Disabilities in the Writing Center

Since writing centers serve communities of teachers and learners, they will inevitably serve people with disabilities. Ever since the 1980s, writing center workers have explored the issue of tutoring students with disabilities, people who may require different learning environments and may have learning needs that interact in complex ways with standard tutoring practices. In order to make accessing this scholarship easier, I have read and analyzed as many of the available articles in the literature as I could find. This article presents summaries in tabular form of both the research methods and tutoring suggestions contained in these sources. I also discuss and analyze these methods and go into detail on those studies that use empirical methods. My goal is not to rank the usefulness of studies based on methods used but simply to point out that studies based on empirical methods may assist tutors and practitioners in achieving Evidence-Based Practice (Babcock and Thonus). Another analysis that emerges from this research are the types of disabilities portrayed in the literature, and I make suggestions based on a comparison with the disabilities actually disclosed by college students.University Writing Cente

Review: Learning from the Lived Experiences of Graduate Student Writers edited by Shannon Madden, Michele Eodice, Kirsten T. Edwards, and Alexandria Lockett

Learning from the Lived Experiences of Graduate Student Writers takes us from narratives to research. I was interested in and looked forward to reading this book, as, over the summer, some graduate students and I read Degrees of Difference: Reflections of Women of Color on Graduate School (McKee & Delgado, 2020), and I wanted to see how the books complemented each other. While Degrees of Difference was more personal, more narrative-based, and more interdisciplinary, both books stressed the importance of mentoring. But I am especially excited to bring some of the ideas from Learning from the Lived Experiences of Graduate Student Writers to my Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) campus. Our graduate population at The University of Texas Permian Basin is growing, and we need to offer it more support

Writing Centers and Disability: Enabling Writers Through an Inclusive Philosophy

In its Position Statement on Disability and Writing Centers, the International Writing Centers Association (IWCA) recognizes and emphasizes the relationship between writing centers and disability and “encourages scholarship that explores the ways disability intersects with writing center work.” The IWCA further encourages writing centers to be inclusive to all writers by adopting “communication that takes into account various learning styles or ways of processing language.” We too, argue that writing centers should be welcoming environments for all writers and that they should engage with their writers as unique beings, making accessible to them the individuation of instruction and support. Writing centers should be spaces where the multiple barriers that students experience in their writing are addressed and a variety of options are provided.University Writing Cente

Challenges and Changes: The Development of an English Writing Center in Taiwan (Note 1)

This paper explains the process of a group from a regional public university in Texas, USA attempting a short-term project to start a writing center at a private technical university in Taiwan. The group encountered several challenges and this paper attempts to reflect on and analyze what happened and to assist others who may have similar plans. Writing centers are growing in Asia but may need a different approach than just transplanting a US approach uncritically. Also cultural knowledge is key in endeavoring to re-establish a current concept in a new context

CARDS: A Collaborative Community Model for Faculty Development or an Institutional Case Study of Writing Program Administration

The structure of writing programs evolves to account for the transformation of composition studies. Online and dual credit programs necessitate a need to adjust prior practices initially geared towards face-to-face pedagogy; however, several challenges surface in online and dual credit writing programs. The most prevalent is that these online courses are primarily staffed by non-tenured faculty, including adjuncts who do not have a physical presence on campus. The faculty dynamic presents many challenges when attempting to garner participation in collaborations. In recent years, the Writing Program Administrator (WPA) at a regional public university noticed a need to improve faculty morale, satisfaction, and participation, especially with the emergence of online programs. Through a national survey and selective interviews of current faculty at the university, we determined that the answer lies in the structure of the program. The Writing Program Administrator has several models to choose from, but we will argue that the collaborative community model is most conducive to addressing and enhancing faculty morale, satisfaction, and participation in first-year writing programs

Rhetorical argument, folk linguistics, and content-oriented discourse analysis: A follow-up study

AbstractIn 1994, Dennis Preston published “Content-Oriented Discourse Analysis and Folk Linguistics”, in which he applied Deborah Schiffrin’s argument structure analysis and Vantage Theory to folk-linguistic data. The present study applies Schiffrin’s analysis to similar folk-linguistic data, as both Preston’s and my subjects discussed African American English. Preston found that his subjects used Oppositional Argument while the subjects in the present study used Rhetorical Argument. According to Schiffrin’s analysis, arguments contain positions, dispute, and support. The resulting analysis compares the conclusions that can be drawn from each set of arguments, such as social and distributional facts about language variety, and facts about variety acquisition and use

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