Classroom teachers and administrators often see the writing lab as a simple extension of the classroom experience, rather than as the tutorial practice that it should be with interactive one-to-one teaching. Students should be acting participants, spending at least 50% of lab time talking, questioning, trying out, practicing, and composing. Tutors should be nonjudgmental and nonevaluative in helping the student achieve better composition solutions. Tutoring adds the following elements to writing instruction: (1) instruction "in," not "about" the writing process (a tutor guiding a student through some organizing strategies with a specific piece of writing helps that student in ways that a textbook chapter about organizing cannot); (2) opportunities for dialogue (as the writer-tutor dialogue develops, the writer learns how to engage, clarify, think about, and structure a topic); (3) awareness of audience (the tutor gives immediate feedback, noting where more content or explanation is needed or where questions arise in the reader's mind); and (4) interactive instruction and diagnosis (when writers are working on rhetorical skills or conventions or grammar, they are not merely acquiring bits of data but are mastering a complex skill). (NKA)