For Faculty - Writing Center in Broken Arrow
For Faculty
The Writing Center in Broken Arrow has trained tutors available to help students with their writing needs. The dedicated and experienced staff provides free, one-on-one help with writing in face-to-face or online sessions. From drafting and revising a paper to grammar and documentation styles, writing tutors are available to answer student questions. Through consultation and practice, they can help students become more confident and skilled writers all in a supportive, friendly environment.
We can help students
- Clarify/identify purpose
- Brainstorm
- Get started
- Create/revise a thesis statement
- Create/revise topic sentences
- Organize a paper
- Develop ideas
- State ideas clearly
- Reduce wordiness
- Cite sources correctly (APA, MLA, Turabian, and CSE)
- Format a paper
- Learn punctuation rules
- Learn to proofread
- Use correct tense and point of view
- Use correct grammar
- Use words correctly
- Interpret professors' comments on graded papers
We do not
- Write papers for students
- "Fix" papers for students
- Write on student papers
- Identify all errors in punctuation
- Guarantee a student a passing grade
- Guess a student's grade
- Proofread a student's paper
Resources
In addition to individual tutoring, we have the following resources available to students:
- WCONLINE, our online scheduling system, accessible 24/7.
- Desktop computers and printers
- Resource Island library with many useful books for writers
Faculty Encouragement
We greatly appreciate faculty efforts to promote the Writing Center. In fact, most students who use the Writing Center hear about it from an instructor. However, students respond differently to the idea of tutoring. Some readily seek it out while others feel embarrassed; some think that asking for help is a sign of weakness. As a result, telling students about the Writing Center or suggesting they seek out tutoring might not be enough. Your students will be more likely to take advantage of this resource if you adopt some or all of the following practices:
- Encourage all of your students to use the Writing Center and use positive language to talk about it. Explain that all writers benefit from talking about their writing projects and getting feedback on drafts. Students who get the impression that using the Writing Center is a punishment for bad writers are not likely to come.
- Invite students to see that tutoring is a way of taking control and that tutoring can increase their overall academic self-confidence.
- Include information about the Writing Center on your syllabus (Email the Coordinator at idoux@nsuok.edu for a syllabus statement.) or pass out this Writing Center flyer.
- Build us into your students' writing process: tell students about the Writing Center well in advance of the assignment due date. Remind students that appointments are strongly encouraged.
- Invite a writing tutor to visit your class. During a 10-15 minute class visit, the writing consultant will explain the basics of using the Writing Center, answer your students' questions, and provide brochures with all the information the students need to make an appointment and come prepared.
- When you encourage your students to come to the Writing Center, we appreciate receiving a copy of your assignment. If a student forgets to bring a copy, we'll have one on hand.