This article presents the text of a speech presented at The International Writing Centers Association and the National Conference on Peer Tutoring (IWCA-NCPTW) joint conference in Baltimore, Maryland, in November 2010. It stemmed from a larger project--a collection of previously published and new essays titled "Writing Together: Collaboration in…

This essay presents case studies of "course-based tutoring" (CBT) and one-to-one tutorials in two sections of developmental first-year composition (FYC) at a large West Coast research university. The author's study uses a combination of rhetorical and discourse analyses and ethnographic and case study multi-methods to investigate both the scenes…

Over the past two decades, writing centers have steadily been expanding services and materials they offer online. The way students write and communicate about their writing continues to change, and the writing center has increasingly been looked upon as a site through which technology and writing have the ability to converge in the form of…

Discusses why writing centers are concerned about plagiarism, how this concern has influenced writing center pedagogy, and whether this concern has been counterproductive to student learning. (RS)

Uses a study of a high school writing center program to illustrate and explain the different forms and skills needed for collaborative writing in both classroom and writing center contexts. (MM)

Presents a short history of collaboration as a pedagogical technique in composition. Concludes with some assumptions about collaboration that might be useful to those in writing centers as they theorize, teach, confer, tutor, conduct faculty workshops, and reflect on their educational and political purposes for teaching writing. (PRA)

Describes the five major problems faced by foreign students in traditional composition classes. Presents types of tutorial activities which may prove beneficial when dealing with the major problems that ESL students have in both reading and writing in English. Discusses the effect of such tutorial activities at the University of Kentucky. (HB)

Presents typical problems encountered by tutors at writing centers when they conference with ESL writers. Discusses processes and ways of adapting collaborative conferencing strategies for second-language writers at the University of Wyoming Writing Center, including a need for intervention, that have proven effective in alleviating these…

Advocates the move to collaboration in writing centers. Describes three different ideas of writing centers (as "storehouse,""garret," and "Burkean parlor"). Discusses where the focus of control lies in each. Urges careful examination of what collaboration means and how definitions of it locate control, to avoid reproducing the status quo. (SR)

Argues that any writer writes with and against a cacophony of competing voices, thus collaborating with the Otherness of their own words. Studies one student's attempt to write on an issue about which she held multiple views. Considers how the writing center might aid in providing critical distance within such a model. (HB)

Discusses the role of talk in the writing center and the general value of conversation for writers at all levels. Considers how writing center talk raises questions about writing and institutions. Shows how such a concept of talk connects to classroom teaching. (HB)

Contends that the collaborative learning occurring in a writing center is ethical. Argues that educating young writers is more important than certifying their ability; that research demonstrates the efficacy of collaborative learning; and that inexperienced writers are entitled to the same collaborative help that professional writers expect and…