The Writing Center has a team of undergraduate students, graduate students, and instructors from departments across the university who can assist writers on any writing project. Our goal is to help everyone at AUB become stronger, more confident writers.
How can the Writing Center help you?
Faculty often think that the Writing Center is only for students; however, we are happy to work with faculty on their writing. In particular, our tutors are trained to critically read assignment prompts. If you have found that your students struggle to meet your expectations for the assignments in your class, our tutors can act as an impartial, confidential reader to give you feedback on what your students might find confusing or unclear in the instructions you have given them.
How can the Writing Center help your students?
Often faculty only think to tell weak students to make use of the Writing Center; however, all writers, even strong ones, struggle at times and can benefit from having a critical reader talk through their writing with them. There are two ways in which you can help to encourage your students to make use of the Writing Center:
- Add the following blurb about the Writing Center in your syllabus, on your Moodle page, or in your assignment prompts.
- Invite a Writing Center tutor to your class for a 15-minute presentation on how the Writing Center helps support AUB students with their writing projects. We have found that students are more likely to schedule a tutoring appointment after they sit through these presentations.
How can you help the Writing Center?
Inform your students of the services the Writing Center does and does not offer. For instance, we do not “fix" papers. Instead we work with writers to help them develop their writing skills. This work usually helps to improve the current paper, but since writing is a complex and difficult task that takes a lot of practice, sometimes progress is slow.
Do not require students to come to the Writing Center. Writing Center tutors at AUB and elsewhere find the most difficult sessions are those in which the writer does not want to be there. These writers get the least out of the sessions because they do not come willing to interact with the tutor and to work on the paper. These time slots can be better used by more engaged writers.
If you would like to discuss other ways the Writing Center can support you in teaching your students how to write, please contact us at writingcenter@aub.edu.lb