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Here’s what goes on in the Writing Center:
A staff writing consultant (either a graduate or
advanced undergraduate student) starts by asking you a lot of questions
about your assignment, what you want to accomplish in the paper, the work
you have done on it so far, the due date, and your concerns or questions.
(By the way, it’s a good idea to bring a copy of the assignment sheet
if your professor gave you one, or any notes you
took in class about it.) Answering these questions often helps you to
clarify your own goals and intentions for the paper, and helps us to know
what to look for as we read the paper with you.
Then you or the consultant will read your paper (or
whatever part of it you have brought in) aloud. You may be surprised at how
much it helps to hear what you’ve written. You’ll both be listening
for ways of improving the paper—ways to make it say what you want it
to say as clearly and effectively as possible—and you’ll stop
along the way to discuss possible changes.
The goal of a Writing Center
conference is to make you feel ready and able to tackle the next step in
writing or revising your paper, whatever that may be. Sometimes there may
just be a little polishing and proofreading left to be done; if so,
we’ll try to make sure you know how to do that. But sometimes a paper
needs significant re-focusing or re-organizing; sometimes an argument needs
to be reconsidered, or bolstered with more evidence, or stated more
clearly; sometimes sources need to be identified more accurately, or
individual sentences or paragraphs need to be written more clearly. The
truth is that sometimes a paper needs attention to all of the above!
Together, you and your consultant will sort out what you should work on
first and whether or not you should come back to deal with other issues.
That’s why we strongly recommend that you allow plenty of
time between your first Writing
Center visit and the
paper’s due date.
One other thing: the Writing Center
consultant is not a stand-in for your professor. He or she is not in a
position to anticipate or explain your instructor’s response to your
writing, or to judge either the accuracy or the quality of your
paper’s content. The consultant may suggest that you bring some of
your questions about a paper to the instructor who assigned and will be
grading it. But it’s still worth coming to the Writing Center
to clear up what you can before turning in a paper. Think of your visit as
a rehearsal – a way to work out a few bugs and gain confidence before
the real audience sees your work!
We look forward to seeing you!
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