Dear Debra

I think the solution is to offer a semester module 'Academic writing' at the Writing Centre, which can be made compulsory, optional, or prescribed for some students.

Best wishes

Jacques

Hi, Dear Debra Sharon Ferdinand,

Peer interaction and feedback have a great pay off,  specially in writing classes. However, as you have rightly mentioned, it is difficult to create the proper motivation, specially when the interaction involves people from different educational levels. In my country, teachers usually allocate a part of the final exam score to the so- called active participation during the course. I wonder if this can work effectively in your context.

Lots of luck,

Best regards,

R. Biria

Reza:

In some instances, following peer feedback, the student needs guided practice to correct some of the writing challenges. But, thanks for the suggestion and sharing your experience.

Debra

Dear Debra

I think the solution is to offer a semester module 'Academic writing' at the Writing Centre, which can be made compulsory, optional, or prescribed for some students.

Best wishes

Jacques

Hi Debra

Students in their learning they usually work for better marks achievement.

The course outline to be given to them at the beginning of the course may include some marks for any activity the instructor is expecting for students to engage, this may involve specific work at writing center. So assignment which require them to consider writing center as as compulsory may work.

All the best

SHESHE

If challenges in academic writing are identified, then they are often either general (e.g. the student has presented poorly structured work, needs referencing guidance etc.), or there is a specialist problem that may hinder their ability to perform.  It is down to the teacher (+/- help) to identify what the problem is & to direct the student accordingly.  Sometimes, referral to the universities published resources on assignments etc. will be enough.  If the student cannot use these resources effectively (i.e. their next assignment shows no improvement), then they may need 1:1 tutoring.  Their personal / subject tutor can provide this (if it is a relatively short matter), or they may need additional support. 

In my experience, I have made formal referrals to 'Learning Support' & the student is obliged to go to the appointment.  If they choose not to (LS appointments can be scheduled to suit the student's timetable), then this is their responsibility & they have to accept the consequences (i.e. they will not improve if they do not engage).  LS appointments take precedence over other activities that can be caught up on at a later date.

If a student does not take advantage of the additional support that is made available to them (which is what these referral  sessions are), then this is recorded & considered when assessing the students performance.  Many of us have an abundance of materials to offer students, we offer initial development, group & 1:1 tuition, and also offer access to specialist help when students need to overcome a specific learning difficulty. We also have specific entrance criteria, so all of the students that we accept should have a fair chance at being able to perform to a minimum level.

Higher Education ~

'You can lead the horse to water, but you can't make it drink'.

Dear Debra,

In our case here in Japan, we made an explicit link between CLIL classes, and going to the writing centre to get advice on the mechanics of writing. We also placed related writing assignments in the writing centre. Students were required to go there to pick up the worksheets, do their assignments right there if they wanted, and have these signed off by the centre staff. The staff were also requested to give feedback on English and advice on how to approach the task. This was usually 1:1, or a pair of friends came. It promoted discussion and peer support, since the centre staff were just a few years older, so they were like near-peer role models. We also promoted the use of students' own L1 to deal with these writing tasks by placing related articles in Japanese, as well as English too, in the centre. The flow of traffic in the centre to get these tasks done created a good energy. The policy generally worked well. 

Dear Debra,

First of all, the aspects such as "it's too far to walk and the opening hours clash with class time" are in the most cases only locally relevant—  and not universally relevant aspects. As an example, my university has what we call 'The language center' where all students can go there to get help with the language of their papers. But the problems there are of organizational nature such as mainly:

The allocated staff there have not themselves published anything. They are at the best cases some language teachers who do care only about the grammar of the text, or the layout of the text showed to them. They don't check the whole text. In other words, they focus only on answering specific questions asked by students.

So the content and quality of whatever we call as in our case "The language center" is problematic, and not the location, distance, or time aspects. I think that the best solution in order to help students producing relatively good academic texts is offering them these two crucial courses:

1) Research methods

2) Academic writing and publishing

As you know, these two courses have indeed nothing to do with the grammar of whatever texts students might produce. I mean there is no any correlationship between a student's good academic work (say a relatively good published article) and her/his language ability, specifically when quantitative papers are considered. Of course language is very important too but it's not the responsibility of any serious university. Language ability is individually and her/his own responsibility to whether improve or demote it.

A great number of our students have even problem with the grammar of their own mother tongue, which in my workplace case is the Swedish language. The main reason is nowadays (24/7) students' use/misuse/abuse of the cyberspace which as said they have access to it 24/7, and without facing any whatever filtering/restriction problems. Thus, the negative impact of ICT on students', mostly, written language is now a bitter reality.    

Hi Debra,

Will keep my response simple.  We have similar problems to you because our students are adults AND we offer a Virtual Masters of Education program.  So our students are offered help outside of normal working hours using video conferencing.  It was a bit of a struggle at first, but the university understood AND it is so easy with free tools like Skype or GOTO Meeting. 

I make getting feedback from the writing center part of the grading rubric.  Not WHAT the feedback in, but just the fact that they get feedback and incorporate it.  So it is a formative part of the rubric, not summative.

Said:  Greetings from neighbouring Finland  :-)

Your post is very astute, especially your observations on 'language centres'.  In the HE academic setting I think that English has become more of a 'tool' than a language, and whilst learning a language is important (beit English or any other language), producing written language is the main goal.  I process academic work for a living here in Finland, and it is often taken that if the 'native speaker' corrects the grammar, then all will be well .... hmmmm

If we think of top athletes, they have an effective support team of managers, trainers, nutritionists, psychologists etc.  Universities and major research institutions are in the training business & want to produce competitive outputs .... so the aspects like writing skills, statistics, professional development should all be thought of as elements that will help our scholars & students be the best they can be.  Like it or not, university is competition (internal or external), so if a student does not want to walk the extra 500 meters to the writing centre, then this might tell you something about their motivation.

Perhaps universities should consider re-organising their support services, with less focus on the traditional concepts of language.

It depends on peers, on reference persons in the writing center, on the efficiency of their methods.