W R I T I N G C E N T E R FA Q
SPRING
WHAT
WE
DO
2015
We offer free and friendly support for writers at any level with any type of project.
Based on the underlying notion that all writers, regardless of experience, benefit from thoughtful feedback, our
goal is to facilitate learning. In addition to serving as responsive readers for works-in-progress, we are here to help
writers consider various strategies for developing, testing, and communicating their ideas; reflecting on their
purpose and audience; demystifying the writing process; and practicing with tools for invention, drafting,
research, revision, and the editing of their own work. We aim to challenge students to become stronger writers in
order to foster broader success in writing tasks across the disciplines both in and outside of academia.
WHO
WE
SERVE
The Writing Center is for all writers; students, staff, and faculty alike.
We support a rhetorical approach to writing founded on considerations of purpose, audience, and
genre – this means we’re flexible and can work with writing projects for any class as well as projects in
support of scholarships, jobs, and college entrance. Specifically for faculty and staff, we offer
feedback on written works and help with classroom communications, designing writing
assignments, and facilitating productive peer review.
The Writing Center is staffed by FLCC instructors and professional mentors with
expertise in college-level academic and creative writing, who can mentor writers in
any content area.
WHO
WE
ARE
Why mentors instead of tutors? When we think of tutoring, we think of supplemental instruction, an
additional opportunity for students to learn concepts they couldn’t sufficiently grasp from classes or labs. But
learning to write is different than learning other academic subjects because it culminates in thinking processes that
entail numerous choices, strategies, and practices, depending on the context. Meeting with a mentor is a different
experience than “being tutored” as our goal is not to reinforce classroom content knowledge, but to nurture
writers’ progress in becoming fluent with their processes in the various genres, practices, and terminologies they
encounter in their coursework across the curriculum.
HOURS
H
OURS &
& LOCATIONS
LOCATIONS
Main Campus Write Place:
A-219 adjacent to the entrance of the Library
Honors House Writing Studio:
HH 104 on the 1st floor
5
LOCATIONS
flcc.
100+
mywconline.
WEEKLY
Campus Centers:
HOURS
Academic Support @ Geneva, Victor, & Wayne campuses
Online:
com
flcc.mywconline.com
Scheduling is simple – Writers can drop in or use their favorite electronic device to
register, log in, and choose a time that is most convenient: flcc.mywconline.com
WHAT
TO
BRING
To make the most of our time together, writers should bring everything related to the project at hand
(the syllabus, the assignment, related notes and drafts, pertinent texts), any suggestions an instructor or reader
has made on their work, and realistic expectations of what can be accomplished in the time chosen
to work with a mentor. The more writers know about the kinds of help and advice
they’re looking for, the more we can accomplish in a session.
We are not an editing or proofreading service and projects will not be scrubbed
of all errors after a visit to the Writing Center . Our goal is to help writers develop skills and
NO
RED
PEN
strategies to make their writing more successful, not just to improve a specific text, so we do not edit, “fix,”
“correct,” or proofread papers line by line. Instead, we collaborate with students on editing and proofreading
strategies within the context of their own writing.
Think of it this way. Would a mathematics professor send a student to a support center to have the tutor find and
fix the student’s calculation errors? No. That professor would expect the support center to help the student to
understand the process by which correct answers are derived and careless errors avoided. The same is true in a
writing center.
We acknowledge that writing is an ongoing learning process that develops throughout a person’s life and that errors are a part of this
process. Most of our conversations in the Writing Center address more global issues such as clarifying the writer's ideas, discussing
organizational strategies, and striving toward credible support for claims. However, when grammatical competence interferes with a
student’s ability to do college-level work, we use the student’s own drafts as tools to identify patterns of error and to create a
manageable focus for learning. Unlike having papers proofread, writers are actively involved in the learning process. Wherever writers are
in their process, we work with them to take steps—no matter how incremental—to becoming more and more successful with their work.
CLASS VISITS, WORKSHOPS & POLICIES
Can Students Be Required to Use the Writing Center?
We hope that every instructor at FLCC will encourage students to visit the Writing Center, but a Writing Center visit for a specific
paper/due date cannot be required. No matter how well-intentioned, experience teaches us that the Writing Center works best when
students choose to visit us. We can accommodate only so many clients at any given time due to our scheduling and staffing limitations,
and requiring our services can take time away from students who are motivated by a genuine desire for feedback on their work. We do
make two exceptions: instructors may gently incentivize writing center visits or require students to visit the Writing Center
at some point of their choosing during the semester; also instructors may require students to work with us to
address concerns of plagiarism. In these cases, we follow sessions up with a report to instructors. All
general visits to the Writing Center are otherwise confidential unless students give us
permission to notify their instructors.
Do We Offer
Workshops & Class Visits?
Ways to Introduce Our Services
We can provide a classroom visit to inform students about
the role and services of the Writing Center, or we can help facilitate
in-class writing workshops and productive peer review. If you would like
to schedule such a visit, please email Nani Nehring Bliss, Interim Director.
