The legacy and sustainability of a university education requires student independence and ownership of learning. Adopting a student-centred constructivist approach to teaching and learning allows students to develop a web of self-constructed, interconnected understanding, and supports their development into lifelong learners. The efficacy of this…

This article examines the relationship between the use of online tutoring sessions and student success in developmental writing courses. The results suggest a statistically significant difference between the success rates, as measured by course grades, of those students who use the tutoring service and those who do not, thus suggesting the…

Providing a complex representation of a beginning writing tutor's role, this monograph, written as a journal, was drawn from a tutor's own perceptions and those of her students. While refinement of composition skills frames the entire narrative, the day-by-day record of the tutor's first quarter also emphasizes such skills as goal setting,…

The use of a peer tutoring writing program to promote intellectual growth and critical judgment at Brooklyn College is described. The plan makes expository writing the focus of peer influence. Its satisfactory effect on both tutors and tutees and its method of operation are discussed. (LBH)

Describes generic problem-solving model constructed by D. Koberg and J. Bagnall that can be used by writing center tutors and that progresses as follows: (1) accept situation, (2) analyze, (3) define, (4) ideate, (5) select, (6) implement, (7) evaluate. Provides tutors with coherent framework and with way of breaking larger framework down into…

Argues that while the writing laboratory cannot solve all problems inherent in teaching writing, it is a rich resource for both student and instructor. (MM)

The work of teaching faculty in the major disciplines how to teach writing often falls to the writing program administrator (WPA), and this paper explains one WPA's hypotheses, reasoning, and methods used in promoting writing in a college engineering department. Principles underlying the program related to the motivations of faculty and the…

A review of more than 100 student journals that are kept as part of the requirements of an education course that gives juniors and seniors academic credit for tutoring freshmen and sophomores in writing reveals that the tutors contribute to the development of writing abilities by providing the opportunity to use oral language in discursive…

An approach to the teaching of composition undertaken by the University of South Carolina writing laboratory is described in which the objective is to educate students and teachers in the composition process and to discover more about how writing is learned. Focus is on helping people learn to think. (LBH)

This study describes in detail the synthesis of two relatively new, widely accepted and critically approved teaching methods, writing workshops and peer tutoring programs, in a coordinated program designed to improve student writing skills and attitudes. After tracing the origin of this experiment to specific concerns about the use of standard…

Describes a successful experimental program at West Virginia University which involved using undergraduate English Education majors as tutors in the Writing Laboratory. (DD)

Open admissions as an educational policy in higher education depends upon the success of remediation programs in English and especially in composition courses. Because so many English majors will spend part of all of their professional lives teaching, their training at both the undergraduate and graduate levels should prepare them for teaching,…

The first section of this paper notes the tremendous number of approaches to teaching writing, the agreement among experts that writing involves developmental stages specific to each student, and the need for writing programs that challenge individuals at their various levels of development. The paper then describes a newly revised writing course…

Explains how peer writing tutors not only help their fellow students, but can also learn a great deal themselves about grammar and mechanics, information processing, marking papers, audience awareness, and problem-solving strategies. (ARH)

This booklet is one of a series of teacher-written curriculum publications launched by the Bay Area Writing Project, each focusing on a different aspect of the teaching of composition. After a brief introduction in which the writing concepts of fluency, shape, and correctness are defined, the rest of the booklet presents the work of three…