


“In a writing center, the object is to make sure that writers, and not necessarily their texts, are what get changed by instruction…our job is to produce better writers, not better writing” (p. North: Staunch declaration that writing centers were not centers for mechanical remediation and error correction.

Reigstad & McAndrew: Division of the writing process into “higher order” and “lower order” concerns, establishing a value-laden sequence of content and organization before grammar and punctuation.You will probably recognize the first two because the vocabulary and the philosophy are still driving forces in today’s writing centers: In 1984, several of the most influential texts in writing center history were published. 1984: The triple whammy for multilingual writers The list of strategies is followed by excerpts of coaching sessions, with annotations that illustrate how some of the strategies work in real conversations between writing coaches and multilingual writers. This page provides a bit of important historical context for the discussion and offers strategies for responding to the grammar-checking request in ways that respect the pedagogical philosophies of the writing center and the instructional needs of students writing in a foreign language. Unfortunately, multilingual writers have been unfairly denied access to language feedback because of the very strong prohibition against editing, but the good news is that we can still be very helpful without compromising our principles. “Checking the grammar” can feel uncomfortably close to proofreading and editing students’ papers for them-which writing coaches know is strictly out of bounds. When you ask students writing in English as an additional language what they would like to work on, they will often say that they’d like you to check their grammar. “Just Check My Grammar” What this handout is about
