Tutor Education

All tutors must submit two professional journal responses per semester. The journals are in the Writing Center.  Please click on the link below for the journal response form:

• Professional Journal/Text Response Sheet

Tutors: Please follow the links below to access material.  While the first section, "RWU Tutor Documents" focuses more on the mechanics of tutoring in a writing center, the second section, "Articles," provides a crucial foundation for the philosophical bases of tutoring. 

RWU Tutor Documents

• Tutor Code of Conduct 2012-2013
• Peer Tutor Guide by Dave Gillespie
• Role Playing Strategies
• 10 "Tutor Do's"
• Introduction to Academic Writing Course Guide
• Expository Writing Course Guide

Articles

Please go to your Bridges account and access the required reading at the Writing Center Tutors site.  If you do not see that site in Bridges, please contact Karen. The articles for Fall 2012 are listed below and are all available in Bridges. 

Articles on Talking in the Writing Center (the more the better!)

• "Training Tutors to Talk about Writing," by Stephen M. North. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Dec., 1982), pp. 434-441. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/357958

• "Power and Authority in Peer Tutoring," from The Center Will Hold: Critical Perspectives on Writing Center Scholarship, eds. Michael A. Pemberton and Joyce Kinkead. Published by Utah State University Press; Logan, Utah; 2003. Pages 96-113. USED WITH PERMISSION OF AUTHOR.  Please find this article in the Resources folder on Bridges.

• "Talking in the Middle: Why Writers Need Writing Tutors," by Muriel Harris. College English, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jan. 1995), pp. 27-42. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/378348?seq=5

Articles on Genre

• "Addressing Genre in the Writing Center," by Irene Clark. The Writing Center Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Fall/Winter 1999), pp. 7-32. Available at: http://casebuilder.rhet.ualr.edu/wcrp/publications/wcj/wcj20.1/wcj20.1_clark.pdf
• "Introducing Students to Disciplinary Genres: The Role of the General Composition Course," by Patricia Linton, Robert Madigan, Susan Johnson. Language and Learning Across the Disciplines, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Oct. 1994). Available at: http://wac.colostate.edu/llad/v1n2/linton.pdf

Articles on New Practices & Approaches

• "On the Rhetoric and Precedents of Racism," by Victor Villanueva. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 50, No. 4, A Usable Past: CCC at 50: Part 2 (Jun., 1999), pp. 645-661. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/358485
• “Creativity in the Writing Center: A Terrifying Conundrum,” by Elizabeth H. Boquet and Michele Eodice.  Creative Approaches to Writing Center Work, ed. By Kevin Dvorak and Shanti Bruce. Cresskill: Hampton Press, 2008, pp 3-20.  Please find this article in the Resources folder on Bridges.
• “Reflections on Contemporary Currents in Writing Center Work, by Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede.  The Writing Center  Journal, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2011), pp. 11-24. Please find this article in the Resources folder on Bridges. 

Articles on ESL Tutoring

• “Theoretical Perspectives on Learning a Second Language,” by Theresa Jiinling Tseng.  ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors, 2^nd ed.  Edited by Shanti Bruce and Ben Raforth.  Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 2009, pp. 18-32.  Please find this article in the Resources folder on Bridges.

• "Creating a Common Ground with ESL Writers, by David Mosher, Davin Granroth, and Troy Hicks. The Writing Lab Newsletter, Vol. 24, No. 7 (Mar. 2000). Available at: https://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v24/24.7.pdf

A final word:
In "The Idea of a Writing Center," North remarks on the "heritage" of the writing center: "it stretches back farther than the late 1960s or the early 1970s, or to Iowa in the 1930s--back, in fact, to Athens, where in a busy marketplace a tutor called Socrates set up the same kind of shop: open to all comers, no fees charged, offering, on whatever subject a visitor might propose, a continuous dialectic that is, finally, its own end" (446).