All Journals

232 articles
Year: Topic: Clear
Export:
peer tutoring ×

2014

  1. Undergraduate Writing Tutors as Researchers: Redrawing Boundaries
    Abstract

    own right. Fitzgerald argues that we should pursue

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1766
  2. Questioning in Writing Center Conferences
    Abstract

    These researchers examine how questions function in a corpus of eleven writing center conferences conducted by experienced tutors. They analyze the 690 questions generated in these conferences: 81% (562) from tutors and 19% (128) from students. Using a coding scheme developed from prior research on questions in math, science, and other kinds of quantitative tutoring, they categorized tutors’ and students’ questions. The researchers found that questions in writing center conferences serve a number of instructional and conversational functions. Questions allow tutors and students to fill in their knowledge deficits and check each other’s understanding. They also allow tutors (and occasionally students) to facilitate the dialogue of writing center conferences and attend to students’ engagement. In addition, tutors use questions to help students clarify what they want to say, identify problems with what they have written, and brainstorm. Based on this analysis, the authors make some recommendations for tutor training. 85891-Writing Center-text.indd 37 3/10/14 2:52 PM Thompson & Mackiewicz | Questioning in Writing Center Conferences 38 Introduction To resist the role of teacher-surrogate in favor of the role of helpful peer or collaborator, to get students to do the talking, and generally to achieve a student-centered focus, tutors have been advised to use questions as primary tutoring strategies in writing center conferences (Brooks; Harris). In other words, tutors are supposed to use questions to indirectly guide students to improving their writing. In these oftenidealistic conceptions of writing center conferences, questions are “real,” genuinely reflecting an interest in who the students are and what they want to say rather than leading students to a particular point of view. Moreover, students’ satisfaction with writing center conferences has been connected to their perceptions of having their questions answered (Thompson, Whyte, Shannon, Muse, Miller, Chappell, & Whigham; Thonus, “Tutor and Student Assessments”). Tutors are supposed to encourage students to ask questions freely, and it is assumed that students will ask more questions in writing center conferences than in the classroom (Harris). However, beyond encouraging students to talk and beyond directing tutors toward students’ areas of confusion, questions are important prompts for learning and for maintaining students’ engagement in writing center conferences. Research about question asking and answering in the classroom has typically focused on how teachers can pose questions to enhance critical thinking for students. This research has shown that the dialogic Socratic method, with its back-and-forth questions and answers, is a more effective teaching strategy than didactic teacher talk (Rose, Bhembe, Siler, Srivastava, & VanLehn; see also Kintsch; Tienken, Goldberg, & DiRocco). Today questioning is one of the most frequently used classroom teaching techniques, with elementary and high school teachers asking as many as 300 to 400 questions per day (Tienken, Goldberg, & DiRocco). Research suggests that if used effectively either in the classroom or in one-to-one tutorials, questions can enhance students’ learning in at least three ways. First, as shown in Socrates’s questioning of his student about the concept of justice, questions can direct students in their efforts to “construct and reconstruct knowledge and understanding” (Smith & Higgins 486). By discussing what they are thinking with a more expert tutor or teacher, students engage in self-explanation, a process shown to deepen their understanding (Chi; Chi, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann, & Glaser; Chi, De Leeuw, Chiu, & LaVancher; Rose, Bhembe, Siler, Srivastava, & VanLehn). Second, questions can enhance students’ motivation, stimulate curiosity, and encourage active participation in learning (Lustick; Smith & Higgins). 