.These stories are filled with compelling characters and recurring plots: the frustrated first-year student; the instructor's cryptic comments; the first scientific paper written for a major professor; the challenging task of figuring out the genre of the dissertation.These stock scenarios are familiar to us because they have all taken place in the relatively patterned institutions that host our writing centers, and these persistent patterns represent a script of sorts, one we can easily follow, whether we're the actors themselves or the audience listening to someone else's writing center stories.Patterns, of course, do get disrupted.In many ways, writing centers are in the business of disrupting patterns, working with writers to develop new approaches to writing tasks and changed relationships to their academic work.Those of us who work in writing centers must also be prepared to have our patterns disrupted, to hear how writers are really engaging with their texts: the English Language Learner who is not asking for proofreading assistance but who instead wants to know whether the evidence she presents in her argument is convincing; the chemistry student who comes in with a laboratory report, a genre often associated with arcane language and fill-in-the-blank templates, and turns the conversation quickly to her excitement over the research she is doing and the ways she might convey the essence of that research to a general reader; the returning student enrolled in an

To understand the social present is very much a matter of recognizing and understanding the extent to which and ways in which our everyday lives are invested in and impacted and punctuated by counternarratives and the "

People are gathered around television sets and radios. A Liberian student, who is near tears, comes to my office to express

Writing center directors have often valued narratives, using them to understand students in rich ways, to train tutors effectively, and to build knowledge about writing center practice and theory (

Published on 01/01/08

Published on 01/01/08

Published on 01/01/08

Published on 01/01/08

This "From the Editors" segment, positioned in the text as a foreword, is in many ways a coda, concluding six years of our work together, twelve issues of this publication culled from 191 submissions from the field's many talented, dedicated teachers and scholars.In our initial "From the Editors" contribution (23.1), we quite literally looked forward -to a new look for the journal, to the authors and articles awaiting us, and to all we would learn about the field of writing centers, working on the inside of its knowledge-making process.True to our writing center roots and historical interests, however, we quickly looked back.Way back.By our second issue (23.2), we offered highlights from 100 years of writing center history, sampling from the work of Fred Newton Scott, E. L. Holcomb, Mickey Harris

Tutors 25 Years Later," links the range and focus of their professional activities to Bruffee's leadership beginning in the late 1970s. One important element of that leadership centers on the growth and development of peer tutoring

In the early 1970s the City University of New York (CUNY) introduced a new policy of Open Admissions to all graduates from the high schools of New York City.

Q : How do you feel, after over 30 years, about being invo ing f?

Published on 01/01/08

Hillary democ miss is Tutors is no c At the ing, bu directo much o dents -both in the classroom and without. We attended class at the CUNY Graduate Center on 42 nd Street, and many of us were living in an NYU dorm across from Washington Square Park

Substantive expertise of a subject is often equated with the ability to teach it.

Rhetoric and composition, as a new academic field

A Short Course in Writing provides a good occasion to ask what makes a textbook in rhetoric and composition a classic. The fact that Bruffee's book is among the first to appear in the Longman Classics in Rhetoric and Composition series cannot be attributed, after all, to its commercial success. In his review of the original manuscript of A Short Course , Richard Beai, the most prominent English editor at the time, told Paul O'Connell, who published the first edition at Winthrop in 1972, that Bruffee could either alter the book and sell a lot of copies or publish the book as is and make history.1 What Beai predicted has indeed come to pass. As A Short Course appeared in subsequent editions (the 2nd from Winthrop in 1980; the 3rd from Little Brown in 1985; and the 4th from HarperCollins in 1993), it has influenced, far out of proportion to its sales, the actual practices of writing instruction and, more broadly, of educational reform in U.S. college composition.

The author discusses the reasons why she uses the book "A Short Course in Writing" which is written by Kenneth Bruffee. One of the reasons why she chose the book as a guide in writing and teaching writing is that the book offers students several patterns of organization or structure. Another reason is the emphasis on arrangement and invention which involves making introductions and conclusions. The book also teaches that teachers can restrict the form or the content of student writing. Other reasons of the author's usage are that it helps her grade students fairly and it offers the Descriptive Outline method of writing.

Published on 01/01/08

Published on 01/01/08

Published on 01/01/08

Published on 01/01/08

Published on 01/01/07

Mirme-apolk, Nov/e-rvike-r Z (9(95" IWć^A Pbar Je>ame>H~e>, ÏÏW'y'z fvn.W'tÇh moi

Like many writing centers, ours trained us to respond to writers whose papers might involve plagiarism; we learned to show students

A university employee, Nancy, recently brought to me an idea for a nonfiction book about coping with thyroid cancer.In remission and awaiting word on her latest diagnostic scan, Nancy began our tutorial by excitedly reviewing the many and sometimes amusing lessons about life and family she had learned from her ordeal.As she explained, the book gave her a chance to explore her long-dormant writing skills, work on a project worthy of her time, and pass along what she had learned to other cancer victims.Her personal investment in the project was high, and the intensity with which she listened to my every word of encouragement and advice certainly raised the stakes for me.As we discussed where to begin and the book's potential commercial appeal, I felt edgy and alert -a condition heightened by Nancy's sudden jumps from idea to idea.I wanted to offer support but not build false hope, so I tried to balance any assurance that she had good ideas with a realistic assessment.She asked hard questions about working in a mixed genre -in her case, autobiography combined with elements of a "how-to" manual that might eventually become a sort of humorous Chicken Soup for the Cancer Survivors Soul.Some of her questions I simply could not answer, in part because many of her ideas remained half-formed and success would hinge on her persistence and writing ability.But I improvised suggestions based on some experience with creative nonfiction, a slight familiarity with "how-to" books, and secondhand knowledge of cancer-survival stories.Nancy left our ninety-minute brainstorming session with an attitude of eager determination to continue working.As good sessions sometimes do, this one left me feeling used up but exhilarated -an intellectual version of runner's high.

Published on 01/01/07

Published on 01/01/07

Published on 01/01/07

Published on 01/01/07

The last twenty five years have witnessed a number of profound changes in the landscape of higher education, changes that have been collectively described as a shift towards the "managed university." Although other terms have also been proposed to name this shift, there is wide agreement about some of the basic characteristics of the trend.1 The power of corporate interests to shape higher education funding and policy has grown, and many colleges and universities have themselves adopted overtly business-oriented models of management. Institutions are making aggressive efforts to cut costs and maximize revenues in the face of diminished state subsidies. Among the many results of such changes has been the emergence of a new kind of "academic capitalism" (Rhoades and Slaughter) that shifts resources away from a wide range of traditional, but economically marginal, university activities, and redirects them to activities that generate revenues and enhance the competitive position of US corporations in the global economy.

About the New Racism," Victor Villanueva issued an invitation and a challenge to writing center directors, scholars, and tutors. Villanueva urged us to examine and to address the ways in which race and racism shape writing center identity and practices; enable and constrain knowledge and knowledge production, teaching and learning; and are reproduced not only through the thought and action of individuals, but also and especially through

The Problem: The Divide Between Theory and Practice Like most writing center directors, we have always included in our tutor preparation an emphasis on differences students may bring to a session. Up until a few years ago, this approach mainly took the form of a unit on working with ESL writers and another on working with students who have learning disabilities. This approach to diversity was reinforced by the textbooks we chose for our tutor training seminar. The guides for tutors that we have assigned over the years (including Meyer and Smith's The Practical Tutor , Capossela's The Harcourt Brace Guide to Peer Tutoring, , McAndrew

by

It has been over a decade since Irene Clark argued in