Writing Center

Writing Tutorial Session Structure & Details

          During your Writing Center Conference, you'll have a chance to talk to an experienced writing tutor about a course paper you're writing. Your writing consultant can help you develop and organize ideas for a paper and can give you helpful advice to guide your revision.

          Each Writing Center conference is different, but here's an outline of some things you can expect during your conference. The session will last approximately a half an hour. The tutor will first want to read through the specific paper assignment you received (be sure to bring it with you). The tutor will then ask you to explain what you want help with. If you haven't yet written a draft, the tutor will try to help you get started writing the paper; you can talk through the assignment together and begin planning or writing and outline or first draft. Guided by what you've asked for help with, your tutor will then respond, as a critical reader and as a writing tutor, to what you've written-pointing out sections that work well, identifying possible problems, teaching you important principles about writing, and helping you find ways to improve the paper as you revise.

          In their responses to your draft, the tutors are likely to concentrate on large-scale issues first. For example, they will try to help you make sure that you're responding to the assignment that you're writing a focused, well-organized, and effectively developed paper before they help you with such concerns as style, grammar, word choice, and punctuation. They follow this order for a good reason: small changes in individual sentences will not improve a paper as much as changes in thesis, focus, and organization will.

          It's important for you to know that tutors will not edit or proofread your papers for you, nor will they do your thinking or writing for you. Instead, their goal is to teach you to do these things for yourself so you can become a better, more confident writer. Remember, too, that your tutor is not your professor. If you have specific questions about the content of your paper or about what's being asked for in the assignment, be sure to talk with your professor.

How to Prepare for a Writing Tutorial Session

1. Keep your appointments, but if you just drop in, bring along some extra homework in case you must wait to receive help.
2. Make sure that you have recently reviewed your assignment and the draft of the paper you've written. If you haven't yet written a draft, try to do some thinking and at least some preliminary writing before your appointment (a partial draft, a tentative outline, a trial thesis statement, some written ideas or brainstorming about your topic). If you're really stuck, come to your appointment anyway; we'll try to help get you started.
3. Think about the assignment again, and ask yourself if your draft satisfies the assignment.
4. Set your priorities for the conference. Think about what kind of help you most need from the tutor. A half-hour appointment goes by quickly and you should determine ahead of time what's most important to you at this time.
5. Mark sections of your draft you're most unsure about and would like to concentrate on during the session.
6. Try outlining what you've written so far.
7. Think about criticisms and suggestions that other people (your professor, tutors, peers) have made about previous papers.
8. Be prepared to accept helpful criticism and to revise.
9. Come prepared. Bring all relevant assignments, papers, and books with you.
10. Actively participate in your tutoring session. Be prepared to talk and to write during your session.
11. Work regularly with the same tutor.
12. Most importantly. try not to come in at the last minute: plan on perhaps two or more conferences while you work on an assignment.

Public Speaking/Speech Practice in the Writing Center

Campus Tutorial Services provides a Public Speaking/Speech Practice service in our Writing Center for students in any class who would like a private room to practice their speech in, access to presentation technology, speech recording, and/or a peer audience to provide feedback and encouragement. This service is available for individual students and speech groups. In order to reserve a space, please contact Campus Tutorial Services at least 24 hours before your requested practice time by email at tutorctr@uww.edu or by phone at 262-472-1230.

Public Speaking Practice can help students:

• Refine their speech topic
• Prepare speech materials/presentational aids (i.e., notecards, outlines, etc.)
• Reduce speech anxiety through repetition and experience presenting
• Note areas of speech to improve before presentation day

Writing Center Partnerships

Campus Tutorial Services partners with departments and organizations across campus in order to provide students with convenient, accessible support in as many ways as possible. Our writing tutors provide in-class support in a variety of courses, including (but not limited to) English, Math, History, Biology, Chemistry, CORE, DEVLPED, and New Student Seminar. Writing tutors are also stationed several hours per week in remote locations such as Wells Hall and the Andersen Library.