Writing Center Journal
12 articles2025
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Abstract
This study examines what multilingual writers notice while they read their writing aloud, and whether reading aloud helps improve the accuracy of their writing during revision. It also investigates whether multilingual writers’ second language (L2) proficiency influences the extent to which reading aloud impacts revision. To address these questions, a counterbalanced, mixed design study was carried out with two experimental conditions: revising while reading aloud and revising while reading silently. Multilingual writers of higher and lower English proficiency at a large research university participated in a two-day sequence of composition and revision, two times, over the course of two weeks. Each student’s composition and revision process was screen-recorded and used in a stimulated recall interview at the end of the study procedure. Quantitative results from this study suggest that reading aloud may be more beneficial for multilingual writers at higher rather than lower English proficiencies, mostly because of lower proficiency multilingual writers’ difficulties in having to effectively allocate their attentional resources. Findings of the study help writing centers implement practices with a more nuanced, learner-specific approach to further enhance their ability to support diverse learners.
2024
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Using Content Analysis and Text Mining to Examine the Effects of Asynchronous Online Tutoring on Revision ↗
Abstract
What do writers do with the feedback they receive? While the answer will vary depending on the writer’s experience and the rhetorical situation, understanding what writers do can provide important information for course redesign and professional development of tutors and instructors. In this first of two manuscripts, the authors examine how first-semester, first-year writing students use responses provided via asynchronous online tutoring (AOT) in revising their assignments. Our primary research question was: What was happening in—and after—those tutorials? We addressed this question by a process of narrowing and refining of data analysis toward increasingly precise inferences as we progressed from automated to coded analysis, which culminated in examining the drafts submitted for tutoring, tutor feedback, and the subsequent assignments submitted for evaluation in the students’ FYW courses. In parallel, we describe the writing analytics–informed methods used to do so in hopes that others will be compelled to replicate or extend this work in their own contexts. We found that students made corresponding revisions at both macro and microstructural levels when provided with directive or declarative feedback, and they made few revisions when tutors provided open-ended questions.
2022
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Writing Centers and Neocolonialism: How Writing Centers Are Being Commodified and Exported as U.S. Neocolonial Tools ↗
Abstract
The editors of the Writing Center Journal and Purdue University Press, publisher of WCJ, are retracting the following article: Hotson, Brian, and Bell, Stevie. (2022). "Writing Centers and Neocolonialism: How Writing Centers Are Being Commodified and Exported as U.S. Neocolonial Tools." Writing Center Journal, vol. 40, no. 2, article 4. https://doi.org/10.7771/2832-9414.1020. This article contains two significant factual errors that the authors have agreed to correct. The Writing Center Journal is committed to the highest standards of publication ethics and has accepted the request of Dr. Ron Martinez and colleagues from the Universidade Federal do Paraná and the article’s authors to retract the piece until a revision can be posted. The journal will also create a space for published rebuttal.
2021
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Abstract
In face-to-face writing center tutorials, tutor praise is an action that builds rapport and motivates writers (Mackiewicz & Thompson, 2013). Drawing on and extending prior interactional analyses of praise, this article examines writers’ responses to text-based praise across 10 tutorials, with a particular focus on interactional segments in which writers reformulate their previously mentioned concerns in response to tutor praise. Unlike more common responses that signal acceptance of the praise, such as appreciation, overt acceptance, and alignment, this responding action reflects some momentary misunderstanding between tutor and writer in the tutorial interaction. Despite this, these segments also show writers taking a more active role in critically evaluating their own papers and identifying areas for revision. In addition to surveying writers’ varied responses to praise and exploring future research directions, this article also raises pedagogical implications for writing center tutoring and the one-to-one teaching of writing, specifically about how certain ways of designing and delivering praise can contribute to ambiguity and can run the risk of foreclosing or precluding opportunities for writers to articulate the kind of assistance they need with their drafts.
2019
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Abstract
This study explores the impact of tutor talk on students' revision practices. We applied Mackiewicz & Thompson's scheme for classifying tutoring strategies from their 2015 Talk about Writing, with some variation to suit our writing center context. With an exclusive focus on tutor talk, they did not assess the impact of tutor talk on the writing itself nor on the writer's responses to the conversation with the tutor. Thus, in our study we sought evidence of a relationship between the different types or patterns of tutor talk and the extent of revisions a writer made to their essay after a writing center session. Our mixed-methods study found that in 80% of sessions (n=8), students revised based on tutor talk, and in two sessions, students applied tutor talk to sections of their paper not discussed in the session.
2018
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The Oral Writing-Revision Space: Identifying a New and Common Discourse Feature of Writing Center Consultations ↗
Abstract
To better understand interaction between consultants and writers and reveal more about the daily work in writing centers, this exploratory, discourse-based study uses conversation analysis to take an "unmotivated look" at data.Through initial transcription, a new discourse feature, the oral writing-revision space, or OR, emerged.The OR has not been previously identified in either writing center or conversation analysis literature.This emergent discourse feature functions in several important ways, allowing both consultants and writers to navigate the session by taking on more or less responsibility as needed.Further, this research presents the OR as a framework for better understanding interaction and scaffolding in writing center sessions and has implications for tutor training, challenging lore, and discourse-based research.
2017
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Abstract
From 2012 to 2015, the online grammar program Grammarly was claimed to complement writing center services by 1. increasing student access to writing support; and 2. addressing sentence-level issues, such as grammar. To test if Grammarly could close these two gaps in writing center services, this article revisits the results of a Spring 2014 study that compared Grammarly' s comment cards to the written feedback of 10 asynchronous online consultants. The results showed that both Gram-marly and some consultants strayed from effective practices regarding limiting feedback, avoiding technical language, and providing accurate information about grammatical structure. However, the consultants' weaknesses could be addressed with enhanced or focused training, and their strengths allowed for important learning opportunities that enable student access to information across mediums and help students establish connections between their sentences and the larger whole. This article concludes that each writing center should consider their own way of closing these gaps and offers suggestions for multiple consultation genres, new services, and strategies for sentence-level concerns.
2016
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Abstract
This study considers five different tutor note styles and reports on how the three primary audiences for such notes -student writers, faculty, and tutors -assess their efficacy in terms of length, voice, purpose, and content. Surveys and focus groups reveal that all stakeholders take tutor notes seriously and that collectively they prefer notes that are about a paragraph long, address students directly in the second-person, maintain an institutional rather than colloquial voice, and include a detailed summary and revision plan. To put this study in context, the article also traces the history of writing center scholarship on session reports.
2012
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Listening to Revise: What a Study about Text-to-Speech Software Taught Us about Students' Expectations for Technology Use in the Writing Center ↗
Abstract
research, he has interests in writing pedagogy with a focus on technology's fundamental role in cultivating ethos and precipitating varied revision processes. This is a story of a failed study. In 2007, we set out to demonstrate that Kurzweil 3000, an adaptive text-to-speech software program, would help any student revise with its read-aloud function and numerous writing tools. During the course of the study, we confronted our misconceptions about students' technology use and realized
1992
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Abstract
During the past fifteen years, I have also worked closely with writing centers, watching them evolve from places which emphasize skills and drills to places which provide sophisticated and supportive counseling about the range of writing processes.While my education is