85891-Writing Center-text.indd 38 3/10/14 2:52 PM The Writing Center Journal 33.2 | Fall/Winter 2014 39 Third, teachers’ and tutors’ questions may become models for selfquestioning, important for students in regulating their own learning processes. Further, in both the classroom and in tutorials such as writing center conferences, learning typically occurs within a conversational context, and along with stimulating understanding, questions are vital linguistic components of an educational conversation. Besides helping tutors identify what students do not know, questions allow tutors to understand students’ goals for coming to the writing center and to politely facilitate the flow of the tutorial conversation. We will consider all of these types of questions in this article. We examined how questions function in a corpus of eleven writing center conferences conducted by experienced tutors. In these eleven conferences, we found a total of 690 questions, mostly asked by tutors but some asked by students as well. Incorporating research about questions in classroom teaching, we adapted a scheme for analyzing questions in tutorials that was developed by the psychologist and linguist Arthur C. Graesser and his associates. This scheme has been used to analyze questions in math, science, and other kinds of quantitative tutoring, with a range of students from elementary school to college (Golding, Graesser, & Millis; Graesser, Baggett, & Williams; Graesser, Bowers, Hacker, & Person; Graesser & Franklin; Graesser & McMahen; Graesser & Olde; Graesser & Person; Graesser, Person, & Huber; Graesser, Person, & Magliano; Graesser, Roberts, & Hackett-Renner; Person, Graesser, Magliano, & Kreuz). Through our analysis, we show how questions can function in writing center conferences so that we and our tutors can understand the potential impact of questions on students’ learning and, subsequently, pose questions more consciously. Previous research about questions in writing center conferences has focused on what questions reveal about tutors’ roles and control over conferences. For example, Kevin M. Davis, Nancy Hayward, Kathleen R. Hunter, & David Wallace analyzed four types of “conversational moves” (47) teachers use in classroom discourse—structuring the interaction, soliciting responses, responding, and reacting—to determine the extent to which tutors took on teacher roles. According to Davis, Hayward, Hunter, & Wallace, tutors are usually in control of conferences, but sometimes they do assume less teacher-like and more conversant-like roles (see also Willa Wolcott’s “Talking It Over: A Qualitative Study of Writing Center Conferencing”). Susan R. Blau, John Hall, & Tracy Strauss considered the nature of the collaboration that occurs in writing center conferences by analyzing “three recurring rhetorical strategies” (22) relating to tutors’ directiveness—questioning, echoing, and using qualifiers. They found that in conferences considered satisfactory, tutors 85891-Writing Center-text.indd 39 3/10/14 2:52 PM Thompson & Mackiewicz | Questioning in Writing Center Conferences 40 demonstrated “informed flexibility” (38) in the strategies they used. Other studies have evaluated tutors’ use of mitigated and unmitigated interrogatives (Thonus, “Dominance in Academic Writing Tutorials”), “question–answer interrogation sequences” (Thonus, “What Are the Differences” 231), and leading versus open questions (Severino). A few studies have included questions in analyzing tutors’ politeness strategies (Bell & Youmans) and self-presentation (Murphy). These studies of writing center conferences tend to analyze questions as signals of assumed role and that role’s concomitant right to control the discourse as opposed to examining all the ways questions can function—including but not restricted to the ways they help construct role and maintain control. We analyzed questions to determine the extent to which experienced tutors ask questions that push students’ thinking, check their understanding, facilitate conversation, and model the types of questions students should ask of themselves in order to assess and develop their own writing. Simultaneously, we speculated on the relationships between questioning and students’ and tutors’ roles. After delineating the question types we found, we examined question-answer patterns according to initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) instructional dialogue (Mehan), a classroom discourse pattern largely unexamined in writing center research (for an exception, see Porter). We examined writing center variations on the IRE pattern, showing how experienced tutors used different types of leading and scaffolding questions in tandem with common-ground questions in a cycle of promoting students’ thinking and engagement and of checking students’ comprehension.

