Department of English

The Writing Center

Services to Student Writers:

The Writing Center matches student writers with trained student readers in a collaborative effort to help writers make progress on a particular writing assignment. Discussion forms the heart of this consulting process. When writers come to the Writing Center early in the writing process, then the discussion may focus on understanding the assignment itself, on brainstorming, free writing, or other ways to begin work. When writers bring a rough draft, the consultation typically focuses on that draft--on what it makes clear, what it might lack--and especially on how the writer might revise.

The Writing Center assumes that because college writing assignments require ambitious and independent thought (almost always about content new to the writer), all writers need to see what their words communicate, and all writers benefit from being asked to explain their thought and their writing purposes. Writing Center consultations do sometimes focus on what the publication process identifies as copy editing i.e. error identification and remedy. In these consultations (as in all others), writer and writing assistant work together to identify possible problems and understand various revision options; writing assistants will never simply proofread or correct.

Unfortunately, Writing Center consultations cannot work miracles of transformation; they cannot turn sow's ears into silk purses. Writing well is the result of hard intellectual work practiced in many and various writing activities. What the Writing Center does is make available a unique setting in which student writers can understand and extend their own thinking as they work to make that thought cogent and successful on the page.

The Writing Center welcomes writers from all disciplines, first year through graduation. Writers concerned about particular writing assignments are especially encouraged to plan multiple writing center consultations as an important part of their writing process. Writers need not make appointments in advance.

Services to Faculty:

In consultation with the Writing Center Director, faculty are encouraged to consider building Writing Center consultations into their ambitious writing assignments, either as requirements or as options for extra credit. The Writing Center does have a mechanism by which faculty can determine which students have made Writing Center consultations.

In addition, the Writing Center plans for 1999-2000 include informal discussion opportunities for faculty interested in the many connections between teaching, student thinking, and writing activities. And any faculty members interested in floating plans for a specific course or writing assignment are encouraged to do so with the Writing Center director.