Who can use the Writing Center, and for what?
The Writing Center is a free resource open to the entire WFU community: faculty, staff, undergraduate students, and graduate students. Most students come for help with papers for their courses, but we also offer help with personal statements, grant and research proposals, and application letters, just to name a few.
Please note that you must have a @wfu.edu email address in order to register for an account using our scheduling system. If you are a student at the medical school, please reach out to us at writingcenter@wfu.edu to discuss tutoring availability.
Who are the tutors?
The Writing Center staff includes undergraduate and graduate students. Some are English majors, but not all. We hire students from all disciplines, including both the humanities and STEM, but the one thing they all have in common is that they have lots of experience with reading and writing and love to share that experience with others.
How do I get to be a tutor?
Prospective undergraduate tutors are required to complete WRI 341: Writing Center Pedagogy. This is a 3-credit course taught by our director, Dr. Ryan Shirey, currently offered both fall and spring semesters. You’ll learn about the history and theory of writing centers, discuss best practices, and gain hands-on experience observing other tutors. We hire undergraduate tutors directly from this course.
Graduate students should reach out to Dr. Shirey and/or our Academic Coordinator, Caroline Livesay, to inquire about hiring.
Why should I use the Writing Center?
All writers have trouble reading their own work with a critical eye; we tend to read what we intended to say, rather than what we’ve written actually says, and we are often too close to our own work to notice the difference. (The Latin poet Horace advised young writers to put their work away for ten years because when they took it out again, they would immediately see what was wrong with it. Alas, what student has the luxury of such distant deadlines?) Our philosophy is that all writers, regardless of ability, need an extra set of eyes to truly see their work.
When should I come?
You can schedule a session at any stage of the writing process, whether you need help getting started, developing a partial draft, or reviewing a complete draft. However, depending on how much help you need, the earlier the better. If your paper needs work in lots of areas, we probably won’t be able to address them all in a single session. So, we encourage students to plan ahead when making appointments to set themselves up for success.
How do I get to see a tutor?
It’s easy! You can use our scheduling system to book an in-person, synchronous online, or asynchronous online appointment. We are also open for walk-in appointments (subject to availability), so feel free to swing by anytime you want a second set of eyes to see if any of our tutors are available.
When I schedule an appointment, am I guaranteed to work with the tutor on my appointment form? What about my appointment time?
Great question! While we will do our best to keep your appointment details the same as when you booked your appointment, there may be instances when we need to have you work with a different tutor or pair of tutors due to various scheduling needs, changes, and conflicts. In rare situations, one of our staff may also reach out to you about rescheduling your appointment to a different time.
What should I bring to my session?
Any and all information about the assignment, preferably the actual instructions given by the professor (it is hard for us to help you if neither of us understands the exact purpose and requirements of the assignment). Bring a draft of your work-in-progress at any stage, or even just some notes on what you might like to write about if you are having trouble getting started. Even if you haven’t written as much as you’d hoped, bring that half-finished draft that stops mid-sentence and the notes you jotted down about what to say next. Our tutors are here for any point in the writing process, not just polishing a final draft.
How long does a session last, and how often can I come in?
Depending on the length of your paper and how much work it needs, we offer 30- and 60-minute sessions. To ensure that everyone has equal access to our services, we limit students to 60 minutes of appointment time per day and 120 minutes of appointment time per week. Although students may not schedule more than two hours worth of appointments per week, they may have an additional walk-in appointment (subject to availability), just not back-to-back with a previous appointment.
What should I expect in my session?
In an in-person appointment, your tutor will act as an audience for your work, helping you match the words in your head with the words on the page. Instead of simply telling you what to say, the tutor will ask you lots of questions about the assignment, your ideas and intentions, and the areas you want help with. We won’t take your paper away from you; instead, we’ll read it with you. We like to have students read their work aloud because it helps them hear what they’re really saying, not what they think they’re saying.
A synchronous video chat session will be very much like an in-person appointment. We will use the microphone and chat functions on the video chat to facilitate the conversation and act as an audience for your work, helping you match the words in your head with the words on the page, like we would for an in-person appointment.
For an asynchronous eTutoring appointment, you will submit your paper and assignment information and answer some questions in the appointment form about your main concerns with the paper. We will read the paper during your assigned time slot, and at the end of the appointment time you will receive an annotated version of your writing from the tutor. We will not make direct changes to your writing, but will instead add comments and a summarizing note for you to review. The feedback here will be much like the questions a tutor might ask you in conversation, but you will not interact directly with the tutor during your appointment time.
In all types of sessions, we will give you an honest response to the paper by telling you what we learned from reading it, where we had questions and needed more information, and where we got a little lost or confused. Our job is not to “fix” your paper, but to keep you moving through the writing process. If you need help with proofreading for grammatical errors, we will help you with strategies for identifying errors, but we will not correct your papers for you.
Can I drop off my paper and pick it up later? Or send it to the WC ahead of time?
If you choose the asynchronous eTutoring option, you may upload your draft at any point before your appointment start time. We ask you to share as much information as possible when you create your appointment, since you won’t get to have a real-time conversation with the tutor here. Keep in mind that the tutor will only review your draft during the appointment time; you will not receive feedback any earlier than the end of your chosen time slot.
For synchronous appointments, the tutor will not review your writing ahead of time. Instead, we will work with you to help you make decisions about how to take the next step in revising your work. If there’s one word that sums up what we do, it is “collaborate.” We want to work with you. In order to do that, we need to be able to talk to you and discuss your ideas and thought process.
I had an asynchronous appointment; where are my tutor’s comments?
After your appointment ends, you will receive the client report form as you normally would after an in-person appointment. However, the WC Online system does not include file uploads as attachments with the client report form, so you’ll need to wait for a separate email from WC Online. This will be a notification email informing you that your appointment was “modified,” and your tutor’s comments should be attached to that email. If you don’t see the email attachment, you can go to your appointment in WC Online, click on it, and scroll to where the file uploads are visible. You can download your tutor’s feedback document from there.
If you cannot find your tutor’s comments in your appointment or as an email attachment, please email us at writingcenter@wfu.edu.
Will I get a good grade on my paper if I use the Writing Center?
We cannot guarantee you any grade. Our expertise is in writing, not in history or politics or literature or any subject you might study here at WFU. Therefore, we can’t judge the depth and sophistication of your ideas. That’s your professor’s role, and they will always be reading your work with a different set of expectations than our tutors. Our role is to help you give shape to your thinking, not to evaluate the quality of that thinking.
Will my professor know that I’ve come to the Writing Center?
Only if you request it. If you would like, we will send a copy of the client report form to your professor describing what we worked on and how much progress we made without providing any kind of evaluative comments. We find that professors often like knowing that their students use the Writing Center as it shows that the students are taking initiative on their assignments.
I have questions about the Writing Center’s scheduling policies. Where can I find answers?
Explanations of our policies on scheduling appointments, cancellations, tardiness, etc., can be found on the Policies page of our website.
To whom should I go if I have a complaint or suggestions about the Writing Center?
Please feel free to contact the Writing Center Director or Academic Coordinator with any comments at writingcenter@wfu.edu. We like to get feedback!