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The Writing Center
Information and Resources for Faculty
Referring students to the Writing Center
As a professor you may want to refer a student to the Writing Center
for help. To start the process, you can download a Writing
Center Referral Form.
This form can be used to direct a specific student for help at the
Writing Center with a specific assignment. It can provide focus so that
the tutoring session deals with the writing problems of greatest need.
After your student's visit to the Center, this form will be returned
to you, along with the comments by the tutor. A copy will be kept on
record at the Writing Center.
Alternatively, just give us a ring on 2482 or 2430 or send an email
to wcenter@aui.ma.
Please let us know which writing issues you want us to review with
your student(s). The description and/or nature of your assignment are
necessary for the tutor. You may request that a student visit the Writing
Center as a requirement for completion of a given paper or project.
In this case, you will be provided with notification that the student
has indeed been to the Writing Center, and has worked on a specific
assignment.
What you can expect from the Writing Center
The Writing Center process uses peer review in partnership with the
writer so that the writer can identify aspects of her writing that need
improvement. The tutor may have a specific improvement in mind, but
encourages the writer to propose suggestions by herself for her own
writing. The tutor will naturally work on those elements of the writing
that most impede communication. This means that reader-tutors of a given
text will notice the most significant problems with expression and work
with the writer to revise those. These significant problems are often
subjective; i.e., the aspect of prose that hinders comprehension for
one reader may not be the one that affects another.
Therefore, if you recognise a specific error in your students' writing
that you cannot abide, please make sure that the writer and the tutor
are aware of this problem. Most likely, it will not be the one that
the tutor sees as superordinate! Feedback from you to the student can
be helpful in having them eradicate this problem in their writing.
The top-down approach to writing is a principle of Writing Center
tutoring.
Every encouragement is given so that students (writers and tutors)
work at the level where ideas are organized. This is the basis of the
writer's ability to express herself. Thus, errors of grammar and word
usage are subordinate to higher level problems with the transmission
of logical ideas, coherently expressed in functional sections, paragraphs,
and sentences.
This is why drafts, outlines and the assignment itself are of such
vital importance to the Writing Center experience.
What you cannot expect from the Writing Center
Tutors at the Writing Center are peer reviewers. Thus, they will work
with their writer-clients to improve a piece of writing. They will not
do the editing or proofreading for the writer-client. They expect the
writer-client to participate fully in the process of refining her writing.
Tutors normally have one hour to work with a writer-client. Thus, there
is a limit on the length of writing that can be tackled in one consulting
session. Realistic expectations by clients are necessary.
Plagiarism
The Writing Center provides guides and handbooks on the use of both
MLA and APA reference and citation systems for writer-clients to use.
Teacher expectations on referencing and source documentation for a given
assignment need to be communicated to students, preferably as part of
the assignment. The tutors will review documentation procedures with
the writer-client, but as reference works on this aspect of writing
are abundantly available across the university, student writers are
expected to follow the rules throughout their own writing for prevention
of plagiarism.
CAD sources for the Prevention of Plagiarism
Educators' articles and sources on Plagiarism
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