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1767
  3. The Role of Disciplinary Expertise in Shaping Writing Tutorials
    Abstract

    e p r o v e d t r u e . D i s c i p l i n a r y e x p e r t i s e d i d r e s u l t in increased tutor directiveness, but this directiveness was used to facilitate rather than hinder effective collaboration.

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1769
  4. Can They Tutor Science? Using Faculty Input, Genre, and WAC-WID to Introduce Tutors to Scientific Realities
    Abstract

    Writing centers can be staffed wholly or partially by tutors with little training in science writing. This article suggests that an emphasis on scientific rhetoric, not content, may be most useful for training tutors and developing handouts and checklists to aid novice science writers in invention and revision. The article also suggests that a training program in science writing can be informed by local science faculty’s major concerns. However, these faculty discussions toward tutor training should be supplemented through WAC-WID and genre research to retain a training focus on the connection between scientific thought and scientific writing, science writings’ primary genre families, and the delivery of scientific writing to different audiences.

2013

  1. The Message is the Medium: Electronically Helping Writing Tutors Help Electronically
  2. Tutor Training and Services for Multilingual Graduate Writers: A Reconsideration

September 2012

  1. The Role of the Student Experience in Shaping Academic Writing Development in Higher Education: The Peer Writing Tutors’ Perspective
    Abstract

    On 29 June 2011, 280 delegates interested in the teaching, tutoring, research, administration and development of academic writing in higher education in Europe descended upon the University of Limerick to discuss the role of the student experience in shaping academic writing development in higher education. The EATAW 2011 conference invited all those interested in academic writing development in higher education to contribute to the discussion on enhancing the quality of the student experience through writing. Enhancing the student experience is central to the vision and mission of most higher education institutions in Europe and beyond. How students experience academic writing impacts upon their identities and on their participation in academic and disciplinary environments. Writing programmes and initiatives that actively engage students in the writing conventions and practices of their academic communities can enhance the quality of the student learning experience.

    doi:10.18552/joaw.v2i1.110
  2. Mutual Growing: How Student Experience can Shape Writing Centers
    Abstract

    This article claims that working with peer tutors in a writing center can be very valuable for the center’s development, if the director and tutors work together according to crucial principles in writing center pedagogy. Based on the example of the writing center at European University Viadrina, this article shows how the ideas of autonomy and collaboration for both writing support and writing center leadership led to the writing center’s growth.

    doi:10.18552/joaw.v2i1.68
  3. Editorial: The Role of the Student Experience in Shaping Academic Writing Development in Higher Education
    Abstract

    the University of Limerick, Ireland, and hosted by the Regional Writing Centre at the University of Limerick, took as its focus the role of the student experience in shaping academic writing development in higher education.The EATAW 2011 conference brought together 280 participants to contribute to discussion of how to enhance the student experience through writing development.Conference delegates included writing teachers and researchers, writing centre and writing programme administrators, staff developers, and professional and peer writing tutors.

    doi:10.18552/joaw.v2i1.108

January 2012

  1. Paving the Way for Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC): Establishing Writing Centers and Peer tutoring at High Schools in Germany
    doi:10.37514/atd-j.2012.9.3.06
  2. Empowering Student Writing Tutors as WAC Liasons in Secondary Schools
    doi:10.37514/atd-j.2012.9.3.07

2012

  1. Peer Tutors and the Conversation of Writing Center Studies
    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1849
  2. What a Writer Wants: Assessing Fulfillment of Student Goals in Writing Center Tutoring Sessions
    Abstract

    Writing centers offer support and feedback to student writers who bring in specific concerns about papers and writing. The writing center of our home institution offers walk-in sessions with peer tutors who have taken an extensive preparatory course, which, according to the official course description, helps the tutor to become a “successful reader, listener and responder in peer-tutoring situations.” This training emphasizes our center’s goal of facilitating students’ long-term development as writers. Therefore, tutors in our center are trained to shift the impetus and focus of the session to the writer—over issues just focused on the paper—in order to enhance the writer’s control over his/her own writing processes and writing. The writing center where we were trained and currently work thus emphasizes the model of non-directive, writer-based peer tutoring in which, as Jeff Brooks puts it, tutors “make the student the What a Writer Wants: Assessing Fulfillment of Student Goals in Writing Center Tutoring Sessions

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1855
  3. Bringing Balance to the Table: Comprehensive Writing Instruction in the Tutoring Session
    Abstract

    Because writing centers have long been viewed as fix-it shops, mentioning the word "grammar" can spark a heated debate over the writing center's role. Stephen North faulted the English department for perpetuating this misconception. Richard Leahy blamed the writing center's history and "peculiar status" for confusing faculty and students alike (43). Elizabeth Boquet explored tensions caused by shifts between the writing center's identity as both method and space (465). All are valid points, but there is a greater issue affecting both academic writing and the writing center-grammar

