ENGL 390B: Tutoring Practicum in Professional Writing

Instructor Ms. Elizabeth Geib Office HEAV 308E

Office Hours Mon & Wed 11:30-12:30 E-mail geibe@purdue.edu

Course Description

Welcome to English 390B! This course is designed to guide you towards business writing consulting. This course offers a wide
range of writing center history and tutor practices connected to what it means to be a business, technical, and/or
professional writer, tutor, and professional. While all tutors at the Purdue Writing Lab and many other writing centers across
the world are able to work with professional documents, business writing consultants provide a unique vantage point to how
various types of business writing exist within writing center spaces. Many of you come from different backgrounds, have
different interests, and have different outlooks on what business writing might entail. Understanding what it means to be a
tutor also means understanding what it means to be a writer, communicator, critical thinker, and professional. As we will
learn, tutoring is about conversing, collaborating, working through tough situations, and producing inimitable learning
moments. Writing centers are unlike other academic spaces; the tutor is not the instructor, the tutor also isnt a classmate-
peer, but instead a person who is there to listen and to guide in the best way they know how. We will spend a lot of time
talking about writing centers in relation to the larger institution and what it means to be tutors within that complicated
space. Tutoring isnt about being an expert but instead learning how to talk and work with others in a way that is genuine
and productive. By the end of this course the goal is to not only learn what it means to tutor, but what you, individually
value as a writer, communicator, and critical thinker and how that all transfers into the conversations you have with other
writers.

Objective:

The goal of this course is to continue the conversations you have already been a part of on your majors/disciplines but to
focus in on writing center scholarship and the relationship of writing centers within business genres. In this course, we will go
over the history of writing centers such as where it came from, where it is situated in larger institutional structures, and what
writing centers value on a macro and micro level. We will discuss the problems and marginalization of writing centers within
past and present day, have discussions about how/why this might be, and talk about what might be done moving forward
to alter current writing practices. Because the way we communicate is in constant motion, the ways in which tutors work
with students also needs to adapt to time and space. You will spend a large portion of your time in this class learning about
research methods, conducting research, and learning how to talk about that research with others. By doing this you arent
only using skills you will use in other courses or future professions, are learning how to talk about your work in new contexts-
something that will always be of value.

At the end of this course you should have an understanding for what it means to be a tutor within writing centers at large,
but also what tutoring means to you, individually- this all depends on your interests, your values, your previous knowledge,
and how writing and learning works for you. So, it is my hope that you learn to individualize your tutoring pedagogy based
off of what you already know and what we have learned together in this class. I want to add in something that talks about
what will happen the following semester- does everyone get a position if they do well in the course? If not, how many
people get it in and what should I tell my students in class and in the syllabus about all that?

Goals:

Learn the complexities and nuances of writing center tutoring

Merge individual professional goals with writing center studies
Participate in and observe tutoring in the Purdue Writing Lab
Practice primary and secondary research in writing center studies
Present and discuss research with others
Course Materials:

You are not required to purchase a text book. All readings will be available to you on Blackboard along with other
supplementary materials we may use throughout the semester. Take a look at the calendar below for the reading schedule.

Assignments:

Observations

Tutoring journal

End of semester research project (like Beth does)

Grade Breakdown

Attendance/Participation- 20%

Observations- 20%

Journals- 20%

Semester Project- 40%

Course Schedule:

Week Topic Required Reading Whats Due

Week 1 Course Intro & What is a writing

center?

Week 2

Week 3

Labor Day (Mon)

Week 4

Week 5 Observation of tutor due

Week 6 Writing centers & Identity Readings from: Facing the

Center,

Week 7 Writing centers & Identity

Week 8 Inside tutoring sessions

October Break
(Mon & Tues)

Week 9 Inside Tutoring sessions

Week 10 Researching the writing center

Week 11 Research methods

Week 12 Researching the Writing Center

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Week Topic Required Reading Whats Due

Week 13 Merging research interests

Week 14

Week 15
Thanksgiving Break

Week 16

Week 17 Presentations

Week 18 Finals Week Final projects

Maybe have students read new stuff before North

Lead off with the politics of language not with the history

Issues of different abilities/ disabilities

Learning styles

Students need interpersonal training

Balancing theory and politics with pragmatics

Balance practice and theory

Connect theory with practice

Whats it mean to tutor with an awareness of critical race theory?

Make the tutor course completely new, something that weve never done before- focus in on identity & writing.

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