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This article provides insight into the role of students’ writing motivation in a writing centre setting. Based on my personal experiences as a peer tutor at a writing centre, the article highlights the importance of the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) for the evaluation of students’ motivational levels. It thus shows that the distinction between the motivational concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as well as between ‘amotivation’ vs. ‘demotivation’ provides a basis for tutors and instructors who endeavour to foster students’ motivation. Furthermore, the evaluation of different motivational strategies indicates that both peer tutors and instructors can make a valuable contribution to the development of students’ writing motivation by giving informative feedback, setting clear goals, creating relaxed atmosphere and enhancing students’ positive image as writers.

Case-based assignments represent a common form of assessment on academic business programmes (Easton 1982 and Mauffette-Leenders, Erskine and Leenders 1997), with students required to generate amongst other responses, business case reports, case critiques and case analyses (Nathan 2013). Only limited research is available to support academic writing tutors in understanding such case response texts with published studies focusing solely on business case reports (Freedman and Adam 1994, Forman and Rymer 1999a, 1999b and Nathan 2013). In order to aid writing tutors in supporting academic business students, this paper presents a small corpus study of 36 case response non-report texts (ca. 40000 words), generated on a UK MBA programme. These texts represent categories designated case critique, case advisory and case comparison texts, and were written in three business specialisms, Marketing, Human Resource Management, and Finance, respectively. Rhetorical analysis identified variable rhetorical structure dependent on text category, although orientation, analytical and conclusion components were present at high frequency in all text categories. Substantial variability in citation frequencies, modal verb, business lexis, and first person pronoun deployment was also identified between text categories. Awareness of both similarities and differences in case-based writing responses should serve as a useful aid in informing academic writing pedagogy.

Two long-standing assumptions on which writing centers operate are that individual tutoring helps students’ writing development and that the actual talk of such tutoring enables such development (Bruffee, 1984; Lunsford, 1991; Gillespie & Lerner, 2008; Mackiewicz & Thompson, 2015). Questions, long thought of as one of the most important pedagogical tools, enable writing tutors to tap into students’ knowledge of writing, help them clarify the writing task, advance their thoughts, and advise them indirectly on how to proceed further. Whereas writing center lore has emphasized the importance of questioning in non-directive tutorials, scholars have only recently begun to explore empirically tutors’ actual use of questions more generally in tutorials, the differentiated functions of questions, and the strategic use of questions in tutorial discourse (Thompson & Mackiewicz, 2014).In this study we present an original, empirical scheme for coding question types in writing tutorials derived from 15 writing tutorial sessions in our own corpus of the genre. We apply this functionally oriented scheme to one typical session to show how questions operate locally, how they are distributed across a session, as well as how they achieve both pedagogical and organizational goals within such interactions. The use of questions in this tutorial is compared with question use in 14 other sessions to discover patterns in tutors’ questioning behavior. Our findings provide insight into how tutors’ strategic use of particular question types can empower students to become more active participants in the tutorial.

This study presents a piloted second language (L2) writing tutor (L2WT) internship program as a way to provide supplemental, sustained writing fellow- style support to L2 writers and classroom teachers in multilingual firstyear composition (FYC) courses in a large U.S. university within the span of one semester. The major facet of the internship program was the tutors’ response to student writing in a one-to-one context for each major essay assignment. The presence and needs of second language writing students in the writing classroom have been clearly articulated in relevant research, but what is less known is how to devise successful methods of support that are both helpful and economical. The author provides evidence that students in L2WT-mediated classes earned higher grades and that the L2WT internship program was perceived as valuable for all parties involved: L2 writers, L2 writing teachers, and the tutors themselves. Additionally, the for-credit internship is a cost-effective option for writing programs without the funding to implement a large-scale writing fellows program. Implications for future offerings of the fellow-style internship, as well as suggestions for how to implement this program in additional contexts, are provided.

