PeerCentered

To most students, a university’s writing center might just be a place of academic seriousness (Leahy). This is especially true for English Language Learners (ELLs), as Zhang-Wu et al. point out in their 2025 on the writing center as a “contact zone,” where ELL writers’ simply want to “have the writing center as a particular tool to help them succeed in the transactional writing relationship they have with faculty and with the institution” (74). Is there a way for the writing center to truly build rapport with ELL students? Can the writing center be a community more than a place to refine academic writing? As an international student and a writing center tutor, I argue that there is.  I came to this conclusion through founding Diverge , a student magazine for those who feel like their voices cannot be afforded by the traditional SAE publications on campus. In the magazine’s beginning stages, the Emory Writing Center offered ways of collaboration beyond traditional one-on-one tutorin...

     Writing centers should increase the availability of multimodal tutoring tools if they wish to grant equitable access to writing improvements for students with dis/abilites. Allison Hitt properly identifies that, “spaces [should not be simply] minimally accessible, but instead [be able] to consider how the disabled may be able to most fully participate.” Some advocate for multi-literacy as the biggest key to granting students with dis/abilities access to writing centers. However, it is multimodality that grants students with dis/abilities equitable access to tutoring services. Multimodal tools are more useful for a wider range of students with dis/abilities than multi-literacy tools. Furthermore, multimodal pedagogies can more easily push for assistive technologies than multi-literacy centers. In addition, multimodality is a form of multi-literacy that covers more ground than standard multi-literacy tools can cover. Writing centers must provide tutors with up-to-date ...