One of the goals for tutors of academic writing is to help student writers tailor their writing processes to different writing projects so that students adapt what they know about one type of writing to another. This ability to write in different contexts can be explained by the theory of transfer of learning, which is generally defined as the ability to take something learned in one context and adapt, apply, or remix knowledge or skills in new contexts, including educational, civic, personal, or professional (Driscoll 2011). The mind, seeing similarities to what is already known, extends what is similar to another activity (Haskell 2001: 11). Tutors of writing need to know about transfer. Six categories of transfer – content, context, genres, writers’ prior knowledge, students’ ability to reflect, and dispositions – offer a lens to help researchers, trainers of tutors, or tutors (whether of L1 or L2 writers) to better identify where and how transfer could happen so that tutors are more prepared to look for opportunities to tutor for transfer. This paper offers insights into how these categories help tutors of academic writing who want to enhance students’ acquisition of academic skills.

The Note Card Review helps first-year college writers examine critically their own writing and that of their peers.

For over fifty years, US writing centers have been helping students, with writing centers found in approximately 90% of American universities and colleges (Eodice 2009). Because those who direct and tutor see student writers struggling with every kind of assignment, writing centers are important resources for anyone teaching writing or writing-intensive courses.Ironically, though, writing centers are an overlooked resource on literacy. As Eric Hobson and Muriel Harris argue, writing centers should share with those who teach writing to larger groups what writing center professionals have learned about the writing process. Based on four years of systematic research interviewing experienced writing center tutors, this article presents teachers of academic writing with valuable insights into how students misunderstand the writing process and how teachers of academic writing can improve their teaching of writing.

By rewriting a sales letter about a short story into a literary analysis, first-year composition students not only learn rhetorical principles that are sometimes lost in a literature-based composition course but also discover the metagenres linking disciplines.

Technical writing, linked to a business, helps nonscience majors understand the demands of the professional writing world.

This article describes three approaches with which grammar may be welcomed back into the composition classroom.

Notes that student writers gain greater insight into the importance of audience by analyzing business documents. Discusses how business writing teachers can help students understand the rhetorical refinements of writing to an audience. Presents an assignment designed to lead writers systematically through an analysis of two advertisements.

Write to the Point is a clever title for a text that presents serious, useful advice to writers in both technical and business fields. Its advice for generating and arranging ideas, its description of computers in the office, its lists on how to write, and its detailed descriptions of proposals can benefit either the technical or the business writer. However, because this text lacks examples and explanations in key places, it reminds rather than teaches a professional what good writing is.