Writing Center
Location: Library, Second Floor
Telephone: 651-450-8598
Hours: The Writing Center is currently closed. Please check this page periodically for updated information. Students needing writing assistance should use the SmartThinking online tutoring service.
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Keith Richter, English instructor (left)
assists a student in the Writing Center |
The Writing Center offers students individual tutoring in every phase of the writing process, from generating ideas to drafting and editing a paper to documenting sources. We also guide students' use of computers to enhance their writing efforts. The Writing Center can benefit students in all levels of writing and in all subjects (nursingbiology, sociology, art, psychology, law enforcement, etc.). Even the most accomplished novelists need feedback from other people to develop their writing to its fullest.
We concentrate on helping you improve as a writer, not simply on helping to improve your writing. The Writing Center is not a drop-off editing service. We will give you the tools to become a better writer; we won't do the writing for you.
Remember that learning to write well, like every other skill worth having, takes time and practice. We will not edit your work for you, but we will teach you to be your own editor. Our job is to help you get to the point where you don't need us anymore.
Read through the information here about our services. Near the end of this page are links for Quick Questions about writing and for E-mail Tutoring for online and off-campus students.
Staff
Ben Kiely and Richel Burkey-Harris are the lab assistants who staff the Writing Center during most of its hours of operation. They are experienced writers and teachers of writing. Additionally, student tutors put in regular hours, and faculty members occasionally make themselves available to help students. Laurel Watt, English and Reading faculty member, and Keith Richter, English faculty member, supervise the center. Visit Writing Center Staff to learn more about their backgrounds and beliefs.
Access to the Writing Center, staff, resources
You can get assistance at the Writing Center in three ways: walk-in conference, conference by appointment, and online submissions.
Using the Writing Center
Below are some guidelines to help make your visits to the Writing Center more effective.
- Plan before coming to the Writing Center: Bring your ideas and/or drafts to the Center early in the process, not the day before the paper is due. Plan to come to the Center more than once, particularly if you have a lot of problems with grammar.
- Come to the Writing Center prepared: Bring your ideas, drafts, or prewriting. Bring your textbook(s). Bring your assignment sheet or notes about the requirements for the assignment.
Bring any other relevant notes and be ready to actively participate in the writing conference.
- Have realistic expectations about what the Writing Center can do for you: Expect to take an active, participatory role in the tutoring conference.
Expect that the conference will last no more than 60 minutes.
Expect to address higher order concerns like organization, development, and logic early in the process.
Expect to address lower order, sentence-level concerns like grammar and punctuation later in the process.
Do not expect that every problem in a paper will be addressed. Tutors will focus on patterns of errors that you can realistically learn to correct in the time available.
Do not expect the tutor to "fix" the paper for you.
Do not expect that going to the Writing Center guarantees you will get an "A."
Do not expect to leave your paper with staff to be proofread and/or commented on in your absence.
E-mail Tutoring
Currently we are providing tutoring by email to all students. Go to e-mail tutoring for instructions and a web form to submit your questions.
Quick Question
If you have a quick question (that is brief and just one item) about writing, go to Quick Question for examples and a web form that you can complete and submit.
More Online Tutoring Links
Visit Online Tutoring Links for more great resources available to you from other institutions and organizations.
Frequently Asked Questions
For answers to typical questions and details about how to work with a tutor, visit Writing Center FAQs.
This page last modified: 06/27/2007