This article reports the results of a study of undergraduate research practices and mentoring practices of 107 writing center professionals and 102 undergraduate peer writing tutor researchers. Survey responses from these 209 tutor researchers and professionals provide insight into what they consider to be the benefits of peer writing tutor research and the challenges faced by tutor researchers and their mentors. The article concludes that while both tutor researchers and professionals agree on one significant challenge (time needed to complete projects) and one significant benefit (the positive effects of tutor research on peer tutoring), other benefits and challenges were not consistently identified and discussed by both groups. Implications for tutor research and research mentoring are discussed, and a general call is made for the writing

Peer tutoring non-native writers seems to pose particular challenges to tutors with regard to the overall goals and principles of peer tutoring that have been expressed in the literature. Principles such as non-directivity and long-term emphasis on the process quality of writing are often assumed to be in conflict with non-native writers’ desire to be actively and directly guided in their process of learning to write in a foreign language. Peer tutoring’s appropriateness therefore remains rather controversial within this particular context. In this article we outline the results of an empirical study focusing on the potential, as well as the limitations, of peer tutoring with regard to non-native writers in a German writing center. Using the method of qualitative content analysis designed to achieve a healthy balance between deductive and inductive aspects of empirical research, we ask the open question: ‘How do peer tutors deal with non-native writers?’ Results show that the limitations of rigid peer tutoring principles become obvious more quickly with non-native writers. However, peer tutoring with non-native writers reveals larger potential, too, and can offer recommendations for peer tutoring in general.

This article presents three case studies that closely examine various types of interactions taking place in writing center tutorials involving newly arrived pre-matriculated ESL writers. By learning what strategies tutors commonly use and how successfully the ESL writers negotiate their goals for the visit and the form and meaning of their text through this sample, this study aims to help identify what characterizes successful tutorials and what unique challenges English language learners might face when interacting with tutors. Results from these case studies show that it is not how many corrections tutors make or suggest for the students’ papers, but how much the tutors engage their tutees in a meaningful dialogue that brings satisfaction to the ESL students. Findings also suggest that deliberate efforts should be made to equip ESL writers with necessary metalanguage to communicate their goals for their visit.

Students often struggle with writing as they are unaware of the process of writing and of strategies and skills to help them write well. They often focus on the product of writing rather than engaging with the process of writing. However, it is in the process of writing, and in the discovery of that process, that learning happens (Murray 1973, Emig 1977, Berlin 1982). It is thought that the inductive, non-intrusive model of peer-tutoring practiced at the Regional Writing Centre at the University of Limerick, based on the model proposed by Ryan and Zimmerelli (2006), encourages students to engage with their own writing and learning in a non-threatening, approachable and positive manner. However, amidst the rising debate on what constitutes student engagement with learning, it is timely to investigate whether, and to what extent, the model used to train peer tutors in the Regional Writing Centre constitutes real and meaningful student engagement for those who peer tutor in the Centre and for the students they tutor.

