Moving Closer, Never Reaching: Translation as Writing and Tutoring Practices 

Multilingual Writers, Peer Tutoring, Writing Center Tutors

By Xiran Tan, Wesleyan University—My linguistic and physical existence feels much like the in-between space between the asymptote and the curve. The former infinitely approaches the latter yet never touches. Pulled back and forth between Mandarin and English, and drifting away from my first language Cantonese, which was not allowed in Chinese public schools […]

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The Elephant in the Center: The Question of Workshops

Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Centers

By Jennifer Rupp, University of Kansas—You’ve spent hours creating a new workshop that you are genuinely excited about – it’s both informative and fun! Then, it’s two minutes to go-time. One student walks through the door. You anxiously smile and say, “We’ll just wait a few more minutes to see if anyone else shows up.” They don’t. Now you both feel awkward […]

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Video Narratives in Training

Technology, Tutor Publications, Tutor Training, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Katie Layendecker, Carthage College—When our director asked my co-trainer and me if there was anything we’d like to change about our training program, we knew we wanted to modernize it in a way that was both informational and fun. We couldn’t forget that, for the most part, our audience is first-year students who don’t know what a writing center is like. The new tutor training program at our writing center is led by experienced tutors and has been more or less unchanged for the past four years. This means […]

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Call for Proposals, 2024

Writing Centers

Another Word is currently seeking proposals for blog posts to be published in 2024. We seek proposals from those invested in writing center studies on a broad range of topics related to administering, tutoring, training, and working in the writing center. 

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Rebuilding a Research Culture Of, By, and For Our Students

Tutor Training, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Center Research, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Alexa Quezada, Indiana University Indianapolis—During the summer of 2022, my campus’s University Writing Center underwent a series of changes that massively impacted the culture of the Center, including our approach to research. We lost both our director and assistant director in rapid succession. Subsequently, roughly a third of our student consultants quit in a combination of solidarity and worry that the UWC—and their jobs—would not exist by the beginning of the fall semester. Just before the semester began […]

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A Survey-Based Study Exploring Required Writing Center Visits at a SLAC

Classes, Higher Education, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Undergraduate Students, Writing Center Research, Writing Centers, Writing Fellows

By Eve Brunell, Estella Davis, Jay Fowler, Caroline Host, Dylan Howell, Emily Jackson, Olivia Jackson, Evan Paden, Olivia Sparks, Ellie Thornsbury, Erika Williams (under the direction of Dr. Scott Whiddon, Transylvania University)—In Fall 2023, Transylvania University Writing Center (TUWC) partnered with four undergraduate courses—theater, philosophy, sociology, and writing/rhetoric/communication—to support writers working within a range of genres and assignment types. In each of these partnerships, enrolled students were required to work with a TUWC undergraduate peer writing consultant at least two times to support understanding prompts, brainstorming possible pathways, developing drafts, and considering revision strategies. […]

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ChatGPT and Writing Center Tutors: Establishing a “both/and” Relationship

AI Writing, Multilingual Writers, Peer Tutoring, Technology, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Jun Akiyoshi, The Pennsylvania State University, and Rajwan Alshareefy, University of Delaware—Both of us, Jun and Rajwan, have similar backgrounds. We worked as EFL/ESL teachers, studied in an interdisciplinary area of Composition and Applied Linguistics, enjoyed talking about research and practice of writing education, and most importantly, we worked together at the same writing center when we were graduate students. Even after we earned our Ph.D.s, we continued to engage with, learn about, and research (writing) education. Throughout the years, we often talked about the theory and praxis of (college) writing, second language education, among many others. Our conversations became more heated when […]

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A Collective Center for Communal Care

Disability and Writing Centers, Diversity and Inclusion, Peer Tutoring, Tutor Training, Undergraduate Students, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Center Staff, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Rachel Herzl-Betz and britty cox, Nevada State University—Once, my (Rachel’s) direct supervisor in the Provost’s Office asked whether we had ever presented on our writing center leadership structure. At the time, I laughed it off. Why would we talk about how we keep the trains running on time?  As we (Rachel and britty) thought more, that idea connected to larger questions about writing center interdependence and the ways that we all get used to what we do. Like a grad student learning to teach […]

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Looking Back, Looking Ahead: Analyzing the History of Lafayette’s College Writing Program

Events, Higher Education, Student Voices, Undergraduate Students, Writing Center Staff, Writing Centers

By McKenna Graf and Emma Hetrick, Lafayette College—Students and faculty of the Lafayette College Writing Program (CWP) have been embarking on a journey through their history. Leading with passion, we have been investigating how we operated in the past and how that might inform and improve our future. In Fall 2023, we started by gathering information on alumni, sorting through archival material about writing all over campus, and interviewing past employees of the program. With these seedlings of our project, we were able to present our research at the historic Hotel Bethlehem on Friday, January 12, 2024.

