Writing Center Talk over Time: A Mixed-Method Study(Routledge Research in Writing Studies)

In the last 15 to 20 years, writing centers have placed greater importance on tutor training, focusing on teaching tutors best practices in fostering student writers’ engagement and writing skills. Writing Center Talk over Time explores the importance of writing center talk and demonstrates the efficacy of tutor training. The book uses corpus-driven analysis and discourse analysis to examine the changes in writing center talk over time to provide a baseline understanding of the very heart of writing center work: the talk that unfolds between tutors and student writers. It is this talk that, at its best, motivates student writers to continue to improve their writing and scaffolds their learning and that makes tutors proud of the service that they provide. The methods and analysis of this study are intended to inform other researchers so that they may conduct further research into the efficacy of writing center talk.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Foreword by Isabelle Thompson Chapter 1: The UWS Writing Center in Place and Time Chapter 2: Practice Based in Research Chapter 3: A Mixed-Method Approach Chapter 4: Volubility, Variation, and Most Frequent Words Chapter 5: Tutors’ Keywords Chapter 6: Student Writers’ Keywords Chapter 7: Lexical Bundles in Tutors’ and Student Writers’ Talk Chapter 8: Student Writers’ Very Long Turns-at-Talk Chapter 9: Changes in the Aboutness of Talk at the UWS Writing Center References Appendix A: Glossary Appendix B: 2017 Interview Questions Appendix C: Mackiewicz and Thompson (2015) Coding Scheme for Tutoring Strategies Appendix D: Letters for Participant Recruitment Appendix E: Consent Forms and Data Release Form Appendix F: Demographic Information Sheets Appendix G: 2017 Training Syllabus Appendix H: 2017 Consultant Observation Form Appendix I: Excerpts from the 2017 ESL Training Schedule

About the Author :
Jo Mackiewicz is Professor of Rhetoric and Professional Communication and Co-Director of the Advanced Communication Program at Iowa State University, USA. She is the author of The Aboutness of Writing Center Talk and co-author, with Isabelle Thompson, of Talk about Writing.