At the Texas A&M University Writing Center, some of the consultants are “loaned out” to other departments as writing assistants. We, as undergraduates, work one on one with a professor in many different scenarios, reading drafts, looking at grammar, style, and structure in a student’s paper for the professor, and making presentations tailored to these particular students about grammar. Starting my second semester as an Undergraduate Writing Assistant, I discovered that this class, of future Special Education teachers, was very different from my previous class, a group of senior Agronomy majors focused on soil and crop sciences. Part of my job as an assistant is to give feedback on personal reflections that each member of the class writes, and they turn in five of these reflections throughout the semester. After receiving the second group of reflections it became abundantly clear to me the students were not growing as writers. Each student seemed to be making mistakes repeatedly on
I found this survey to be very thought provoking. Not only does it seem to "interact" with those who are responding to the questions in a manner very similar to that seemingly vague and yet decidedly pointed questioning which tutors themselves utilize in tutoring sessions, but it also made me think a lot about just what exactly happens in the Writing Center -- a point of consideration which in turn caused me to wonder about what exactly I want to be having happen in out sessions instead.
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