own right. Fitzgerald argues that we should pursue

These researchers examine how questions function in a corpus of eleven writing center conferences conducted by experienced tutors. They analyze the 690 questions generated in these conferences: 81% (562) from tutors and 19% (128) from students. Using a coding scheme developed from prior research on questions in math, science, and other kinds of quantitative tutoring, they categorized tutors’ and students’ questions. The researchers found that questions in writing center conferences serve a number of instructional and conversational functions. Questions allow tutors and students to fill in their knowledge deficits and check each other’s understanding. They also allow tutors (and occasionally students) to facilitate the dialogue of writing center conferences and attend to students’ engagement. In addition, tutors use questions to help students clarify what they want to say, identify problems with what they have written, and brainstorm. Based on this analysis, the authors make some recommendations for tutor training. 85891-Writing Center-text.indd 37 3/10/14 2:52 PM Thompson & Mackiewicz | Questioning in Writing Center Conferences 38 Introduction To resist the role of teacher-surrogate in favor of the role of helpful peer or collaborator, to get students to do the talking, and generally to achieve a student-centered focus, tutors have been advised to use questions as primary tutoring strategies in writing center conferences (Brooks; Harris). In other words, tutors are supposed to use questions to indirectly guide students to improving their writing. In these oftenidealistic conceptions of writing center conferences, questions are “real,” genuinely reflecting an interest in who the students are and what they want to say rather than leading students to a particular point of view. Moreover, students’ satisfaction with writing center conferences has been connected to their perceptions of having their questions answered (Thompson, Whyte, Shannon, Muse, Miller, Chappell, & Whigham; Thonus, “Tutor and Student Assessments”). Tutors are supposed to encourage students to ask questions freely, and it is assumed that students will ask more questions in writing center conferences than in the classroom (Harris). However, beyond encouraging students to talk and beyond directing tutors toward students’ areas of confusion, questions are important prompts for learning and for maintaining students’ engagement in writing center conferences. Research about question asking and answering in the classroom has typically focused on how teachers can pose questions to enhance critical thinking for students. This research has shown that the dialogic Socratic method, with its back-and-forth questions and answers, is a more effective teaching strategy than didactic teacher talk (Rose, Bhembe, Siler, Srivastava, & VanLehn; see also Kintsch; Tienken, Goldberg, & DiRocco). Today questioning is one of the most frequently used classroom teaching techniques, with elementary and high school teachers asking as many as 300 to 400 questions per day (Tienken, Goldberg, & DiRocco). Research suggests that if used effectively either in the classroom or in one-to-one tutorials, questions can enhance students’ learning in at least three ways. First, as shown in Socrates’s questioning of his student about the concept of justice, questions can direct students in their efforts to “construct and reconstruct knowledge and understanding” (Smith & Higgins 486). By discussing what they are thinking with a more expert tutor or teacher, students engage in self-explanation, a process shown to deepen their understanding (Chi; Chi, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann, & Glaser; Chi, De Leeuw, Chiu, & LaVancher; Rose, Bhembe, Siler, Srivastava, & VanLehn). Second, questions can enhance students’ motivation, stimulate curiosity, and encourage active participation in learning (Lustick; Smith & Higgins). 85891-Writing Center-text.indd 38 3/10/14 2:52 PM The Writing Center Journal 33.2 | Fall/Winter 2014 39 Third, teachers’ and tutors’ questions may become models for selfquestioning, important for students in regulating their own learning processes. Further, in both the classroom and in tutorials such as writing center conferences, learning typically occurs within a conversational context, and along with stimulating understanding, questions are vital linguistic components of an educational conversation. Besides helping tutors identify what students do not know, questions allow tutors to understand students’ goals for coming to the writing center and to politely facilitate the flow of the tutorial conversation. We will consider all of these types of questions in this article. We examined how questions function in a corpus of eleven writing center conferences conducted by experienced tutors. In these eleven conferences, we found a total of 690 questions, mostly asked by tutors but some asked by students as well. Incorporating research about questions in classroom teaching, we adapted a scheme for analyzing questions in tutorials that was developed by the psychologist and linguist Arthur C. Graesser and his associates. This scheme has been used to analyze questions in math, science, and other kinds of quantitative tutoring, with a range of students from elementary school to college (Golding, Graesser, & Millis; Graesser, Baggett, & Williams; Graesser, Bowers, Hacker, & Person; Graesser & Franklin; Graesser & McMahen; Graesser & Olde; Graesser & Person; Graesser, Person, & Huber; Graesser, Person, & Magliano; Graesser, Roberts, & Hackett-Renner; Person, Graesser, Magliano, & Kreuz). Through our analysis, we show how questions can function in writing center conferences so that we and our tutors can understand the potential impact of questions on students’ learning and, subsequently, pose questions more consciously. Previous research about questions in writing center conferences has focused on what questions reveal about tutors’ roles and control over conferences. For example, Kevin M. Davis, Nancy Hayward, Kathleen R. Hunter, & David Wallace analyzed four types of “conversational moves” (47) teachers use in classroom discourse—structuring the interaction, soliciting responses, responding, and reacting—to determine the extent to which tutors took on teacher roles. According to Davis, Hayward, Hunter, & Wallace, tutors are usually in control of conferences, but sometimes they do assume less teacher-like and more conversant-like roles (see also Willa Wolcott’s “Talking It Over: A Qualitative Study of Writing Center Conferencing”). Susan R. Blau, John Hall, & Tracy Strauss considered the nature of the collaboration that occurs in writing center conferences by analyzing “three recurring rhetorical strategies” (22) relating to tutors’ directiveness—questioning, echoing, and using qualifiers. They found that in conferences considered satisfactory, tutors 85891-Writing Center-text.indd 39 3/10/14 2:52 PM Thompson & Mackiewicz | Questioning in Writing Center Conferences 40 demonstrated “informed flexibility” (38) in the strategies they used. Other studies have evaluated tutors’ use of mitigated and unmitigated interrogatives (Thonus, “Dominance in Academic Writing Tutorials”), “question–answer interrogation sequences” (Thonus, “What Are the Differences” 231), and leading versus open questions (Severino). A few studies have included questions in analyzing tutors’ politeness strategies (Bell & Youmans) and self-presentation (Murphy). These studies of writing center conferences tend to analyze questions as signals of assumed role and that role’s concomitant right to control the discourse as opposed to examining all the ways questions can function—including but not restricted to the ways they help construct role and maintain control. We analyzed questions to determine the extent to which experienced tutors ask questions that push students’ thinking, check their understanding, facilitate conversation, and model the types of questions students should ask of themselves in order to assess and develop their own writing. Simultaneously, we speculated on the relationships between questioning and students’ and tutors’ roles. After delineating the question types we found, we examined question-answer patterns according to initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) instructional dialogue (Mehan), a classroom discourse pattern largely unexamined in writing center research (for an exception, see Porter). We examined writing center variations on the IRE pattern, showing how experienced tutors used different types of leading and scaffolding questions in tandem with common-ground questions in a cycle of promoting students’ thinking and engagement and of checking students’ comprehension.

