Many educational institutions^[1] maintain a writing center that provides students with free assistance on their papers, projects, and reports from trained professionals, consultants, or peer tutors. A key goal of any writing center is helping writers to learn. Typical services include help with the purpose, structure, and organization of writing, and are geared toward writers of all levels and fields of study. In general, writing centers also offer assistance with grammar and syntax and citation of sources for research papers using one of various recognized formats, such as MLA, APA, or Turabian. Writing centers coach students rather than doing their work for them, even in dealing with apparently mechanical aspects of writing.

A writing center usually offers individualized conferencing whereby the writing tutor offers his or her feedback on the piece of writing at hand; a writing tutor's main function is to discuss how the piece of writing might be revised. However, the tutor usually does not proofread nor edit the student's work. Instead, the tutor facilitates the student's attempts to revise his or her own work by conversing with the student about the topic at hand, discussing principles and processes of writing, modeling rhetorical and syntactical moves for the student to apply, and assisting the student in identifying patterns of grammatical error in his or her writing.

Some institutions also offer an Online Writing Lab (OWL), which generally attempts to follow the model of writing center tutoring in an online environment.

A recent movement in writing centers has been to provide services for the non-academic community. Such services include one-to-one response for out-of-school writers, and workshops on a wide variety of topics. Such writing centers are often identified as community writing centers.

Writing centers are not exclusively a post-secondary phenomenon. Some high schools have successfully created writing centers similar to the model in higher education.^[2]

No longer strictly an American phenomenon, writing centers have spread in other world regions as well.^[3] The European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW) is in part concerned with the study and advancement of writing centers in European universities. The International Writing Centers Association (IWCA) is committed to supporting writing centers from around the world, with current regional associations in Europe and proposed associations in the Middle East, South Africa, and the Far East.

References

See also

• Composition studies
• Communication studies

External links

• International Writing Centers Association
• European Writing Centers Association
• Mid-West Writing Centers Association
• Northern California Writing Centers Association
• Pacific Northwest Writing Centers Association
• South-Central Writing Centers Association
• Southeastern Writing Centers Association
• Southern California Writing Centers Association
• Canadian Writing Centres Association
• Northeast Writing Center Association
• European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW)

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