University Writing CenterMany of us have had the frustrating experience of trying to read student papers that fail to meet the standards we set in our disciplines. Students’ inability to recognize an author’s thesis or formulate a clear thesis of their own, lack of analysis, and difficulty using or assessing evidence, are just some of the more serious writing issues faculty must contend with. In addition, there are the grammatical mistakes, poor structure, and other stylistic issues that often plague students’ work.
Moreover, as many of us face ever-increasing class sizes, it becomes more difficult to give as much individualized attention to student writing as may be necessary. Beleaguered faculty can take comfort, however, in the knowledge that Cal Poly Pomona’s new University Writing Center is up and running, and that help is available for students.
The student tutors at the University Writing Center are trained to deal with a variety of writing problems often found in humanities or social science writing. Helping students to construct a clear and coherent thesis is the first area on which the Writing Center tutors focus. Without a clear thesis, students’ essays do not move beyond the merely descriptive level. The Writing Center’s focus on a thesis-driven approach to writing also enables students to more readily recognize an author’s thesis in their reading and research, making them more critical and analytical readers.
Writing Center tutors also aid students in honing their analytical skills by helping them to construct arguments backed up by evidence and to cite their sources properly. This helps confront a major weakness in much undergraduate writing: the lack of critical awareness of evidence both in their research and their written work. Writing Center tutors not only advise students in the proper use of evidence, they also get students to evaluate different kinds of evidence. Students are asked to think about the degree to which a particular source may be biased, about whether evidence being used is anecdotal, statistical, firsthand or otherwise. Does a particular piece of evidence stand alone or does it need corroboration? As with the case of the thesis, the critical thinking skills involved in assessing evidence enable students to become more sophisticated evaluators of their reading as well as their writing.
The approach taken by the Writing Center to these analytical issues can best be described as holistic—which is to say that the Writing Center is concerned with connecting writing to other critical thinking skills. These skills—reading, critical reflection, and writing—are indeed interconnected, and the Writing Center understands that a comprehensive writing program must address all of these areas in order to make better writers of students.
Of course, in addition to these larger analytical issues, the writing center provides students with an excellent resource for learning to proofread papers for mistakes in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and word choice. Students can also get feedback on the overall organization and clarity of their writing.
I should stress that the University Writing Center is neither a cure-all for poor student writing skills, nor is it intended to take the place of quality feedback from faculty. It is, however, an excellent resource for students, and since advising students to take their papers to the Writing Center, I have seen noticeable improvement in a number of my students’ papers. My experience with the Writing Center has impressed me enough to recommend it to other faculty as a valuable resource on campus.