e p r o v e d t r u e . D i s c i p l i n a r y e x p e r t i s e d i d r e s u l t in increased tutor directiveness, but this directiveness was used to facilitate rather than hinder effective collaboration.

Writing centers can be staffed wholly or partially by tutors with little training in science writing. This article suggests that an emphasis on scientific rhetoric, not content, may be most useful for training tutors and developing handouts and checklists to aid novice science writers in invention and revision. The article also suggests that a training program in science writing can be informed by local science faculty’s major concerns. However, these faculty discussions toward tutor training should be supplemented through WAC-WID and genre research to retain a training focus on the connection between scientific thought and scientific writing, science writings’ primary genre families, and the delivery of scientific writing to different audiences.

On 29 June 2011, 280 delegates interested in the teaching, tutoring, research, administration and development of academic writing in higher education in Europe descended upon the University of Limerick to discuss the role of the student experience in shaping academic writing development in higher education. The EATAW 2011 conference invited all those interested in academic writing development in higher education to contribute to the discussion on enhancing the quality of the student experience through writing. Enhancing the student experience is central to the vision and mission of most higher education institutions in Europe and beyond. How students experience academic writing impacts upon their identities and on their participation in academic and disciplinary environments. Writing programmes and initiatives that actively engage students in the writing conventions and practices of their academic communities can enhance the quality of the student learning experience.

This article claims that working with peer tutors in a writing center can be very valuable for the center’s development, if the director and tutors work together according to crucial principles in writing center pedagogy. Based on the example of the writing center at European University Viadrina, this article shows how the ideas of autonomy and collaboration for both writing support and writing center leadership led to the writing center’s growth.

the University of Limerick, Ireland, and hosted by the Regional Writing Centre at the University of Limerick, took as its focus the role of the student experience in shaping academic writing development in higher education.The EATAW 2011 conference brought together 280 participants to contribute to discussion of how to enhance the student experience through writing development.Conference delegates included writing teachers and researchers, writing centre and writing programme administrators, staff developers, and professional and peer writing tutors.

