Information for Teachers
Think of the Writing Center as a place where writers of every level go to get feedback on their work. Professors seek feedback on their ideas and writing from their colleagues and the Writing Center provides this same kind of service for students. A cross-section of students use the Center; we see freshmen to graduate students in all disciplines and work with poor writers as well as those who have graduated with 4.0 GPAs. Some teachers give students who use the Center extra consideration when grading or are particularly encouraging with comments because the students are taking active steps to improve their writing.
In tutorials, tutors focus on global before surface issues. The rationale for this approach is twofold: (1) Correct sentences don't mean much if a paper lacks a thesis, is unorganized, or does not address the assignment. (2) If a tutor works with a student at the sentence level in a paper that needs substantial revision, a student may not revise sufficiently because structural changes will probably necessitate changes in the "corrected" sentences. To address this, students may wish to arrange more than one tutoring session to work on a paper—one session for global issues and another for the sentence level elements after revision has occurred. However, if you wish a student to focus on specific surface problems in lieu of larger issues, please tell a student to indicate this to us so that a tutoring session can address your goals for the student.
Tutors will help students learn how to proofread, but the Writing Center does not offer proofreading as a service per se. Because proofreading is a skill that must be developed, the Center will work with students on this skill by helping students to see their work objectively. We will point out errors the student doesn't recognize, explain why the errors are errors and, if possible, why they occurred and how they can be corrected, as well as reinforce these points throughout the student's proofreading of the paper.
Have realistic expectations. Students can cover much in a tutoring session but instructors should not expect perfect papers after a student visits the Writing Center. Tutors offer advice and work with a paper in progress. Students may then revise their papers based on the advice they receive at which point errors or elements not in a previous draft may occur. This is natural as writers explore new strategies and concepts. Also, multilingual students often need to work extensively with the new language they are acquiring and, as with any language acquisition process, will experience periods of progress and plateaus. Becoming a better writer takes time. Be patient and encouraging.