By: Laura Jane Stallo
Many students only go to the Writing Center when they are required to as a part of their graded assignments, or when they are struggling with an essay. While the Writing Center does help students with both of those things, they do so much more.
The Writing Center currently offers two forms of tutoring for students, live and asynchronous. Michael Williams, a first-year undergraduate tutor at the UWC, explains the difference.
“Because of the pandemic, we haven’t been able to meet in the office,” Williams said. Much like the rest of the university, the Writing Center offers their services virtually through Zoom where students can schedule 30-minute or hour-long appointments with tutors.
During live appointments, the tutors will meet with students over Zoom and will walk through the essay with student. The tutors can help students with anything from “brainstorming” to showing students “what needs to be edited,” and "why," said Williams.
The process is slightly different with asynchronous tutoring. “It’s basically the same thing, except you don’t have that live feedback,” Williams said.
Students submit documents to the Writing Center, and the tutors “take that Word document or PDF, and we do our best to give feedback and give explanations along the way as if we were actually in a Zoom meeting.” Williams said.
Strengthening your own writing
When asked what some of the most common mistakes students make in their essays, Williams said they can be broken into two categories, “grammatical and structural.”
“Comma splices tend to be an issue a lot,” Williams said, adding that most of the grammatical mistakes tend be the easiest to point out. “In a Zoom meeting, you can read the essay back to them and they’re able to catch it themselves.”
"Even the best wordsmiths are bound to make simple grammatical mistakes," Williams said.
“It’s important to know the difference between commas, semicolons and periods, and when to use them.”
If you are ever confused if your sentence is a run-on or if you should have used a semicolon or a comma, you are not alone, and the Writing Center is there to help you answer those questions and more.
When it comes to structural mistakes, Williams highlights the importance of reading the assignment guideline carefully. “There are some who don’t follow the assignment guidelines,” Williams said, with many students feeling unsure of what the professor is asking of them.
“It’s always good to read the assignment guidelines on your own, and if you still need help following the assignment guidelines, we can help with that,” Williams said.
Style Guides
The Writing Center is also equipped to accept essays and articles from any discipline or style guide. “As tutors we take in all kinds of papers from all kinds of disciplines,” Williams said.
“A lot of my students have been from remedial English courses,” though Williams has also had students from “The School of Business to engineering to psychology and even graduate students.” With such a variety in backgrounds, tutors are constantly learning about different rules and style guides.
“Most of us already know MLA, and that’s the typical style we teach in, but we’re still able to help with whatever style,” Williams said. Most students are familiar with the rules of which style they are writing in, but if the tutors ever encounter an obscure style guide they are not familiar with, most style guides have digital copies available all over the internet.
“We trust students enough that they are able to find the resource for us and that they we are able to go through it together, kind of like following the assignment guidelines, and we take that as a learning experience,” Williams said.
The tutors also get offers to attend training seminars held throughout the semester to learn more about specific style guides. “It’s the expectation that as a tutor, when you do have breaks in your work schedule, it doesn’t hurt to go through the instruction manuals,” Williams said.
Workshops
While most students take advantage of the Writing Center’s tutoring services, the center also offers workshops throughout the semester for students.
“The workshops are free and open to the public. Usually we’ll have a couple of senior-level tutors who help to conduct workshops, to help the community out with basic issues that we see,” Williams said.
The workshops are similar to mass-tutoring sessions, Williams said. During the Fall 2020 semester, the Writing Center offered three sessions: “Presentation on How to Find and Correct Your Errors,” “Presentation on How to Reflect on Your Writing” and “How to Manage Writing Anxiety and Writer’s Block.”
One of the biggest roadblocks and misconceptions that students have about the Writing Center is that it is only a place to go if you feel like there are problems with your writing, Williams said.
“Workshops and tutoring sessions can be for people of all levels – all disciplines,” Williams said, and emphasized that, “We’re helping you to evoke the best writer that is already in you.”
Working for the UWC
The Writing Center is a resource available to strengthen your writing through either one-on-one tutoring sessions or workshops. It can also be a place to gain a variety of skills and connections by working there.
“I’ve learned a lot and it’s definitely been one of my favorite experiences this semester,” Williams said.
“One of the most important things working here has taught me is the importance of different writing styles…working with a lot of different students from first-gen students to students who aren’t native English speakers has been really interesting.”
“As a tutor is has been a really good experience to read and hear a lot of different voices and hear a lot of different experiences and to look more into my own narrative voice,” Williams said, and “learning how to edit other people’s papers has taught me how to edit my own papers better.”
“One of the biggest things about working at the Writing Center,” Williams said, “is that we’re very friendly, we never want to put (the student) in a position where we’re very hard on you.”
“Before I came to the Writing Center, I was always the person that people came to when they needed help with their papers, so I was already used to being in that environment but being a tutor at the Writing Center has given me a lot more confidence in doing that and has also given me a lot more skills and resources with working with different students and different writing styles,” Williams said.
Whether you just want feedback on an essay or want to be on the other side of the screen, the Writing Center is an excellent resource to develop your writing, no matter your year or skill level.
