Group items tagged

conference announcements; "Building a Comprehensive English Learning Center at Del Mar College" (discusses materials, function, teacher education, advertising/promotion); "Where Does the Writing Center Fit In?" (WCs supporting WAC); mailing list

updates on lab classrooms, interdisciplinary writing, learning skills centers; mailing list

This article presents three case studies that closely examine various types of inter-actions taking place in writing center tutorials involving newly arrived pre-ma-triculated ESL writers. By learning what strategies tutors commonly use and how successfully the ESL writers negotiate their goals for the visit and the form and meaning of their text through this sample, this study aims to help identify what characterizes successful tutorials and what unique challenges English language learners might face when interacting with tutors. Results from these case studies show that it is not how many corrections tutors make or suggest for the students' papers, but how much the tutors engage their tutees in a meaningful dialogue that brings satisfaction to the ESL students. Findings also suggest that deliber-ate efforts should be made to equip ESL writers with necessary metalanguage to communicate their goals for their visit.

discussion of WCs that act as "a means or locus of conducting community service"

crowdsourcing a list of resources on WCs and student learning/retention; research on cost-effectiveness; individual reports from directors that demonstrate value of WCs see also a discussion on writing centers and grade improvement: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=18268126

Looks at collaborative learning and collaborative pedagogy in the writing center and how to overcome the challenges of both.

Bell, Diana C., Holly Arnold, and Rebekah Haddock. "Linguistic Politeness in Peer Tutoring." The Learning Assistance Review 14.1 (2009): 36-54. From abstract: "use[s] politeness theory to analyze the developing tutorial relationship between students and peer tutors in a university writing center" (36).

a discussion of distinctions between writing center tutoring and tutoring (English, writing, reading) that is offered by Learning Centers, Academic Skills Centers, etc.

"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

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."

"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."

The members of the University of Mount Union's Writing Center created this instructional video about writing center tutorials. The video runs through a typical tutorial and could be useful for tutors and students to learn how to prepare for and what to expect from a tutorial.

home page for the D.C. area peer tutoring group for secondary school writing and learning centers. Lists events in the area and links to resources for secondary school writing centers

"In addition to publications in journals and books, the WAC Clearinghouse provides access to two resources focused on writing in science, technologogy, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The STEM Bibliography The Writing-to-Learn in STEM Bibliographic Database"

"The Journal of Writing Research (JoWR) is an international peer reviewed journal that publishes high quality theoretical, empirical, and review papers covering the broad spectrum of writing research. The mandate of the Journal of Writing Research is: to publish excellent and innovative writing research drawn from a range of academic disciplines (e.g. psychology, linguistics, pedagogy, design studies, communication studies, information and communication technology, learning and teaching) to stimulate interdisciplinary writing research to be fully international to apply high academic standards, including double blind peer review to share knowledge through open access "

survey data with written responses covering administration, budget, programming, physical space, and many more topics