Writing center tutors play a key role in advancing L2 writers' language learning because the tutorial interaction involves the introduction of new language and vocabulary at the point of need or interest. This tutor-research case study presents a detailed, complex portrait of how a second language writer in a US writing center learned and used…

Writing center tutors have traditionally been trained to use indirect, dialogic methods of tutoring and to attend to global concerns such as argumentation and organization--practices based more on experience tutoring native rather than non-native speakers of English. Lately, however, tutors have also been encouraged to respond to non-native…

Proposes that writing centers form relationships with Applied Linguistics/ESL to research cross-cultural and cross-linguistic questions, thus fostering research grounded in the everyday work of the center, but with large cultural and theoretical implications. (SR)

Discusses collaboration in the peer writing center. Suggests that applying hierarchical and dialogic collaboration to writing centers can help to sketch out the forms of collaboration in peer tutoring, but a more fine-grained rhetorical analysis will result in richer and more precise descriptions and avoid hardbound categories and stereotypes. (RS)

Compares native and nonnative speakers of English and the possible ramifications of these differences for the operations of writing centers. Reviews two recent books and their attempts to fill a need for helpful materials on linguistic diversity and the teaching of writing. (HB)

Critiques Robert Kaplan's version of contrastive rhetoric as delineated in his 1966 diagram of five cultural traditions. Shows how subsequent contrastive rhetorical studies have eliminated many of the flaws of Kaplan's research. Provides results from a writing center pilot study that demonstrate differences in students' native language writing…