At last Monday's staff meeting Joanna Shaver, an English as Second Language (ESL) Professor came to give an informational talk about the types of aids that she expects the writing center to provide to her students, and strategies for us as consultants to use in order to most effectively serve them. In a hand out, she constructed a pyramid that listed priorities that she wanted to see in her students' papers. She deemed expression of ideas as the most important element, and grammar, spelling etc as the least. In this way, she viewed the writing center as a place more for her students to come and discuss the ideas in the paper first, rather than simply dealing with just the conventions of paper writing.
A large portion of the "walk in" students seeking conferences are ESL students, who are primarily Japanese, so this talk will be very useful to us as a staff moving forward.
- Matt Barnd, '13
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