Welcome to the Business Writing Center

The Writing Center offers individual tutoring to help students improve their writing for classes and professional situations. Tutors' approach focuses on coaching so students develop general skills as they work on a particular paper.

The Writing Center also offers services for faculty: assistance with assignment design, custom handouts to illustrate assignment expectations, and suggestions on ways to include writing in a course. In collaboration with the Foster Library, the Writing Center can design class partnerships to improve students' use of sources and research writing. To discuss these services, contact the director, Nola-Jean Bamberry (bamberry@u.washington.edu, 685-9608).

Explore this page to learn more about the Writing Center — who the staff are, what services we offer students, and what resources can help you create writing assignments. Click on a question to begin exploring. The answer will expand, and with another click, it will collapse.

• Are the services for undergraduate or graduate students?

  ---

  Anyone is welcome to use the Writing Center, but our focus is the Undergraduate Program. We have undergraduate peer tutors, most of whom are business majors. However, since they are skilled writers with training in tutoring, they are able to help graduate students with writing issues that don’t require advanced subject knowledge. Multilingual graduate students often work with our tutors on general issues such as grammar, word choice, sentence structure, and punctuation.

  
  
• Who are the staff?

  ---

  The Writing Center is staffed by undergraduate peer tutors, typically business majors. They have first-hand experience with the kinds of assignments given in business classes. Anyone accepted to be a tutor has excellent writing skills and participates in additional training on critiquing papers, revising, and coaching.

  Meet the Tutors

  

  Nola-Jean Bamberry, Writing Center director, has a Ph.D. in medieval literature from the University of Washington. One of her sub-specialties in the program was rhetoric and composition. After finishing the English degree, she moved across campus to the Foster School, where she has taught Business Communications and run the Writing Center, along with being involved in several other programs. Her hobbies are photography and cooking.

  
  
• What happens in a typical meeting with a tutor?

  ---

  The writing conference is a conversation, not a one-way critique from the tutor. The tutor’s primary role is not to tell you what to do, but guide you in problem solving and point out key writing principles you can apply to your paper. Where appropriate, the tutor will point out specific corrections and help you see patterns of error in a draft. By recognizing repeated errors, you will become a better editor of your own work. When you come to the Writing Center, the tutor will begin by asking about your concerns and will ask to see the assignment if you are working on a paper for class. The tutor will review any draft you bring and assess the writing issues and how they relate to your concerns. The tutor may ask you to read part or all of the paper aloud or may start guiding you directly through making revisions. Usually you will work on larger issues first and then move on to editing and polishing the paper. The goal of each visit is both a better paper and long-term improvement in your writing skills.

  
  
• How can I encourage students to use the Writing Center?

  ---

  • Include a link to the Writing Center web site in your syllabus or writing assignments and encourage students to get feedback on drafts. The URL is http://bschool.washington.edu/bwrite/
  • As part of your writing assignments, explain to students that their best work will rarely be their first draft. Remind them that getting the perspective of a second reader will help them write better papers.
  • Tell students about online writing tips and reference materials on the Writing Center web site. These are useful as students draft papers and, later, check on final revisions.
  • Tell students you have noticed that taking the time to use the Writing Center services leads to higher quality papers.
  • Pick up a flyer and post it on your door. Request an 8 ½ x 11 or 8 x 14 poster for your door. We have a few designs you can choose from.
  • Send us an email requesting an image of our flyer so you can forward it to your students with a recommendation that they use the Writing Center.

  
  
• How can the Writing Center help students whose native language is not English?

  ---

  As part of their training, tutors learn appropriate coaching techniques for working with multilingual students. The University has also given release time to a graduate student specializing in this area to provide ongoing training for campus writing center tutors.

  Tutors help students learn to identify their own errors. Tutors do not edit students’ work, but they do help students learn standard English usage, a task that takes repeated practice and time. The tutors also ask students to think about the big picture – organization, logical support, etc. – before focusing on grammar. Often students come to the Writing Center wanting to focus just on grammar.

  Students who come to the Writing Center repeatedly over the course of a quarter make marked improvements in their English writing ability.

  
  
• Why do the papers of some students who visit the Writing Center still have errors?

  ---

  Tutors do not edit papers because the Writing Center’s primary goal is helping students improve their writing. Ideally, a conversation about a draft begins with larger issues of structure, clarity, and effective argument, with the tutor and student taking time to work through revisions. Then the conversation moves on to finer points, with the tutor highlighting patterns of error or offering revision guidelines, still coaching the student in editing information. Sometimes creating a polished paper requires a second appointment after the student has worked more on the paper.

