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The Writing Center
The Writing Center, through the support of the Writing Program and the Learning Commons, offers free tutoring to all writers at the University. Every writer needs a reader. This is a mantra in writing centers, and our tutors respond to student writing in order to help students develop a draft, clarify an argument’s logic, gain control over sentence structure and grammar, find and own their purpose, and generally learn to reflect on their writing practices.
Most students learn about the Writing Center from their teachers, especially their writing teachers, so encourage your students to take advantage of this resource when writing for any class. As a first step, you can include this information in your syllabus:
Located in the Learning Commons of the W. E. B. Du Bois Library, the Writing Center is a free tutoring service for all writers in the University community. Tutors work with writers to brainstorm, structure a piece of writing, learn strategies for copyediting, and more. All student writers—whether you love writing, struggle with writing, are mystified by writing, or all of the above—are welcome. And remember that you can keep using the Writing Center even after you’ve taken College Writing. To make an appointment, go to:
http://www.umass.edu/writingcenter.
You can also simply walk in and see if a tutor is available.
Are you teaching a particularly reflective student who has potential as a writing tutor? Undergraduate students can become tutor interns by applying for enrollment in the two-semester tutor training sequence (English 329H: Tutoring Writing, Theory and Practice in the Fall and English 298H: Practicum, Tutoring in the Writing Center in the Spring). Tell your students about this opportunity. In order to apply for the Fall semester, interested students must submit a letter of interest and writing sample to Haivan Hoang, hhoang@english.umass.edu, in the preceding Spring. Look for announcements from the Writing Program.
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