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Resource page for high school writing centers, with a short description of what a h.s. writing center is, why a student-staffed center can work, and links to some high school writing center websites.

a report on how one center has worked to generate student interest (and so gain departmental funding); a report on "Autotutor: A Branching Self-Instruction Program"; a report on achieving competency with basic writers; mailing list

The Journal of Response to Writing publishes papers based on research, theory, and/or practice that meaningfully contribute to an understanding of how response practices lead to better writing. JRW has three purposes: 1. Provide a venue for theorizing and reporting ground-breaking research on response to writing 2. Invite writing theorists, researchers, and practitioners to a venue to share their work with one another and colleagues in adjacent fields, most notably Composition, Applied Linguistics, and Foreign Language teaching viz a viz L1 and L2 writing 3. Provide new or inexperienced teachers with immediate suggestions for use in giving, encouraging, or managing responses to their students' writing

discussing how to help students who want writing help but aren't working on a particular project (general skills)

working with students who don't know composition vocabulary/terminology

"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."

"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."

should tutors who know a NNES student's home language work with the student in that language? discussion and resources

discussion of how to manage faculty expectations and cope with faculty members who appear unsupportive of the writing center's work/mission update here: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=1142114

a discussion and list of resources for working with students who communicate in ASL

A great resource for working with STEM students

This video gives a general overview of the Writing Center at Frankfurt International School mission what assignments the tutors work with, how to make an appointment with the Writing Center, and what resources the Writing Center offers.

One of the recurrent questions we ask ourselves as writing center practitioners is what we're doing: basically, what our theoretical assumptions are about our work, and how they inform (or fail to inform, or even hinder) that work.

"This article explores some important insights offered by second language acquisition research, focusing in particular on the findings of interactional and Vygotskyan approaches. Finally, it argues that writing centers may be an ideal place for second language writers to work on their writing."

"This statement responds to the growing educational concerns about plagiarism in four ways: by defining plagiarism; by suggesting some of the causes of plagiarism; by proposing a set of responsibilities (for students, teachers, and administrators) to address the problem of plagiarism; and by recommending a set of practices for teaching and learning that can significantly reduce the likelihood of plagiarism. The statement is intended to provide helpful suggestions and clarifications so that instructors, administrators, and students can work together more effectively in support of excellence in teaching and learning."

the first "Great Moments in Writing Lab History"; a report on "Comp-Lab Project" of York College, "where reduced classroom hours are systematically coordinated with a flexible schedule of autotutorial work in a writing laboratory"; a report from a WC on offering student support beyond auto-instruction; a report on computer-assisted instruction; mailing list

crowdsourcing how directors encourage tutors to reflect on their work continues here: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=24431401 continues here: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=24431439

"This website supports a presentation on the implications of big data on writing center studies for the 2014 IWCA/NCPTW conference in Orlando, Florida. Its aim is to use newly available big-data sets about global development and education to provoke new questions about the impacts of writing center work."