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Launched in March 2013, the National Census of Writing seeks to provide a data-based landscape of writing instruction at two- and four-year public and not-for-profit institutions of higher education in the United States. Despite numerous calls for empirical data to ground the design and administration of writing programs and writing centers, this is the first comprehensive study of its kind and covers the following sections:  * Sites of writing * First-year writing/English composition * Identifying and supporting diversely-prepared students * Writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing beyond the first year * The undergraduate and graduate writing major and minor * Writing centers * Administrative structures * Demographics of respondents

"Launched in March 2013, the National Census of Writing seeks to provide a data-based landscape of writing instruction at two- and four-year public and not-for-profit institutions of higher education in the United States. Despite numerous calls for empirical data to ground the design and administration of writing programs and writing centers, this is the first comprehensive study of its kind and covers the following sections: Sites of writing First-year writing/English composition Identifying and supporting diversely-prepared students Writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing beyond the first year The undergraduate and graduate writing major and minor Writing centers Administrative structures Demographics of respondents With data from 900 institutions, the National Census of Writing will help educators and administrators across the country to better understand the variety of ways in which writing instruction is delivered in the twenty-first century. The research team has made the processed data available through this open-access database, which allows individuals to gather national data on pressing local questions. The database is searchable by type of institution, institutional size, geographical location, and, when we have consent, by the name of the institution."

From ABSTRACT: "For teaching practices in the Writing Center, the findings raise questions about how writing center pedagogy can empower L2 writers on their language control when the writing consultants have the ultimate control in language and the L2 learners have the inherent uncertainty. While writing center work draws on the advantages of collaborative dialogues and effects better language control for ESL writers based on a sociocultural learning perspective, writing center pedagogy needs to continue reconsidering the needs and beliefs of ESL writers (Blau & Hall, 2002; Powers, 1993). The language issue in ESL writing is not a lower order concern in the writing, but more likely a primary concern for the writer. As also found in this study, when the broader contextual factors such as the focus of writing and writers' beliefs are taken into account, language knowledge and control are not just about linguistic correctness to ESL writer development. In striving to create better writers but not just better writing for any writers, it is crucial for writing centers to continue rethinking their staff training on the topic of language issues with their diverse multilingual clientele who speaks English as a second language."

This study examined the perspectives of both tutors at university writing centers and the Non-Native English Speaking (NNES) students who use the centers. Using qualitative methods, this study looked at perceptions of the academic writing needs of the NNES students, along with characteristics of tutoring sessions which made the sessions successful in the eyes of tutors and students. The study used interviews, observations, a survey, and artifacts to look at these topics and then compared the perceptions of tutors and students. Additionally, the study compared writing centers at two universities, one of which employs an ESL specialist, in order to learn if employing this specialist affects success for the tutors and NNES students. Results indicate that student and tutor perceptions of student needs were similar in that they expressed consistent need for grammar assistance and help with low-order concerns (LOCs). Sessions at both universities were successful, according to tutors and students, if sessions focused on these grammar and LOC needs. Employing an ESL specialist did not affect the perceptions of students or tutors nor did it seem to effect the success of sessions for either students or tutors.

Faculty and writing center tutors bring expertise to writing as practice and pro-cess. Yet at many institutions, the two groups work in relative isolation, missing opportunities to learn from each other. In this article, I describe a faculty de-velopment initiative in a multidisciplinary writing program that brings together new faculty and experienced undergraduate tutors to workshop instructors' com-ments on first-year writing. The purpose of these workshops is to assist faculty in crafting inquiry-driven written responses that pave the way for collaborative faculty-student conferences. By bringing together scholarly conversations on tu-tor expertise and the role of faculty comments in student learning, I argue for the value of extending partnerships between writing centers and programs. Such ac-counts are important to the field for challenging what Grutsch McKinney (2013) calls the "writing center grand narrative," which limits the scope of writing center work by imagining centers primarily as "comfortable, iconoclastic places where all students go to get one-to-one tutoring on their writing" to the exclusion of lived realities (p. 3). In this case, I describe a writing center where tutors bring their expertise outside the center and into the faculty office, consulting in small groups with faculty with the aim of enriching the quality of instructor feedback in first-year seminars.