Writing centers offer support and feedback to student writers who bring in specific concerns about papers and writing. The writing center of our home institution offers walk-in sessions with peer tutors who have taken an extensive preparatory course, which, according to the official course description, helps the tutor to become a “successful reader, listener and responder in peer-tutoring situations.” This training emphasizes our center’s goal of facilitating students’ long-term development as writers. Therefore, tutors in our center are trained to shift the impetus and focus of the session to the writer—over issues just focused on the paper—in order to enhance the writer’s control over his/her own writing processes and writing. The writing center where we were trained and currently work thus emphasizes the model of non-directive, writer-based peer tutoring in which, as Jeff Brooks puts it, tutors “make the student the What a Writer Wants: Assessing Fulfillment of Student Goals in Writing Center Tutoring Sessions

Because writing centers have long been viewed as fix-it shops, mentioning the word "grammar" can spark a heated debate over the writing center's role. Stephen North faulted the English department for perpetuating this misconception. Richard Leahy blamed the writing center's history and "peculiar status" for confusing faculty and students alike (43). Elizabeth Boquet explored tensions caused by shifts between the writing center's identity as both method and space (465). All are valid points, but there is a greater issue affecting both academic writing and the writing center-grammar

The one-on-one format of tutoring, which is the norm for writing centers, can foster the much-maligned view of a writing center as a fix-it shop and undermine the role of the tutor as a co-learner and facilitator of peer-to-peer interactions. The peer-interactive writing center approach , presented here, moves away from the one-on-one model and towards a format that encourages genuine peer collaboration, recreates the writing center as a place to actually engage in writing , and encourages students in their intuitions about writing . As a case study of such a peer-interactive approach, this profile provides an overview and evaluation of the Writing Drop-In Lab at the University of New Mexico, which provides a model for bringing the practice of writing tutoring into line with a view of writing as a collaborative, process-oriented phenomenon.

Scepticism about peer tutoring in writing expressed by university members outside the writing centre is a common problem for staff at several European writing centres. Our workshop at the 2009 EATAW conference focused on this issue by testing a short training to prepare writing centre staff for discussions with sceptical faculty members who reject peer tutoring.This article explains the procedure of the workshop and, as a result of the workshop, gives a compilation and categorization of the pro and con arguments and demonstrates possible answers to typical statements of doubt. It is shown that counter-arguments stem from very different levels of argumentation. There are strategies of how to respond to these arguments, though it will be a great challenge to develop guidelines for argumentation that match the very different institutional conditions of different academic cultures, as they were represented in the workshop.

This project outlines the rationale, design, and findings of a peer tutoring project in a UK teaching-led university. Three students received training and tutored their peers in academic writing. Qualitative data was collected from both peer tutors and tutees; quantitative data was collected through a questionnaire administered by the institution’s Careers department. Findings include a positive effect on the tutors’ self-perception of their own employability and understanding of the conventions of academic writing, along with positive feedback from students who received tuition.

since 1987, believes in the power of narrative, the wisdom of peer tutors, and the value of a well-placed hug. He also knows

This study examines discussions of model papers in a high school Advanced Placement English classroom where students were preparing for a high-stakes writing assessment. Much of the current research on talk about writing in various contexts such as classroom discourse, teacher-student writing conferences, and peer tutoring has emphasized the social and constructive nature of instructional discourse. Building on this work, the present study explored how talk about writing also takes on a performative function, as speakers accent or point to the features of the context that are most significant ideologically. Informed by perspectives on the emergent and mediated nature of discourse, this study found that the participants used ventriloquation to voice the aspects of the essays that they considered to be most important, and that these significant chunks were often aphorisms about the test essay. The teacher frequently ventriloquated raters, while the students often ventriloquated themselves or the teacher. The significance of ventriloquation is not just that it helps to mediate the generic conventions of timed student essays; it also mediates social positioning by helping the speakers to present themselves and others in flexible ways. This study also raises questions about the ways that ventriloquation can limit the ways that students view academic writing.