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1857
  4. The Peer-Interactive Writing Center at the University of New Mexico
    Abstract

    The one-on-one format of tutoring, which is the norm for writing centers, can foster the much-maligned view of a writing center as a fix-it shop and undermine the role of the tutor as a co-learner and facilitator of peer-to-peer interactions. The peer-interactive writing center approach , presented here, moves away from the one-on-one model and towards a format that encourages genuine peer collaboration, recreates the writing center as a place to actually engage in writing , and encourages students in their intuitions about writing . As a case study of such a peer-interactive approach, this profile provides an overview and evaluation of the Writing Drop-In Lab at the University of New Mexico, which provides a model for bringing the practice of writing tutoring into line with a view of writing as a collaborative, process-oriented phenomenon.

September 2011

  1. Fighting for Peer Tutoring in Writing: Learning How to Respond to Scepticism
    Abstract

    Scepticism about peer tutoring in writing expressed by university members outside the writing centre is a common problem for staff at several European writing centres. Our workshop at the 2009 EATAW conference focused on this issue by testing a short training to prepare writing centre staff for discussions with sceptical faculty members who reject peer tutoring.This article explains the procedure of the workshop and, as a result of the workshop, gives a compilation and categorization of the pro and con arguments and demonstrates possible answers to typical statements of doubt. It is shown that counter-arguments stem from very different levels of argumentation. There are strategies of how to respond to these arguments, though it will be a great challenge to develop guidelines for argumentation that match the very different institutional conditions of different academic cultures, as they were represented in the workshop.

    doi:10.18552/joaw.v1i1.9
  2. Investigating Peer Tutoring for Academic Writing Support in a UK University
    Abstract

    This project outlines the rationale, design, and findings of a peer tutoring project in a UK teaching-led university. Three students received training and tutored their peers in academic writing. Qualitative data was collected from both peer tutors and tutees; quantitative data was collected through a questionnaire administered by the institution’s Careers department. Findings include a positive effect on the tutors’ self-perception of their own employability and understanding of the conventions of academic writing, along with positive feedback from students who received tuition.

    doi:10.18552/joaw.v1i1.1

2011

  1. Review: Centered: A Year in the Life of a Writing Center Director
    Abstract

    since 1987, believes in the power of narrative, the wisdom of peer tutors, and the value of a well-placed hug. He also knows

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1735

2010

  1. Introduction to "Multicultural Voices: Peer Tutoring and Critical Reflection in the Writing Center"
    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1652
  2. What They Take with Them: Findings from the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project
    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1671

August 2009

  1. Ventriloquation in Discussions of Student Writing: Examples from a High School English Class
    Abstract

    This study examines discussions of model papers in a high school Advanced Placement English classroom where students were preparing for a high-stakes writing assessment. Much of the current research on talk about writing in various contexts such as classroom discourse, teacher-student writing conferences, and peer tutoring has emphasized the social and constructive nature of instructional discourse. Building on this work, the present study explored how talk about writing also takes on a performative function, as speakers accent or point to the features of the context that are most significant ideologically. Informed by perspectives on the emergent and mediated nature of discourse, this study found that the participants used ventriloquation to voice the aspects of the essays that they considered to be most important, and that these significant chunks were often aphorisms about the test essay. The teacher frequently ventriloquated raters, while the students often ventriloquated themselves or the teacher. The significance of ventriloquation is not just that it helps to mediate the generic conventions of timed student essays; it also mediates social positioning by helping the speakers to present themselves and others in flexible ways. This study also raises questions about the ways that ventriloquation can limit the ways that students view academic writing.

    doi:10.58680/rte20097245

2009

  1. Theory In/To Practice: Multilingual Tutors Supporting Multilingual Peers: A Peer-Tutor Training Course in the Arabian Gulf
    Abstract

    Ronesineeds, as training literature has yet to address contexts outside North America.Indeed, the few articles that describe writing tutoring outside North America dismiss peer tutoring as inappropriate