"As student populations in colleges and universities continue to diversify, composition programs do not always meet students' varying needs. English as a Second Language (ESL) students appear to fail mainstream writing courses at higher rates than their traditional counterparts, yet mainstreaming continues to be mandated, often due to budgetary constraints. Many programs offer multicultural writing courses, but these, too, are often ineffective for many students. Meanwhile, as Paul Kei Matsuda shows, there is a decided split between the disciplines of composition and ESL. Since ESL scholars have a much stronger history of working with diverse student populations than composition scholars do, this study aims to look to ESL scholarship, specifically to contrastive rhetoric, to explore more effective methods of teaching writing to students with varying needs. This case study takes an in-depth look at one student's journey writing across cultures. Ming, a Chinese immigrant who has been in the United States for approximately ten years, is a junior at the University of Rhode Island who struggles with writing. Over the course of one semester, three of her projects were studied in depth. Data include transcripts of audiotaped tutorial sessions in the URI Writing Center, Ming's assignments and papers, and the researcher's notes from interviews with Ming following the tutorial sessions. ^ The new contrastive rhetoric (Connor, Kaplan, Purves) insists that external factors such as culture, education, and media influence the rhetorical patterns writers use. Through a lens of contrastive rhetoric, it becomes clear that most of Ming's difficulties when writing stem from a lack of familiarity with the conventions of U.S. academic discourse or of what her reader expects from her text. The source of much of this is cultural. While Ming's experiences are not generalizable, an in-depth look at her experiences foregrounds some of the issues that contrastive rhetoric addresses, making th

The present study aims to investigate the extent to which L2 learners' individual differences (field dependency and writing motivation) predict their retention of a teacher's written corrective feedback (CF) in the short and in the long run. Using Ellis's (2010) theoretical framework, the study examines the issue from cognitive and affective perspectives. Data was collected from 127 intermediate-level university students through written essays, a field-dependence/independence (FDI) questionnaire, and a writing motivation questionnaire, which were analyzed through t test, ANOVA, and multiple regression. The results reveal that there is a strong relationship between field independence (FI) style and the students' successful short-term and long-term retention of corrections in the subsequent writings. Writing motivation, however, influences the short-term retention of CF only.

From abstract: "This dissertation theorizes the writing center as bridge-as an institutional resource that supports second language graduate writers as they journey from outside the academy to the inside-including its strengths and limitations, both locally (for these writers at this writing center) and for the field more broadly. I offer the metaphor of the writing center as bridge, both as an alternate writing center identity and therefore as an alternate approach to tutoring, and as an approach that privileges the multiple subject positions that students hold as they use the writing center.  [...] Based on the literature, the experiences of these participants, and my own experiences as a tutor-turned-coordinator, I ultimately argue that nondirective tutoring is rooted in practice with native-English-speaking undergraduates and that this practice so dominates many writing centers' identities that it has left little room for other subject positions, including those of second language graduate writers."

"More and more ESL students are seeking writing help at U.S. college and university writing centers. This trend emphasizes the complementary role of the writing center and ESL writing instruction in improving ESL writing skills. Writing center and ESL writing pedagogy share the process and collaborative approaches, which emphasize the writing process using revision and reader feedback. Often difficult to implement in a classroom setting, these approaches can be used successfully with ESL students in the writing center. However, many writing center instructors, unfamiliar with the needs of ESL students, are often ill-equipped to work successfully with this special population. This has caused writing center faculties to turn to the ESL profession for help in establishing suitable strategies. The growing need for ESL expertise in the writing center has created a variety of capacities to which ESL instructors can contribute."

