Help Students Get the Most From Tutoring Sessions

Questions for Instructors:

The University Writing Center offers a supportive teaching environment in which trained Writing Assistants work collaboratively one-to-one with student writers to understand writing assignments, to plan for writing and revising, and to improve strategies for proofreading and editing.

The Writing Center works most effectively when instructors provide detailed information about writing assignment goals and expectations.   The following are some questions that may help Writing Assistants better understand the particular context for writing in your classroom.

Instructors may E-mail responses directly to the University Writing Center:
OWCStudent@CSUChico.edu.
 

1. Tell us how your assignment relates to course content objectives: what do you want students to learn or to demonstrate by writing?
    

2. Tell us about the purpose of your assignment: why are students writing?  To inform readers?  To persuade?  To entertain?  Or some combination?  And to whom are they writing?
    

3. Tell us about the method of development you expect: are students to summarize, describe, illustrate, demonstrate, define, classify, compare, contrast, explore, discuss, explain, interpret, analyze, prove, critique, evaluate, argue for or against, or some combination of these?  If there are key terms in your assignment, such as "critique," tell us what these terms mean to you.
    

4. Tell us what sources of information you expect your students to include: if research comes from secondary research, what kinds of sources are acceptable to you?  What are students expected to document?  What method or style of documentation do you require? 
    

5. Academic disciplines share certain genres such as abstracts, proposals, and reviews of literature.  The conventions and forms of these genres, however, vary from one discipline to another.  Tell us what conventions and form you expect students to follow.
    

6. Tell us how the writing will be responded to and evaluated: will students have an opportunity to respond to the work of their peers during the draft stage?  How will you respond?  What particular aspects of writing are most important to you: content, organization, grammar, mechanics, punctuation?  If you plan to read student writing at multiple stages of the writing process, what is most important to you at each stage?