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1633

May 2008

  1. Crossing the Student/Teacher Divide at the Community College: The Student Tutor Education Program (STEP)
    Abstract

    This article describes the Student Tutor Education Program (STEP) at Westchester Community College, which identifies and recruits potential future college English teachers at the community college level while they serve as peer writing tutors, with benefits to the entire college community as well as the teaching profession in general.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc20086555

April 2008

  1. Tutoring Is Real: The Benefits of the Peer Tutor Experience for Future English Educators
    Abstract

    In this article, an English education professor, a university writing center administrator, and a recent graduate of an undergraduate English education program discuss the role peer tutoring might play in enhancing the education of preservice teachers of writing. The authors argue that by providing additional, authentic field experiences which reflect constructivist, student-centered philosophies often adhered to in English education programs, university peer tutoring can provide undergraduate students with authentic experience in learning collaboratively, developing rapport with students, and conducting student-centered, one-to-one writing conferences.

    doi:10.1215/15314200-2007-043

2008

  1. What Being A Writing Peer Tutor Can Do for You
    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1700
  2. Kenneth Bruffee and the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing
    Abstract

    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

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1702
  3. Vietnam Protests, Open Admissions, Peer Tutor Training, and the Brooklyn Institute: Tracing Kenneth Bruffee's Collaborative Learning
    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1706
  4. Innovation and Repetition: The Brooklyn College Summer Institute in Training Peer Writing Tutors 25 Years Later
    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1709
  5. Paper Trails: The Brooklyn College Institute for Training Peer Writing Tutors and the Composition Archive
    Abstract

    Rhetoric and composition, as a new academic field

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1712

June 2007

  1. Decision-Making in a Quasi-Rational World: Teaching Technical, Narratological, and Rhetorical Discourse in Report Writing Tutorial
    Abstract

    This tutorial on how to teach report writing is based on the premise that decision-making is a complex process that derives from both rational and quasi-rational ways of knowing the world. The author defines quasi-rational to include consideration of hunches, intuition, and tacit knowledge often embodied in stories that have meaning to the decision-maker. Thus, report writing can be approached as a systematic evaluation of options available given goals and constraints, but also as an uncovering of the narratives that decision-makers see surrounding their own lives. The tutorial explains a course curriculum structured in three sections with the following goals and strategies: (1) helping students face personal or family decisions through a traditional decision-matrix process that also incorporates elements of rhetorical stasis theory, (2) using big case studies to reveal the interplay between rational and quasi-rational thought in decision-making, and (3) finding case studies in the students' local geographic regions in order to further explore this interplay. The paper concludes with a brief assessment of how the author's students responded to such a course

    doi:10.1109/tpc.2007.897619

2007

  1. Changing Notions of Difference in the Writing Center: The Possibilities of Universal Design
    Abstract

    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

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1630

March 2006

  1. The Functions of Formulaic and Nonformulaic Compliments in Interactions About Technical Writing
    Abstract

    Writing tutors are encouraged to use compliments in their interactions with technical writing students. However, the form of compliments strongly influences how they function. Specifically, formulaic compliments like "It's good" function differently from nonformulaic compliments like "The size is excellent in terms of visually aiding the reader." A total of 107 compliments were analyzed from 13 interactions between 12 writing tutors and 12 engineering students. About 61% of tutors' compliments followed one of six formulae, and about 39% were nonformulaic. Formulaic compliments were general and mainly performed a phatic function, filling pauses and avoiding silence, particularly in interaction closings. Nonformulaic compliments were more specific and individualized, and they may, therefore, be more instructive than formulaic compliments. Nonformulaic compliments also performed an exploratory function, allowing participants to renegotiate discourse status. This study points to other avenues of research, particularly research that systemically examines writers' perceptions of formulaic and nonformulaic feedback, such as compliments.

    doi:10.1109/tpc.2006.870461

December 2005

  1. Hinting at What They Mean: Indirect Suggestions in Writing Tutors' Interactions With Engineering Students
    Abstract