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Nomadic Pedagogy and the Writing Center

Covid, Higher Education, Technology, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Centers

By Mario Ramirez-Arrazola, University of Oklahoma—In writing center work, It is hard to refrain from thinking about the writing center as the client’s endpoint, and yet it is important to recognize the varied movements and progressions that bring writers to us. Before entering the space of the writing center, they have had to travel through a journey of self-contained experiences, which affected them in either grand or negligible ways. When they walk out, perhaps never to be seen again, their stories don’t stop there. […]

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Show Your Work(flow)

Peer Tutoring, Technology, Tutor Training, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Uncategorized, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Center Staff, Writing Center Theory, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Joseph Franklin, New York City College of Technology—I am writing this at a bamboo table and simple folding chair combo. I am using Microsoft Word on a Mac laptop mounted on a Roost laptop stand and using a Logitech ERGO K860 keyboard that supports my wrists. I am playing instrumental music by Grandbrothers through Sennheiser PXC 550 noise canceling headphones and I have notifications turned off on all devices. These tools (and others) have been curated […]

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Tutor Identity: Learning from Preservice Teachers’ Tutoring Experiences

Tutor Training

By Rasha Alkhateeb, Loren Jones, and Alison Jovanovic, University of Maryland, College Park—Writing center tutors are teachers of writing. As tutors identify their reflexive writing identities, or how they understand their identity as writers and teachers of writing, they negotiate how writing is positioned as a meaning-making process in their sessions (Ryan). The process of developing a writer and teacher identity makes writing tutoring spaces valuable for preservice teachers who  are learning how to work alongside students.[…]

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Tutor Session Reports—Narratives We Build Together


Uncategorized

By Angela J. Zito – This past summer, I had the good fortune to step from the familiar position of tutoring at the UW-Madison Writing Center into two roles new to me: administration as co-coordinator at the Writing Center, and instruction with Madison Writing Assistance (MWA), our center’s community-based arm. While each of these positions […]

October 17, 2016

Our Blog Receives the John Lovas Award from Kairos!


Uncategorized

By Bradley Hughes – In May of 2016, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Writing Center staff was thrilled to learn that our blog, Another Word, which you’re reading now, received the 2016 John Lovas Award, a major national award. This award honors the best use of blogs and other open-publishing tools of the Internet for knowledge-creation and community-building […]

October 3, 2016

Disrupting the “Grand Narrative”: Outreach Instruction and Writing Center Pedagogy


Uncategorized

By Stephanie Larson – In Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers, Jackie Grutsch McKinney makes the argument that writing centers operate under a “grand narrative” that narrowly equates writing center work solely to one-to-one tutoring. “[W]riting center work,” writes Grutsch McKinney, “we’re told, is about tutoring students—and a particular breed of tutoring that takes place in […]

September 19, 2016

Writing Center Moonshots


Uncategorized

By Bradley Hughes – Do you know what moonshots are? They are really ambitious goals–or the process of trying to achieve those kinds of goals. The term refers to US President John Kennedy’s 1961 speech, at Rice University in Houston, about space exploration, when Kennedy boldly promised that the United States would land a person on the moon by the […]

September 5, 2016

Hearing Feelings and Visualizing Readers: Integrating Screencasting into Asynchronous Instruction


The Online Writing Center, Uncategorized

By Dominique Bourg Hacker – Before my work began as Coordinator of the Online Writing Center, I knew that I wanted to integrate screencasting into the email consultants’ workload. Screencasting is a video recording of your computer screen accompanied by voice narration. My predecessor, Mike Shapiro, had experimented with the technology in Summer 2014 and […]

May 4, 2016