Writing tutors at WSU gain national honors

PULLMAN - To use a pun that would probably make most of them cringe, these tutors have the "write" stuff.

Now they've received some national recognition. Washington State University's English 102 course recently received the innovation award from the Conference on Basic Writing, an organization that helps spread effective teaching methods.

"You can learn something about writing by helping others write themselves," Pat Johnson, interim director of writing programs at WSU, said of the one-credit tutorial that pairs trained student tutors with those who need extra help.

Frequently the students who sign up for the course or who use the writing center's walk-in service speak English as a second language. One such person is Lan Dai, a 29-year-old exchange student from Chang De in the south of China. Dai, a senior accounting student, said her thoughts are clear in her head, but they tend to fall apart when she translates them into English and puts them on a page.

"When I write (my thoughts) out, nobody can understand," she said with a laugh. She had just finished a session with tutor John Gilbert, 20, of Mount Vernon, Wash. "I know what I meant to say, but I can't express it perfectly."

One of her first research papers wasn't graded very well, Dai recalled. So her professor suggested she use the walk-in service. She saw a big improvement and now comes in frequently.

Johnson said English 102 was born out of WSU's writing assessment program, which was itself instituted in 1991 after Washington businesses complained the graduates they were hiring had below-par writing skills.

He said WSU was one of the first universities to use a writing assessment. And the assessment isn't just for freshmen and incoming students, he added. It is again administered at the junior year to make sure students are maintaining good writing skills.

Johnson himself was placed in the English 102 course when he started college. "Now here it is 10 years later and I'm the director of the writing center," he said.

The writing center is also unusually large and well-funded, he said. It employs about 75 tutors, when most schools have writing centers less than half that size. Tutors come from all disciplines, so different expertise on different kinds of writing can be shared, he said.

Johnson said some professors and instructors may have a general belief that the quality of student writing has been declining. But he hasn't seen it personally, and thinks it is more of a perception than a reality. "I think that teachers get more critical over time."

And he said the term "remedial" has become a dirty word, even though many students who use the center are playing catch-up. "We don't want to label the students," he said.

Not only WSU students can use the writing center, Johnson added. Through its Online Writing Lab (OWL) at http://owl.wsu.edu, the general public can submit pieces of writing for critique.

Gilbert, a sophomore studying human nutrition and dietetics, agreed with Johnson that tutoring is a two-way street.

"It's a good opportunity to help not only others, but myself."

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Mills may be contacted at jmills@lmtribune.com or (208) 883-0564.