    This study examines the frequency with which 12 writing tutors used hints in their suggestions to 12 engineering students in 13 interactions about technical writing. Of the 424 suggestions tutors made, 106 were hints. Using Weizman's model as a guide, the study describes three types of hints that tutors used: evaluations, general rules, and elisions. It also investigates the benefits that tutors receive from using those types of hints and examines the problems for students that can arise when tutors state their suggestions as hints. Combined with previous research findings, the findings of this study suggest that tutors should pair mildly negative evaluations and general rules with direct suggestions, and tutors should avoid strongly negative evaluations, i.e., criticisms. The findings also suggest that tutors can elude suggestions and provide words and phrases for students' documents but that they should only do this occasionally to model effective tone or syntax.

    doi:10.1109/tpc.2005.859727

2005

  1. Pedagogies of Belonging: Listening to Students and Peers
    Abstract

    Aer they are admitted, many students find actually joining the university to be disorienting and even daunting, especially those whose socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and/or educational worlds differ markedly from the academic world they encounter in college. We know that writing centers play a key role in helping students make this transition, serving as crucial conduits of adjustment for otherwise marginalized students. But exactly how we help tutors to help these students is less familiar ground. Tutors are not usually considered when composition scholars characterize the ways in which writing professionals help students belong. Nevertheless, tutors as well as teachers are party to a process seen variously as assimilation, accommodation, separatism, acculturation, translation, or repositioning (Severino; Bruffee-, Lu, ''Writing as Repositioning"), and the students tutors work with must undergo a process that can be positively characterized as "going native" (Bizzell, "Cognition" 386), quizzically understood as invention (Bartholomae), or negatively viewed as conversion 0-Harris io3; Lu, "Conflict") or initiation (T. Fox). Clearly, there is no consensus among these many "camps"; rather, what we have is provocative, useful discussion on the pedagogical processes of belonging. But many a tutor who finds herself on the frontlines with a lost student will not have the benefit of knowing this discussion. As a writing center administrator who has worked in two urban institutions with ethnically and linguistically diverse student populations, I have struggled to formulate tutor training that urges tutors to consider the complexities of belonging. I believe the tutor needs to understand the paradoxical ways in which writing and academic literacy more generally are instruments of belonging that can constrain as well as liberate.

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1573
  2. Review: On Location: Theory and Practice in Classroom-Based Writing Tutoring
    Abstract

    Writing center work is theoretically-messy business, so it should come as no surprise that shifting the tutorial scene from the center to the classroom is a similarly complicated affair. Such, at least, is my belief having now read On Location: Theory and Practice in Classroom-Based Writing Tutoring, for whether describing a semester-long writing fellows program in a flourishing WAG environment or a single visit of writing center tutors to a Communication class, each of the essays in this volume richly describes a range of issues to consider before embarking on any form of classroombased tutoring. Along with depicting a range of options, most of the essays use these locations either as a source of evidence to advance arguments concerning the development and implementation of classroom-based^utoring programs or as texts ripe for analysis to improve our understanding of tutoring and writing. Whether the reader is initially considering embarking on classroom-based tutoring or currently administering such a program, then, On Location offers a wealth of models as well as a variety of theoretical frameworks for understanding what goes on in these complex learning environments.

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1530

December 2004

  1. The Effects of Tutor Expertise in Engineering Writing: A Linguistic Analysis of Writing Tutors' Comments
    Abstract

    Writing tutors often have very little or no expertise in conventions of engineering writing. In this study, I examine the topics and politeness strategies of tutors' comments, investigating how non-expertise in engineering writing decreases the effectiveness of tutors' interactions with engineering students. I show how the three non-expert tutors gave inappropriate advice and often stated their advice with certainty. I also show how a tutor with expertise in engineering writing gave specific and useful guidance to her tutee and built rapport with him as well. I outline how writing tutors could be trained to help engineering students better.

    doi:10.1109/tpc.2004.840485

January 2004

  1. A Shared Focus for WAC, Writing Tutors and EAP: Idendtifying the "Academic Purposes" in Writing Across the Curriculum
    Abstract