Ronesineeds, as training literature has yet to address contexts outside North America.Indeed, the few articles that describe writing tutoring outside North America dismiss peer tutoring as inappropriate

This article describes the Student Tutor Education Program (STEP) at Westchester Community College, which identifies and recruits potential future college English teachers at the community college level while they serve as peer writing tutors, with benefits to the entire college community as well as the teaching profession in general.

In this article, an English education professor, a university writing center administrator, and a recent graduate of an undergraduate English education program discuss the role peer tutoring might play in enhancing the education of preservice teachers of writing. The authors argue that by providing additional, authentic field experiences which reflect constructivist, student-centered philosophies often adhered to in English education programs, university peer tutoring can provide undergraduate students with authentic experience in learning collaboratively, developing rapport with students, and conducting student-centered, one-to-one writing conferences.

Tutors 25 Years Later," links the range and focus of their professional activities to Bruffee's leadership beginning in the late 1970s. One important element of that leadership centers on the growth and development of peer tutoring

Rhetoric and composition, as a new academic field

This tutorial on how to teach report writing is based on the premise that decision-making is a complex process that derives from both rational and quasi-rational ways of knowing the world. The author defines quasi-rational to include consideration of hunches, intuition, and tacit knowledge often embodied in stories that have meaning to the decision-maker. Thus, report writing can be approached as a systematic evaluation of options available given goals and constraints, but also as an uncovering of the narratives that decision-makers see surrounding their own lives. The tutorial explains a course curriculum structured in three sections with the following goals and strategies: (1) helping students face personal or family decisions through a traditional decision-matrix process that also incorporates elements of rhetorical stasis theory, (2) using big case studies to reveal the interplay between rational and quasi-rational thought in decision-making, and (3) finding case studies in the students' local geographic regions in order to further explore this interplay. The paper concludes with a brief assessment of how the author's students responded to such a course

The Problem: The Divide Between Theory and Practice Like most writing center directors, we have always included in our tutor preparation an emphasis on differences students may bring to a session. Up until a few years ago, this approach mainly took the form of a unit on working with ESL writers and another on working with students who have learning disabilities. This approach to diversity was reinforced by the textbooks we chose for our tutor training seminar. The guides for tutors that we have assigned over the years (including Meyer and Smith's The Practical Tutor , Capossela's The Harcourt Brace Guide to Peer Tutoring, , McAndrew

Writing tutors are encouraged to use compliments in their interactions with technical writing students. However, the form of compliments strongly influences how they function. Specifically, formulaic compliments like "It's good" function differently from nonformulaic compliments like "The size is excellent in terms of visually aiding the reader." A total of 107 compliments were analyzed from 13 interactions between 12 writing tutors and 12 engineering students. About 61% of tutors' compliments followed one of six formulae, and about 39% were nonformulaic. Formulaic compliments were general and mainly performed a phatic function, filling pauses and avoiding silence, particularly in interaction closings. Nonformulaic compliments were more specific and individualized, and they may, therefore, be more instructive than formulaic compliments. Nonformulaic compliments also performed an exploratory function, allowing participants to renegotiate discourse status. This study points to other avenues of research, particularly research that systemically examines writers' perceptions of formulaic and nonformulaic feedback, such as compliments.

This study examines the frequency with which 12 writing tutors used hints in their suggestions to 12 engineering students in 13 interactions about technical writing. Of the 424 suggestions tutors made, 106 were hints. Using Weizman's model as a guide, the study describes three types of hints that tutors used: evaluations, general rules, and elisions. It also investigates the benefits that tutors receive from using those types of hints and examines the problems for students that can arise when tutors state their suggestions as hints. Combined with previous research findings, the findings of this study suggest that tutors should pair mildly negative evaluations and general rules with direct suggestions, and tutors should avoid strongly negative evaluations, i.e., criticisms. The findings also suggest that tutors can elude suggestions and provide words and phrases for students' documents but that they should only do this occasionally to model effective tone or syntax.