"The Citation Project is a multi-institution research project responding to educators' concerns about plagiarism and the teaching of writing. Although much has been written on this topic and many have expressed concerns, little empirical data is available to describe what students are actually doing with their sources. At present, therefore, educators must make policy decisions and pedagogy based on anecdote, personal observation, media reports, and the claims of corporations that sell "solutions." The Citation Project begins the process of providing descriptive data. Our research team systematically studies randomly selected, source-based student papers from a range of different institutions. Our purpose is to describe how student writers use the sources they cite in their papers. With this information, educators will be able to make informed decisions about best practices for formulating plagiarism policies and for teaching rhetorically effective and ethically responsible methods of writing from sources. Preventing plagiarism is a desired outcome of our research, as the subtitle above indicates, but the Citation Project research suggests that students' knowing how to understand and synthesize complex, lengthy sources is essential to effective plagiarism prevention. If instructors know how shallowly students are engaging with their research source-and that is what the Citation Project research reveals-then they know what responsible pedagogy needs to address."

NB This resource was based on a corpus of graduate dissertations. "The Academic Phrasebank is a general resource for academic writers. It aims to provide you with examples of some of the phraseological 'nuts and bolts' of writing organised according to the main sections of a research paper or dissertation (see the top menu ). Other phrases are listed under the more general communicative functions of academic writing (see the menu on the left). The resource should be particularly useful for writers who need to report their research work.The phrases, and the headings under which they are listed, can be used simply to assist you in thinking about the content and organisation of your own writing, or the phrases can be incorporated into your writing where this is appropriate. In most cases, a certain amount of creativity and adaptation will be necessary when a phrase is used.The items in the Academic Phrasebank are mostly content neutral and generic in nature; in using them, therefore, you are not stealing other people's ideas and this does not constitute plagiarism. For some of the entries, specific content words have been included for illustrative purposes, and these should be substituted when the phrases are used.The resource was designed primarily for academic and scientific writers who are non-native speakers of English. However, native speaker writers may still find much of the material helpful. In fact, recent data suggest that the majority of users are native speakers of English. "

This video, produced by Mountwest Community and Technical College, demonstrates a typical tutoring session, including the greeting, the assessment of the student's needs, the creation of an agenda, the evaluation of the writing, the confirmation of the student's ideas, and the creation of a plan of action.

This open-access book, available on the WAC Clearninghouse, can be downloaded. Authors are Brock Haussamen with Amy Benjamin, Martha Kolln, Rebecca S. Wheeler, and members of NCTE's Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar. The book is described as follows: NCTE's Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar provides this much-needed resource for Kâ€"college teachers who wonder what to do about grammar-how to teach it, how to apply it, how to learn what they themselves were never taught. Grammar Alive! offers teachers ways to negotiate the often conflicting goals of testing, confident writing, the culturally inclusive classroom, and the teaching of Standard English while also honoring other varieties of English. This hands-on approach to grammar in the classroom includes numerous examples and practical vignettes describing real teachers' real classroom experiences with specific grammar lessons-including ESL issues-as well as a review of grammar basics.

The Journal of Response to Writing is an international, peer-reviewed journal for writing theorists, researchers, and practitioners of Second and Foreign Language Instruction, Applied Linguistics, and Composition to make quality contributions to the study of response to writing.  While we value traditional forms of response, including marginal notes, face-to-face interactions, electronic feedback, self-reflection, and peer review, we also value and encourage the research of alternative response methods, purposes, and practices. The journal is open-access This journal responds to a growing need and interest for additional scholarly venues to publish articles about writing theory and response practices that allow for a cross-disciplinary discussion of response to writing. The focus on response is intentional since nearly all forms of writing benefit from response, and responding to writing is perhaps the most time-consuming responsibility of a writing teacher. Therefore, understanding the theory and best pedagogical practices for response can benefit the writer while maximizing a responder's effectiveness and efficiency. This journal is meant to fill these needs by crossing disciplinary divides and providing an additional publication venue for writing theory and response practice.

The goal of the WPA Census is to create an online database that would serve as a first stop for people to find answers to questions that come up often in writing program administration practice and research.  The WPA Census embodies the idea that the administrative work of WPAs, WCDs, and WAC directors is scholarship. By ultimately providing these directors with a database that catalogs and organizes the diversity of writing programs, the Census will allow researchers to analyze macro- and micro-trends in the landscape of US institutions.