As you assign written work, let students
know about our services, refer them to our
website, and guide them to our online
scheduler – flcc.mywconline.com
Request bookmarks to distribute to your
students, or take a class walk over to us –
we’ll be happy to introduce ourselves and
show you around.
WRITING PORTRAITS
54
2014
DEGREES
1151
Fal l
VISITS
As always, we appreciate your support of
our mission and services, and would be
happy to speak further with you or your
classes about what we do.
100+
S tat s
COURSES
Last semester, 1151 students pursuing degrees in 54 distinct areas of study
worked with us on projects for over 100 unique courses across the curriculum.
Writing Center in the Curriculum
1%
4%
1%
2% 2%
Writing & Reading
Social Sciences
Unspecified Projects
8%
37%
Humanities
Natural Sciences
9%
Nursing & Health
Business
Application Materials
17%
Visual & Perfoming Arts
19%
Math & Computer Science
Overall, over 1/3 of students sought feedback for Composition projects and just under 2/3
sought feedback on writing for coursework across all the other disciplines, together
representing written work for every degree program FLCC offers .
3%
Te x t s c o m e
in many s a P e S
& SIZES.
Academic Paper
5%
9%
Application Materials
Creative Writing Project
8%
Informal Writing Assignment
4%
68%
3%
2.
Types of Writing Projects
Lab Report/Scientific Paper
Portfolio
Oral Presentation
Writing projects have a variety of purposes and contexts across the disciplines for which a range of strategies for thinking, reading, and
writing are required. But regardless of whether students are attempting to write to inform, analyze, reflect, persuade, entertain,
our goal is the same: to support writers’ progress toward producing
coherent texts crafted to achieve intended ends for their intended audiences.
explain, review, advise, or inspire,
Whether that end is an annotated text for study purposes, a source-based essay to inform a specific audience, a poem to submit to a
literary journal, a lab report to demonstrate understanding of scientific concepts, a journal entry to reflect on one’s learning, an essay
for a competitive scholarship, or an oral presentation to persuade an audience to take action, we
help students engage with
their choices as writers, readers, and thinkers as they craft toward their objectives.
3.
Writers’ Concerns
There’s no
such thing as a
1%
Revision
Drafting
6%
10%
32%
12%
UNIVERSAL or CORRECT
Understanding the
Assignment
Formatting/Documentation
Prewriting/Invention
Editing
writing process.
12%
14%
13%
Research/Working with
Sources
Plagiarism Concerns
ALL WRITING IS CONTEXTUAL.
In the Writing Center we’re concerned with helping writers better understand why
different disciplines rely on different styles and genres for writing, and how these concerns shape the way one thinks, conducts
research, and shares results in these ranging environments.
REVISION. It’s what writers prioritize and a practice built into all of our writing courses. Research shows that it is in the act of
revising that writers learn the most deeply what it is they really want to say and what their readers need from them in order to hear
it. It’s hard work; it’s not simply editing: it’s re-visioning, rethinking, seeing again. And it really benefits from feedback from careful,
critical readers.
The concept exists in all fields: athletes get feedback from coaches & trainers, chefs rely on test kitchens and host tastings before
putting new dishes on a menu, comedians and musicians play open mics to see how their work is received by an audience, and
writers and academics rely on peer review – just look at the acknowledgements section of any well-considered text to appreciate the
long list of readers who gave careful feedback on prior drafts of that text:
Writing matters in all courses.
Writing does not
merely refer to a transcription of knowledge whose merits are
reduced to correctness. Rather, writing initiates a complex
learning process by which deeper meaning-making can occur
in any discipline. Over the last 25 years, researchers have
studied the many ways writing shapes thinking. These
studies demonstrate that writing about a subject is a powerful
means of learning about that subject, especially when writing
is used to scaffold metacognitive reflection on one’s learning
processes. When writing prompts urge students to reflect on
their own learning experiences – the challenges they faced and
the various strategies they employed to overcome them – the
educative effects of writing are substantially improved.
Good Writers Need Good Readers .
4.
Writing
facilitates both
creating & sharing
knowledge.
We encourage metacognitive practice in our work with students by providing them
opportunities to reflect on their learning process. We also foster the contextualizing of
writing tasks across the curriculum in terms of the foundational practices, strategies, and
skills learned in First Year Composition, helping students to scaffold the
portability and development of these essential abilities
into their course-work across the
THANK YOU
disciplines.
FOR YOUR CONTINUED
S U P P O RT O F O U R WO R K . P L EA S E
CONTACT NANI NEHRING BLISS, INTERIM DIRECTOR,
WITH FURTHER INQUIRIES or for a COPY OF OUR FALL 2014 REPORT.
flcc.mywconline.com
flcc.edu/offices/writingcenter
Nani Nehring Bliss, Interim-Director of the Writing Center
Office: A-219
Phone: 585.785.1602