    While we have different methods of teaching, WAC teachers, writing tutors and teachers of EAP share a common goal: to help students learn how to write effectively across the curriculum. To do this, students have to be able to situate each assignment within the larger context of questions and discussions in their course, in order to understand the role of that assignment in inducting them into the discipline. This article demonstrates the importance, students, of discerning this academic purpose, and suggests some ways in which students can be helped to develop routines of interrogating their essay questions to discover the purpose behind the question. It concludes by describ- ing ways of mainstreaming this teaching in collaboration with discipline professors across the curriculum. Working with undergraduate students in an Australian arts faculty, every day I grapple with the problem of purpose in students' writing the disciplines: a problem shared, in universities around the world, by WAC teachers, writing tutors (like myself), and teachers of English Academic Purposes (EAP) who aim to prepare non-English-speak- ing-background students for the demands …(of) subject-matter class- rooms in English-medium universities (Stoller 209). The nature of our concerns varies, depending upon our role in the students' writing

    doi:10.37514/wac-j.2004.15.1.02

April 2003

  1. Drawing on Technical Writing Scholarship for the Teaching of Writing to Advanced Esl Students—A Writing Tutorial
    Abstract

    The article outlines the technical writing tutorial (TWT) that preceded an advanced ESL writing course for students of English Philology at the Jagiellonian University. Having assessed the English skills of those students at the end of the semester, we found a statistically significant increase in the performance of the students who had taken the TWT in comparison to the control group who spent the time of TWT doing more traditional exercises. This result indicates that technical writing books and journals should be considered as an important source of information for teachers of writing to ESL students.

    doi:10.2190/daya-ckxa-ldc2-f95y

January 2002

  1. Tutor and student assessments of academic writing tutorials: What is “success”?
    doi:10.1016/s1075-2935(03)00002-3
  2. How a Writing Tutor Can Help When Unfamiliar with the Content: A Case Study
    Abstract

    Writing Across the Curriculum places considerable demands not only upon the students in writing intensive courses, but also on the writing center staff to whom they go for help. This paper looks at some of the problems raised by tutors in this situation, and presents a case study in which such problems are negotiated in the course of a consultation between a student and a tutor. The kinds of revision resulting from this process are explored for the light they can throw on the relationship between language and content, as well as the relationships among discipline teachers, tutors, students, and the students’ texts. One aim of the Writing Across the Curriculum movement is that every teacher should be a writing teacher. However, while WAC assignments provide opportunities to write, the work of helping students to do it often falls to tutors in writing centers; and both tutors and teachers have expressed uneasiness about such consultations for a number of reasons. First, WAC assignments can challenge the tutors’ priority of respecting students’ ownership of their texts. What does it mean to own your text if you are writing on a topic set by somebody else, drawing on other people’s ideas, and conforming to conventions of structure and voice imposed by a discipline? Conventions of one sort or another have always surrounded writing, and even students’ “personal” writing is often largely a matter of reproducing commonplaces (see, e.g., Bartholemae). However, it is in the context of writing for unfamiliar disciplines that students and tutors are forced to confront these issues, identify the constraints and opportunities peculiar to writing in each discipline, and work within them. This brings

    doi:10.37514/wac-j.2002.13.1.11

January 2001

  1. The Status of WAC in Secondary Public Schools: What Do We Know?
    Abstract

    It’s a cloudy Thursday morning in November, and the university writing center is humming. A peer tutor sits at a table near the center of the room, listening to a sophomore explain her essay assignment for a recreational therapy class while a second tutor helps a freshman fine tune his thesis statement for a research paper. In the far corner, a third tutor works at a computer, responding to an on-line submission from a student in a local high school’s creative writing class. The director is conferring with a member of the mathematics department on ways to include meaningful writing activities in an advanced calculus class. It’s a typical day at a college-level writing center, but it raises a question for educators. Are similar scenes occurring in our public secondary schools? As an awareness of the importance of writing as a means of learning has grown, the writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) movement has gained momentum on college campuses. One response to this increased focus on the importance of writing in the learning process has been the establishment of writing centers at hundreds of colleges and universities. These centers are designed to serve the needs of both students and faculty and aim to support learning in all fields. While these programs have flourished in many post-secondary settings, formal WAC programs in general and writing centers in particular still seem to be something of an exception in secondary public schools; however, interest in these practices appears to be growing there as well. A number of publications show an increasing integration of WAC philosophy and strategies into secondary public school settings. Pamela Farrell’s The High School Writing Center: Establishing and Maintaining One not only provides practical information on designing and running writing labs in secondary schools, but also illustrates the variety of forms

    doi:10.37514/wac-j.2001.12.1.04

2001

  1. Peer Tutoring and Gorgias: Acknowledging Aggression in the Writing Center
    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1446
  2. Tutor Training and Reflection on Practice
    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1457

