Faculty members' frequently asked questions about the Writing Center:

1. Is it okay to encourage all the students in my class to visit the Writing Center?

Yes.

2. Is it useful to require all the students in my class to visit the Writing Center?

The vast majority of students who completed our assessment survey reported they found their Writing Center experience to be helpful.Some students, albeit a minority, do not respond well to professional or peer writing consultants when their instructors require an entire class to visit the Center. These students often wait until the last possible moment to make an appointment, and they sometimes show upwith hastily constructed drafts and with attitudes resistant to revision. All too frequently, such students want nothing more than a report to be sent to their teacher: they regard the consulting session as "busywork."

Therefore, we ask that you let the Writing Center staff know in advance if you intend to require a class to visit the Center. In some cases, we can visit your class and help prepare your students to make the most of their experience with a consultant.

3. May I send students to the Writing Center to have their papers edited and proofread?

No. The Writing Center's mission is to help students (and others) become better writers, not to do students' writing and editing for them. Sometimes consultants help students edit a portion of a draft in order to model ways that writers may make prose more concise or elegant, and consultants also teach students proofreading techniques. Typically, consultants ask writers to describe their primary concerns about a draft, and consultants begin a session by (and often spend a whole session) responding to those concerns. Most composition scholars agree that effective writing teachers and tutors engage initially with "higher-order" concerns that appear in drafts (e.g., argument, focus, organization) and encourage revision of such global concerns before addressing "lower-order" concerns like punctuation and spelling. Indeed, attending solely to errors while failing to engage students in conversation about the ideas they are trying to express would be counterproductive.

In other words, if we want students to learn to write and revise effectively, to say something meaningful about what they are learning, we need to engage with their ideas and encourage them to express them clearly and completely for a reader. If we wanted to discourage students from thinking deeply about their course materials and articulating that thinking, we would focus first and foremost on punctuation. Effective writers often produce what Ann Lamott calls "[messy] first drafts," and then they revise them. We encourage most beginning writers (and most college students can be considered beginning writers in any academic discipline) to hash out their ideas, consider the ways they may best communicate those ideas to a reader, and then do their best to make their prose as flawless as possible. But we don't do the work for them. And if a draft does not make sense, we try first to helpthe writers make it make sense. Later, assuming there is time, we try to helpthem understand patterns of error that appear in a draft--or, if this is not an issue, to polish a well-written draft.

4. What should I do if one of my students has significant trouble with the "mechanics" of writing--spelling, punctuation, or grammar?

If you have a student who consistently demonstrates such problems in final drafts, please encourage the student to make regular (e.g., weekly) appointments with a writing consultant. Since Fall, 2006, a new referral procedure has been in place to address the needs of students who need ongoing assistance with writing. Please see Resources for Faculty for details.

5. One of my students worked on a draft with a peer writing consultant, but her final draft still had lots of errors. How could this have happened?

In keeping with best practices in consulting, peer writing consultants are trained to engage with higher-order concerns in drafts-e.g., audience, argument, organization, development-before addressing lower-order concerns like spelling, punctuation and style. Consultants are also trained to practice a student-centered pedagogy: therefore, they focus first on the issues identified by the writer as priorities. Frequently, higher- and lower-order concerns are discussed simultaneously. For instance, clarifying a wordy sentence often improves an idea.

6. How can a peer writing consultant who is a political science major help my students on their biology lab reports?

Our consultants represent a range of majors, and though they understand that writing-and what counts as "good writing"-varies from discipline to discipline, they are not experts and do not present themselves as such. In most cases, a student writer benefits from the experience of reading her draft aloud to a consultant, asking for and receiving feedback, and making revisions that seem appropriate to her, and consultants need not be experts in a particular subject to facilitate this process.

Of course, discipline-specific questions do arise in sessions, and in these cases, consultants typically encourage writers to seek more information from their instructors.

7. I would prefer my students to work with the professional staff members in the Writing Center rather than the peer writing consultants. Is this possible?

Our peer writing consultants have completed a semester-long course on working with writers, and they are skilled at what they do. In some cases, however, a student writer may need to work with a staff member with greater experience. If you believe an individual student needs such assistance, please call or email us

8. My honors thesis student needs a lot of help in managing his long-term writing project. Can the Writing Center help him?

Certainly. Many honors and master's students meet with consultants on a weekly basis to discuss work in progress. Writers often find that such a schedule enables them to manage their time more effectively and to balance the work of generating and revising text. We encourage honors and graduate students to work with us as well as with their faculty advisors. 
9. A couple of my students told me there were no appointments available when they called the Writing Center. Could this be true?

If your students called to make an appointment the evening (or a few hours) before a paper was due, it certainly could be true. While we have weekday hours in Roberts and evening hours in three different sites on campus, we are often fully scheduled. Students should call at least a few days in advance to guarantee an appointment at their convenience. 
10. What sort of training do the peer writing consultants receive?

Our peer consultants take a course, UNIV 239, "Working with Writers: Theory and Practice," that we teach every spring semester. In this interactive W2 course, they develop their own writing and revision skills as well as their abilities to work with their peers using sensitive, learner-centered strategies. The course also addresses issues such as learning disabilities and intra- and intercultural communication. Students who successfully complete the course may apply to become peer writing consultants. Once they join our peer consulting staff, they participate in a weekly meeting, where their training continues.

11. I've heard that students can be tutored in mathematics and other subjects through the Writing Center. How do they obtain a tutor?

Students who are struggling in introductory courses in mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics may request a long-term peer tutor by completing a tutor request form (available in the Writing Center Coordinator's office, Roberts 100A), which also requires input and a signature from their course instructor. Students then return the form to the Writing Center office. Our staff does its best to match the client with an appropriate tutor, and we meet the needs of the vast majority of those who request tutoring. However, because our mathematics and science tutor pool is limited, there are usually several late requests each semester that cannot be accommodated, and we must give priority to students with the greatest need.

If you teach an introductory biology, chemistry, mathematics or physics course and would like to recommend current or former students who would be good tutors for your course, please let us know so that we can invite them to take our next tutor training. For a description of the math and science tutoring program, click here.