| The LAIS Writing Center is first and foremost a teaching center. We are here to teach writers to be more confident and capable at communicating their ideas in writing. To assist writers in the process of achieving their goals, we work to foster independence in writers, to enable them to learn how to learn to write more effectively.
We do this in several ways. Since most writers are more adept at conveying their ideas orally than they are in writing, writers—whether they be faculty, students, or staff—benefit from discussing their ideas with an experienced writer; their oral abilities help create a bridge to strengthen their scribal ones. We also enable writers by demystifying the writing process, by relating the writing process to writers' learning styles, by breaking assignments into manageable parts, and by emphasizing the role of audience and purpose.
Since our mission is to empower writers, we do not work for them, but with them. For this reason, we do not copy edit papers for writers. Instead, we teach writers to be better proofreaders of their own writing through error pattern analysis, which entails:
- Identifying common reader distractions in their writing;
- Teaching them strategies to improve those distractions;
- Providing guided practice at improving those distractions; and
- Encouraging independent practice followed by additional tutoring.
Since we are a teaching center, writers can use our services at any phase of their writing process, whether they have just received an assignment and are brainstorming for ideas or are in the final phases of their writing project. Our services are not limited to course-related assignments. Our faculty are here to work with writers working on any type of writing, including scholarship applications, résumés, and engineering reports. |