Aer they are admitted, many students find actually joining the university to be disorienting and even daunting, especially those whose socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and/or educational worlds differ markedly from the academic world they encounter in college. We know that writing centers play a key role in helping students make this transition, serving as crucial conduits of adjustment for otherwise marginalized students. But exactly how we help tutors to help these students is less familiar ground. Tutors are not usually considered when composition scholars characterize the ways in which writing professionals help students belong. Nevertheless, tutors as well as teachers are party to a process seen variously as assimilation, accommodation, separatism, acculturation, translation, or repositioning (Severino; Bruffee-, Lu, ''Writing as Repositioning"), and the students tutors work with must undergo a process that can be positively characterized as "going native" (Bizzell, "Cognition" 386), quizzically understood as invention (Bartholomae), or negatively viewed as conversion 0-Harris io3; Lu, "Conflict") or initiation (T. Fox). Clearly, there is no consensus among these many "camps"; rather, what we have is provocative, useful discussion on the pedagogical processes of belonging. But many a tutor who finds herself on the frontlines with a lost student will not have the benefit of knowing this discussion. As a writing center administrator who has worked in two urban institutions with ethnically and linguistically diverse student populations, I have struggled to formulate tutor training that urges tutors to consider the complexities of belonging. I believe the tutor needs to understand the paradoxical ways in which writing and academic literacy more generally are instruments of belonging that can constrain as well as liberate.

Writing center work is theoretically-messy business, so it should come as no surprise that shifting the tutorial scene from the center to the classroom is a similarly complicated affair. Such, at least, is my belief having now read On Location: Theory and Practice in Classroom-Based Writing Tutoring, for whether describing a semester-long writing fellows program in a flourishing WAG environment or a single visit of writing center tutors to a Communication class, each of the essays in this volume richly describes a range of issues to consider before embarking on any form of classroombased tutoring. Along with depicting a range of options, most of the essays use these locations either as a source of evidence to advance arguments concerning the development and implementation of classroom-based^utoring programs or as texts ripe for analysis to improve our understanding of tutoring and writing. Whether the reader is initially considering embarking on classroom-based tutoring or currently administering such a program, then, On Location offers a wealth of models as well as a variety of theoretical frameworks for understanding what goes on in these complex learning environments.

Writing tutors often have very little or no expertise in conventions of engineering writing. In this study, I examine the topics and politeness strategies of tutors' comments, investigating how non-expertise in engineering writing decreases the effectiveness of tutors' interactions with engineering students. I show how the three non-expert tutors gave inappropriate advice and often stated their advice with certainty. I also show how a tutor with expertise in engineering writing gave specific and useful guidance to her tutee and built rapport with him as well. I outline how writing tutors could be trained to help engineering students better.

While we have different methods of teaching, WAC teachers, writing tutors and teachers of EAP share a common goal: to help students learn how to write effectively across the curriculum. To do this, students have to be able to situate each assignment within the larger context of questions and discussions in their course, in order to understand the role of that assignment in inducting them into the discipline. This article demonstrates the importance, students, of discerning this academic purpose, and suggests some ways in which students can be helped to develop routines of interrogating their essay questions to discover the purpose behind the question. It concludes by describ- ing ways of mainstreaming this teaching in collaboration with discipline professors across the curriculum. Working with undergraduate students in an Australian arts faculty, every day I grapple with the problem of purpose in students' writing the disciplines: a problem shared, in universities around the world, by WAC teachers, writing tutors (like myself), and teachers of English Academic Purposes (EAP) who aim to prepare non-English-speak- ing-background students for the demands …(of) subject-matter class- rooms in English-medium universities (Stoller 209). The nature of our concerns varies, depending upon our role in the students' writing