Spring 2019 Writing Center Class

Conducting and reviewing research is vital to the operation of any writing center. Studies such as our "Frequent Flyer" paper help us gather a picture of what the writing center's services are actually doing in students' lives. More qualitative studies, like those we have read on ELL students, help begin to answer complex questions (How do ELL students improve over the course of time in a writing center?) so that services can be improved. Without structured research, all is conjecture. In our writing center, I would be interested in seeing how the experiences of appointment students and the experiences of enrollment students differ. Does the tutor's work compound, giving the advantage to the enrollment student? Or does each session, appointment or enrollment, generally represent a single assignment, such that both kinds of students are more evenly serviced? Another question could be to ask why enrollment students drop (if they do). This could be as simple as a...

Writing center research is a great way to learn more about the field that develops and produces the methods that we implement in the Writing Center. Engaging in the research process or giving a presentation at a writing center conference is not just a way to further one’s career. It is also a way to begin to understand why we implement certain tutoring methods over others. Research is an effective way to delve deeper into the theory and method of tutoring in the writing center. It would be exciting to examine new research on how Generation Z is using the writing center. I would like to learn more about the impact of social media and technology on student writing. How have writing centers had to adjust in order to meet the tutoring needs of tech generations? Does our writing center improve student writing over time? What stigmas or misconceptions most negatively impact writing center attendance? What are the most common communication problems between tutors and student...

I had a wonderful time reading Goedde's "Lorraine's Story" this week. In college I was an English major (and an Italian minor) and I have always loved reading fiction, so I found this article particularly interesting and refreshing. I would argue that many of the suggestions Lorraine's tutor makes are perfectly applicable to academic papers as well, not just to creative essays. Of course, the two genres differ in many ways, but I believe that academic writers would derive great benefits from an enhanced awareness of the ways in which creative writers use language to bring a scene to life. For instance, academic papers often run the risk of sounding too abstract. Dry, jargon-filled paragraphs leave few traces in readers' memories. In contrast, the tutor in the article urges Lorraine to start her paper by telling a story in vivid, concrete language. Of course, this strategy will not work for all academic papers (although it works beautifully for many!), but ...

I was very interested in this week's reading. The crossover from academic to creative writing is a more difficult one than I'd ever considered--I have mainly worked on crossing over to academic writing from creative writing. I would venture to say that my transition was easier than the one described in this paper. Aspects of creative writing--such as attention to sound, as the author attempts to explain to the student--can easily be incorporated into academic writing. All writing, really, is improved by attention to sound and detail. The virtues of academic writing, however, don't always shine in creative writing. I'm currently working on a creative paper via online tutoring and it's proving to be tricky. For one thing, it's quite long, rendering line-by-line comments somewhat impossible. But it's also, I'm finding, difficult to convincingly advise a student on a creative paper outside of the workshop setting. I anticipate the author presenting an argume...

Post #8 Consuelo In broader terms both the non-fiction case study and the more academic ones can be seen as processes of discovery of different subjects with distinct levels of personal involvement,, and expectations. The non-fiction case study seems to be more difficult to the author as it carries the potential risk of eliciting profound contradictions, shameful thoughts, behaviors, and unwanted experiences. The elicitation process that appears to be plagued with uncertainty as the deeply human process of evocating, feeling and writing seems to run without control. A learning process imbedded in the non-fiction case comes across as unexpected full of requirements, conventions, and attention to detail. On the other hand, more academic writing processes may give the appearance of impersonal, objective, somehow remote from the intimate personal experiences of the writer. In this sense, they look as having more controllable results on what and how it is conveyed. Expected prescriptio...

My response considers the advantages and disadvantages of tutoring from a “creative writing perspective” vs. an “academic writing perspective.” I hope I am interpreting the blog post question correctly. It seems to me that both tutoring perspectives are valid, and both utilize useful tutoring methodologies; however, the goals of each methodology are different. Lin and Fei want to tutor students on common and practical academic writing conventions. They want to make sure that students can properly structure a paper, construct a strong thesis statement, and clearly articulate an argument. The advantage to this tutoring method is that it provides students with a set template for constructing an academic essay. Goedde on the other hand is focused on the “sonorous” aspects of words and sentences. He does not just want the sentences on the page to be accurate and meaningful. He wants the sentences to roll off the tongue. The advantage to Goedde’s method is that it gets s...

Goedde's case study is remarkable--and maybe this is too easy--because it enacts form and content so that each is inextricable from the other and therefore helps to steer the point he is making. Sure, his study could have used a more academic structure to argue how one might facilitate creative nonfiction writing, but what would that look like, and especially if Goedde's central idea is kept intact. For me, it seems the advantage of this type of study--that is the advantage it holds stylistically --is that it opens up discussions concerning how these case studies should be written in the first place, and for whom. This is also a concern that is central to Goedde's and Lorraine's point of contention: academic versus creative writing. What do we, the readers, glean from Goedde's style that we might not otherwise glean from a (presumably) traditional model that is, say, the Len and Fei model? This is a question that was brought up in a Cultural Studies course last seme...