December 2000

  1. Developing sound tutor training for online writing centers: creating productive peer reviewers
    doi:10.1016/s8755-4615(00)00034-7

2000

  1. Review: The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring
    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1476

May 1999

  1. The Writing Center: An Opportunity in Democracy
    Abstract

    Describes the Writing Center at Johnson County Community College as an institution that implements democratic ideals in its staffing and teaching; and where all voices are heard, encouraged, and validated. Describes three things necessary to achieve a writing center with a democratic nature: a peer-tutor program including formal tutor training; financial support from the college; and college-wide support.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc19991846

1999

  1. Lessons of Inscription: Tutor Training and the "Professional Conversation"
    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1416

1998

  1. The Debate over Generalist and Specialist Tutors: Genre Theory's Contribution
    Abstract

    Over the past ten years or so, much has been written about whether writing center tutors should be generalists or specialists: when tutors help clients from other disciplines, is it an asset for the tutors to be familiar with discipline-specific discourse conventions? Scholarship attempting to answer this question has been bi-polar: either tutors should be generalists, or they should be specialists. On the specialist side, some scholars argue that tutors’ knowledge of discipline-specific discourse conventions is important to the success of tutoring sessions, since the tutoring should revolve around the rhetoric of the discipline (Kiedaisch and Dinitz; Tinberg and Cupples: Shamoon and Burns). Judith Powers and Jane Nelson, for example, argue that

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1399
  2. Review: The Harcourt Brace Guide to Peer Tutoring
    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1402

October 1996

  1. Landmark Essays on Writing Centers
    Abstract

    Contents: C. Murphy, J. Law, Introduction: Landmark Essays on Writing Centers (1994). Part I:Historical Perspectives. R.H. Moore, The Writing Clinic and the Writing Laboratory (1950). L. Kelly, One-on-One, Iowa City Style: Fifty Years of Individualized Instruction in Writing (1980). M. Harris, What's Up and What's In: Trends and Traditions in Writing Centers (1990). P. Carino, What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Our Metaphors: A Cultural Critique of Clinic, Lab and Center (1992). G. Olson, E. Ashton-Jones, Writing Center Directors: The Search for Professional Status (1984). J. Simpson, What Lies Ahead for Writing Centers: Position Statement on Professional Concerns (1985). J. Summerfield, Writing Centers: A Long View (1988). Part II:Theoretical Foundations. S.M. North, The Idea of a Writing Center (1984). K.A. Bruffee, Peer Tutoring and the Conversation of Mankind (1984). L. Ede, Writing as a Social Process: A Theoretical Foundation for Writing Centers? (1989). A. Lunsford, Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center (1991). C. Murphy, Writing Centers in Context: Responding to Current Educational Theory (1991). A.M. Gillam, Writing Center Ecology: A Bakhtinian Perspective (1991). M. Cooper, Really Useful Knowledge: A Cultural Studies Agenda for Writing Centers (1994). Part III:Writing Center Praxis. J. Simpson, S. Braye, B. Boquet, War, Peace, and Writing Center Administration. D. Healy, A Defense of Dualism: The Writing Center and the Classroom (1993). R. Wallace, The Writing Center's Role in the Writing Across the Curriculum Program: Theory and Practice (1989). R. Leahy, Writing Centers and Writing-for-Learning (1989). H. Kail, J. Trimbur, The Politics of Peer Tutoring (1987). A. DiPardo, Whispers of Coming and Going: Lessons From Fannie (1992). M. Woolbright, The Politics of Tutoring: Feminism Within the Patriarchy (1992).

    doi:10.2307/358309