By Ellen Cecil-Lemkin—The first in-person International Writing Centers Association (IWCA) Conference since 2019 was held from October 26 to 29, 2022 at Vancouver, British Columbia. Sherry Wynn Perdue, IWCA president, wrote, “Attended by almost 500 members from all over the world, our annual conference offered presenters and attendees an opportunity to converse and conspire, so we may reconceive our roles as […]
By Dorothy Mayne—As I entered the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for my shift as a tutor in the writing center one day in the fall of 2015, I noticed a new and overwhelming number of flyers and posters for Grammarly, the automated written corrective feedback (AWCF) software. As the flyers purported, students could use Grammarly to help “perfect” their writing. […]
By Emily Bouza, Tim Cavnar, and Keli Tucker—Multilingual students should be celebrated for what they bring to academia. In this post, we hope to share what it looks like to support multilingualism in education. Emily’s section will cover different frameworks for understanding multilingual practice, Tim’s section will discuss language ideologies as a framework for thinking and talking about language and writing, and Keli’s section will propose a translingual disposition as a possible move toward a more inclusive writing center pedagogy.
By Karen Best—In August I published the first installment of this two-part series on working with multilingual or English as a second language (ESL) writers in courses all across campus. In that blog post, I confessed that I had really overshot my target word length and thus would divide the content into two separate blog posts. […]
By Laura Jones-Katz – I coordinate a language learning center at an English-medium university in mainland China. My background and current context may be rather different from that of many Another Word readers. I’ve never taught native speakers of English, and I only recently made the transition from the classroom to the writing center, and […]
By Scott Chiu – Like many lucky students in US universities, I benefitted from the Writing Center, especially, from the privilege of working as a writing tutor in the writing center; I established my scholarly identity and pursued my vocation as an educator through the writing center world. More than just a beneficiary of the […]
By Karen Best – The ESL Program and the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are both housed in Helen C. White hall, just one floor apart. However, despite this close proximity, our floors remain mostly separate, our staff distinct. Either you work in the ESL Program on the 5th floor or the Writing […]
By Molly Rentscher and Vicki Kennell – Molly Rentscher, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Fellows Program alum, was the Writing Center Coordinator at Arizona State University’s West campus while collaborating with Vicki on the research shared in this blog post. In August 2018, Molly began a new position at University of the Pacific, where she supports […]
By Calley Marotta – How can a university-sponsored community writing center serve those whom the university does not reach? This is a question community writing centers consistently try to answer by designing writing support for those who live and work beyond the university’s walls (Rousculp 2014).(1) By doing so, they seek to bridge a gap […]
By Rachel Azima – When I took my first writing center director position, I inherited a set of interview questions that I have continued to tweak, semester by semester. One question I have retained is one I imagine many folks might ask prospective consultants: what are some qualities you feel a consultant should have (and, […]
