PeerCentered

Fear and confusion combine in the minds of listeners who know all about plagiarism's negative repercussions, but are only dimly aware of its meaning. Even among scholars the topic is stressful to discuss; some time ago, as I talked with a professor about this topic, I sensed a tone of worry in his voice, as if just raising the idea of plagiarism was enough to summon shame. This fear of committing plagiarism is not a solution because it can either cause or worsen students' struggle with paraphrasing and citation, thus hurting their writing quality and their capacity to participate in our community's exchange of knowledge. Overcoming the fear of committing plagiarism principally requires understanding it through peer collaboration and acceptance—an atmosphere that, at present, are best provided by writing centers. I mastered how to avoid committing plagiarism through practice and, most importantly, by making mistakes along the way. Despite first learning about plagiarism i...

Writing Centers and Learning Styles Nowadays, we all know many things affect academic achievement. One factor is learning style , a concept that has received scholarly attention more recently but has been around since the 1920s. Since the goal of the writing center is to improve the writer, part of role of the tutor becomes providing instruction in a manner that the student will comprehend . There are many different ways to offer this guidance, so I thought sharing some information on learning styles for writing tutors might be useful. What is a learning style? Basically, a learning style is not an ability , but a preference for learning a certain way . These preferences include the things people do to learn things (e.g., making diagrams, re-reading, practice) as well as broader styles (step by step instructions, collaborative learning, etc.). Research on learning styles shows that individuals differ in how they prefer to take in, process, and acquire new information , but...

   I've just recently climbed aboard the writing tutoring train this past November and it has been great so far! "It's a piece of cake" was my mindset when applying for the position but it is much more...interesting than what I expected.    I am a graduate student in Rehabilitation Counseling and as I started getting into the motion of tutoring, I realized that this environment was that of a one-on-one session from a counselor! Building rapport, empathizing, listening to their problems and solving them, the whole 9 yards. It brings me great joy to help people and little did I know, this job is perfect practice for someone who is fresh out of undergraduate level of schooling with little experience of counseling.    Although, not many people that walk through that door are the happiest campers on campus. Procrastination gets the best of most students and of course, we as tutors are expected to help in any way possible for the s...

  “I want to learn how to talk like you.” “Like me? How exactly do you mean?” “Like that! You know, how you Americans do… the dah-di-dah-di-dah…”  And so began my conversation appointment at the Texas A&M University Writing Center.   As usual, I had started off by asking my client what he would like to gain from the meeting. When explaining his goals for our time together, he used his hands to mimic what he had discerned to be my up-and-down pattern of speech. A second year graduate student from China, his concern was that his own speech pattern was coming across as monotonous, and that this was affecting his ability to communicate ideas in both academic and social settings. This appointment was the first session in a series of five that I had with my client who had just enrolled in our PLACE Program (The Practice Listening and Conversational English Program). His concerns were valid and are often shared by many of the international students who c...

    When I first began my work at Nova Southeastern’s Writing Fellows Program, I immediately felt close to most of my students, and they have felt close to me. This has made me more eager to help them, and made them more eager to learn while they’re in class or in the studio. Productive sessions are the most rewarding part of my job, especially when students come back again and tell me how well they did and then they immediately want to begin working on their next assignment. Their intention of doing well is inspiring, and I can’t help but take this inspiration outside of the studio into my everyday life. Being close with students can also mean that their troubling sessions stay with me outside of the studio as well. When I have a troubling session with a student, where ideas don’t come smoothly, or the student is overwhelmed and shut down, I feel that I am inadequate and I also take this feeling into my everyday life, the same way I do during a productive session. I’v...

Whenever I go into a tutoring session, I like to open up the thirty minute slot that I give students with a friendly introduction and a brief preface  of how tutoring at the writing center works. I’ll usually follow this up with asking them their purpose for being at the writing center. I am fortunate enough to never really have monotony in answers, as the students that I work with have a wide spectrum of concerns in their assignments, even if I happen to work with nothing but students from a single class for an entire shift at work. However, I notice that students aren’t always exactly clear with how they want me to help them, especially when we, as tutors, get into the busier parts of the semester. For the most part, days at the writing center don’t often get crowded, and the student to tutor ratio isn’t overwhelming. When times at the workplace are as such, it’s not as stressful, and you can often get a full and enriching experience with students. Lately, the f...

Bring it Back Return to Prewriting By Ashley Freeman “Welcome to the studio! You’re still working on the research project, right? What can I help you with today?” “I don’t really know. I just feel like I have too much to do and no time to do it. Can you look at what I have so far?”            “I can, but I’d rather you tell me what’s making you uncomfortable about the assignment first.”            “But, I don’t know what it is.”            What is one to do when a session begins this way? How do you handle it? Do you silently agree and take a look at the student’s paper, or are you persistent in getting some sort of answer out of them? When is it time to stop asking and turn to something else? Do you really want to read and judge their paper without setting some sort of goal for the session? These all se...

Does anyone actually hate writing? “I hate writing.” Usually that’s the opening phrase used during sessions with difficult students. Right away, they mention their dislike for writing, as though the simple statement will get them out of having to go through with the session. They don’t realize that they can say they hate writing all they want, but that doesn't change the fact that they’re still scheduled for a session which means regardless of their feelings, the session will continue. Difficult students may come in with that attitude in place, but there are ways to change that attitude. It’s good to remember to not let that comment get in the way of the session, especially if it’s their opening line. I take that information in and let them know that they don’t have to love it, but it’s not as bad as they think it is. One of the strategies I've used with these students is to avoid going straight into having them write. We still talk about their paper and any questio...

I am relatively new to being a writing tutor and have found some things more challenging than others.  One of these includes working with English as a Second Language students. Just last week, I had an ESL student come in saying, "I'm just stopping by before my class to get help with my grammar. I know it’s bad, and I also want to make sure my thesis is good." He proceeded to explain the paper and thesis to me. I was immediately able to tell that his thesis did not appropriately encompass the essay, but he was very unreceptive to this feedback and insisted that the paper be read so I could better understand.   After he worked through his eight page paper, I still felt the same about the thesis and my attention was brought to some other higher order issues such as the organization and focus.  At this point, with the limited time we had left, his response to my prior advice, and his original requests, I began to question how I should proceed with the appointment. If ...

Looking through the previous posts, and based on my training I know that sitting side-by-side with my client provides important nonverbal information about our relationship. We are peers and I am not an authority figure. While this is true, there is another reason why side-by-side works, and it is purely a practical one. While people are often capable of reading upside-down, it is more difficult and less comfortable. I think tutors would be more apt to miss important corrections from this position, but turning the paper so that it faces away from its author implies that the tutor has taken total control of the work, which of course is the opposite of what we want. So how do we convince our clients that side-by-side is necessary? Most times students will choose the across the table position and look askance at a tutor who comes alongside. Well, we could explain all the reasons why side-by-side is better – it implies equality, the tutor is not in control of the paper, etc., but that ...

        Our tutoring centre is a medium-sized room filled with round tables and sunlight, which pours in through four windows on the eastern-facing wall. On your average day, it is noisy— marked both by the chatter of math tutors working with groups and one-on-one conversations between writing tutor and tutee. I rather enjoy working in this space, but it serves as a reminder of the conceptual space in which I find myself— a space that bears a daunting truth.          As a writing tutor at the University of Winnipeg, I am situated within contrasting forces. Our Canadian value of multiculturalism plays largely on my heart: I feel all should have equal say and opportunities whilst maintaining cultural roots. The university’s diverse student body may represent such multiculturalism, but the practices of the institution do not. And this is not to criticize my beloved university itself, but to point to a larg...