ABSTRACT: "This paper reports the results of a study comparing the interactional dynamics of face-to-face and on-line peer-tutoring in writing by university students in Hong Kong. Transcripts of face-to-face tutoring sessions, as well as logs of on-line sessions conducted by the same peer-tutors, were coded for speech functions using a system based on Halliday's functional-semantic view of dialogue.Results show considerable differences between the interactional dynamics in on-line and face-to-face tutoring sessions. In particular, face-to-face interactions involved more hierarchal encounters in which tutors took control of the discourse, whereas on-line interactions were more egalitarian, with clients controlling the discourse more. Differences were also found in the topics participants chose to focus on in the two modes, with issues of grammar, vocabulary, and style taking precedence in face-to-face sessions and more "global" writing concerns like content and process being discussed more in on-line sessions." "

"The UW-Madison Writing Center launched Another Word in the fall of 2009 to give the writing center community a space to talk (write) about writing. All posts are written by members of our Writing Center staff, by alumni of our Writing Center, or by invited friends from writing centers around the world." All posts are written by members of our Writing Center staff, by alumni of our Writing Center, or by invited friends from writing centers around the world. Another Word is copyrighted by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, and does not accept advertising. You can learn more about our writing center on our website."

University of Washington Bothell Writing and Communication Center's extensive list of ESL Instructional resources, Young-Kyung Min who wrote all the resources offers the following: "Over the last four decades, the demographics in US institutions of higher education have rapidly changed with an ever-increasing enrollment of non-native English speaking students. The enrollment of non-native English speaking students on our campus has greatly increased since its establishment. Creating a global learning environment is one of the main learning goals for our campus; thus, it is very important for faculty to continue learning about the particular needs and concerns of our non-native English speaking students and the campus resources available to assist faculty in helping students with their needs and concerns. Please continue to visit this website as more resources will be added to this section."

"Post-secondary writing centers have struggled to produce substantial, credible, and sustainable evidence of their impact in the educational environment. The objective of this study was to develop a college-level writing self-efficacy scale that can be used across repeated sessions in a writing center, as self-efficacy has been identified as an important construct underlying successful writing and cognitive development. A 20-item instrument (PSWSES) was developed to evaluate writerly self-efficacy. 505 university students participated in the study. Results indicate that the PSWSES has high internal consistency and reliability across items and construct validity, which was supported through a correlation between tutor perceptions of client writerly self-efficacy and client self-ratings. Factor analysis revealed three factors: local and global writing process knowledge, physical reaction, and time/effort. Additionally, across repeated sessions, the clients' PSWSES scores appropriately showed an increase in overall writerly self-efficacy. Ultimately, this study offers a new paradigm for conceptualizing the daily work in which writing centers engage, and the PSWSES offers writing centers a meaningful quantitative program assessment avenue by (1) redirecting focus from actual competence indicators to perceived competence development and (2) allowing for replication, causality, and sustainability for program improvement. "

The Rocky Mountain Writing Center Secondary Education Directory was compiled to help local, regional (RMWCA), and (inter)national (IWCA) organizations and institutions identify secondary schools in the Rocky Mountain Writing Center Region (AZ, CO, MO, NV, NM, UT, WY) as a precursor to connecting, collaborating, and/or supporting fellow educators in the fields of writing and peer tutoring. While the directory was originally to house all middle, junior high, and high schools, the scope was later narrowed to cover the 1,313 high schools in this eight-state region. (Article by Lisa Bell who compiled this directory is in Vol. 37.9-10 of the Writing Lab Newsletter, in open access archives: < writinglabnewsletter.org>,

From Neal Lerner's July 2011 message to WCenter: Folks, the latest issue (July 2011) of the Journal of Writing Research includes a very impressive study by James Williams and Seiji Takaku of the relationship between college students' self-efficacy, help-seeking behaviors, writing center visits, and writing performance. Here's a link to a pdf of the study: http://www.jowr.org/articles/vol3_1/JoWR_2011_vol3_nr1_Williams_Takaku.pdf Here's a snippet to take to your dean: "The analysis showed that those students who frequently obtained writing center tutoring received higher grades in composition than those who did not, regardless of their ESL or native-English-speaker status. The frequency of writing center tutoring seemed to be especially valuable for the ESL students, who outperform their domestic cohorts, receiving significantly higher grades in composition."