  Final Papers may have errors for several reasons:

  • A draft has too many issues to work through in the course of one tutoring session.
  • A student applies revision guidelines and reworks the paper after the session, but doesn’t spend enough time on final editing.
  • A student comes in one or two hours before the paper is due, so there is time to work on only selected areas.
  • The tutor and student may work through part of a paper, and then the student will take the paper home to apply the editing tactics to finish the paper.  The student, who is still learning, may make a few errors.

  
  
• Can the Writing Center help students avoid plagiarism?

  ---

  Yes, in these ways:

  • Many students, even juniors and seniors, don’t understand how to use and document sources correctly.  Tutors can introduce them to this skill, provide illustrations, and review students’ first attempts in a draft.  As a peer, a tutor can avoid embarrassing a student when pointing out accidental plagiarism.
  • When students copy and paste passages, tutors will often recognize the problem simply from changes in writing style.  This creates an opportunity to work with the writer on stating ideas in his or her own words and using sources correctly.
  • Expectations about documenting sources vary across cultures, and the tutors are prepared to explain to students what they need to do to adapt to U.S. academic conventions.

  
  
• What kinds of writing can students bring to the Writing Center? What about group projects?

  ---

  Students are welcome to bring any piece of writing for school or a job search: class assignments, application essays, cover letters, or résumés. Since typically the tutors are business students, they are familiar with the standard expectations and formats for Foster School assignments. Tutors from other majors receive extra training in business formats.

  Group projects are welcome. The group should make an hour-long appointment to discuss a draft with a tutor, and as many of the team members as possible should participate. Frequently, the tutor facilitates discussion about how to revise problem areas in the draft, so it is important to have all or almost all group members at the meeting. Long papers are difficult to critique on screen, so the group should bring a printout.

  
  
• Sometimes student writing is discouraging. How can I get better papers?

  ---

  • Get help from a peer tutor in pushing students beyond Google to do research.  To supplement a reference librarian’s introduction to library research tools, a tutor will visit your class and give a quick talk from the student perspective about how useful the library tools can be.
  • Take another look at how your assignments are designed.  Often students struggle with assignments because they don’t understand the expectations or simply don’t know the standard forms of writing in a new context.  Be sure the assignment specifies the audience (possibly a hypothetical audience), the role of the writer, the purpose for writing, and the kind of document to write.  If you don’t provide a model, consider referring students to the Writing Center or its website for models of formats, for example, a memo.  We can work with you to provide an appropriate model.
  • For more information on effective assignment design, see the following sites:
    • http://depts.washington.edu/cidrweb/Bulletin/Writing.html
    • http://www.writing.ku.edu/instructors/docs/assignment_design.shtml
    • www.emich.edu/public/english/wac/Assign%20Design%20Worksheet.doc
  • Make the criteria for success part of the assignment.  List the characteristics you will look for when grading and, if appropriate, describe in specific detail different levels of achievement that correspond to different grades.  Being explicit about grading criteria helps students understand what success looks like, which the students are still learning.  The following websites give examples of different kinds of grading rubrics that make it easier to communicate criteria for success:
    • http://writing.umn.edu/tww/responding_grading/creating_rubrics.htm
    • http://www.bsu.edu/english/writingprogram/rubric.htm
    • http://www.tcnj.edu/~writing/faculty/rubrics.html

  • Build a draft and revision step into assignments.  To keep feedback and grading time manageable, try one of these options:
  • Give credit for a complete draft, but don’t give students feedback on it.  Instead, suggest they take the draft to the Writing Center, or include peer feedback as part of the assignment.  Explain to students that you are requiring the draft to help them do their best work.
  • Give students comments on the draft so they can apply your suggestions as they revise.  Grade, but give minimal comments on the final paper.  Your comments at that point make much less difference in students’ learning.
  • Create multi-step assignments.  Instead of giving students assignments on unrelated topics, create a series of assignments in which the writing and thinking on one prepares students to take on the next assignment.  Usually the final paper will be a larger project that pulls together the thinking skills and content areas of the previous papers.  These links give more ideas about setting up multi-step assignments:
  • More Resources - How and Why to Use Writing to Improve Learning
  • Responding to Student Writing
  • Using Writing to Improve Discussion
  • Seven Compelling Reasons to Use Writing in Your Courses
  • Myths about Grammar and Teaching Writing
  • Teacher Commentary: Why Include Writing
  • Writing as a Teaching and Learning Tool in Engineering Classes
  • Writing Assignments – Accommodating Learning Disabilities