Category: 2024 Newsletter

I remember one of the first times a professor marked up my essay in colored ink, more vivid and profound than all the other times my professors had complimented my writing. I shoved my essay quickly in my folder, unable to bring myself to read the comments and stare at the question marks etched at the end of paragraphs. Not only was I embarrassed about my grade, I felt even worse about my own writing skills.

I had walked into my college-level English classes thinking the AP courses I had taken in high school had done more than enough to prepare me. I was a freshman being thrown into the world of academic writing, and academic writing was introduced to me with these words: “Forget everything you learned in high school.” As an English major, this sent me into a small panic. The academic writing typically taught to students in secondary education is structured and rigid, focusing on creating an argument while having the proposed argument be “solved” within five paragraphs. This 5-paragraph structure includes an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. While it may seem like a decent skeleton for students to work off when entering collegiate writing, this structure carries cultural implications because of the rigidity. For students whose first language is not English, the nuances of academic writing are not a reflex; as the director of the Writers Workshop, Carolyn Wisniewski, has said, “Academic English is no one’s first language.”

As a bilingual student, I have come across a mindset that I have found to be constant among second language (L2) students, international students, and first-generation college students: “I need to sound smarter.” This mindset stems from “literacy trauma,” which manifests “as the result of traumatic experiences—those that are negative and disruptive—surrounding writing, reading, literacy, and communication in formal educational settings” (Carvajal Regidor, 2023, p.10). For many students of color and L2 students, “sounding smart” is a notion that creates a negative correlation between a student’s own voice and any rhetorical situation they are meant to tackle—in their writing or otherwise. When working with students in the Writers Workshop, it is disheartening to hear this mindset as a main objective students want to work on during the session. When introduced to a student who is looking to “sound smarter” or had experienced literacy trauma, the Writers Workshop curriculum has prepared consultants to support students through their individual writing process.

The preliminary WRIT 300: Issues in Tutoring Writing class that undergraduates participate in before becoming consultants establishes how to approach a consultation with international and L2 students. The course includes articles by writing center and second-language writing scholars, like Dana Ferris (2009), Carol Severino (2009), Paul Matsuda and Michelle Cox (2009), Vershawn Ashanti Young (2010), Eun-Young Kim (2015), and Harry Denny, John Nordlof, and Lori Salem (2018). These sources provide grounding for consultants to move from locally viewing a student’s paper (grammar, language conventions, punctuation), to a more global focus on the paper (answering the prompt, sentence flow, etc.) to allow the student to improve larger aspects of the paper.

As a consultant, I have learned the importance of a student’s own voice and how they approach a session based on where they are in their writing process. Students’ language stretches beyond the form of daily communication—language is embedded in culture, identity, and the way in which a student expresses themselves. WRIT 300 was an opportunity to recognize the complex intersection of language and identity and even how we as consultants hold that complexity within ourselves as writers.

Many times, in the academic sphere, students seem to be presented with a very fixed and daunting introduction to higher level writing, a sentiment I, too, can relate to. Through finding my own voice as a L2 student who identifies as Latina, learning how to find my own voice in academic writing is a large feat I am still trying to overcome and persist. While any student is concentrated on comparing the tone of their writing and level of their writing to either their peers, professor’s expectations, or even sources they are analyzing, the pressure to sound anything like what they are surrounded by is insurmountable. As a Workshop, we aim to ensure these students are validated in their experiences, while pushing them to enjoy the ways in which they authentically write and move through their own process. Ferris (2009) points out, “even functional bilinguals will sometimes have ‘fossilized’ features in their writing and speaking that mark them as being non-native” (p. 27). While even students themselves see these “fossilized” speaking and writing conventions that need to be corrected through the assistance of something like the Writers Workshop, we as consultants are informed these conventions are anything but a weakness or something that needs to be “corrected.”

By Emma Ortega, English major, Sociology minor, senior

The Writers Workshop has fostered the growth of strong writers across campus since opening in 1989. We have stayed committed to the Workshop’s founding mission while changing to meet the latest research standards and student needs.

In 1991, Instruction at Illinois prominently featured an article titled, “Writing center to teach how to incorporate writing into courses,” which was accompanied by a photo of then-current directors Gail Hawisher (Center for Writing Studies) and Michael Pemberton (Writers Workshop) smiling behind a desk. The article introduced the Center for Writing Studies’ plans to impact campus curricula by helping professors incorporate writing into their courses following the newly-implemented Advanced Composition general education requirement.

Within this article, Hawisher articulated how writing is a necessary part of the learning process for all students, no matter their major. “Students can make knowledge – inform, develop new ideas, synthesize subject matter in a course they are taking – through writing,” she argued. “They are capable of discovering ideas through this process.”

A key component of this push to include more writing campuswide was the presence of the Writers Workshop. The writing center was conceptualized as a place where students help students. The 1991 name change from the Writing Clinic to the Writers Workshop signaled a shift from “fixing” or “perfecting” the final written product to helping writers improve their writing practices overall. As Pemberton explained, it was a distinction meant to signify that consultants aimed to “work with students” rather than to “heal or fix” their writing. Pemberton elaborated that the Writers Workshop emphasized such an approach to more effectively address higher order concerns such as focus, development, and organization explicitly because grammatical and lower-order concerns can be resolved “[if] we can help them get a clearer sense of what it is they’re trying to say, or how to develop their ideas.”

The Writers Workshop retains this philosophy 30 years later. Much like the 13 graduate consultants supporting writers in 1991, today our 30 undergraduate and graduate consultants continue to focus on helping writers express their own ideas and arguments. As we have grown in staff size and outreach to writers across campus, we have also increased our disciplinary representation to better help all students. We remain committed to assisting undergraduate writers with their class assignments, research projects, resumes, job materials, and more. We also have worked to stay up to date on emerging writing tools and trends, such as AI. Graduate students, faculty, and staff members are also welcome and frequent visitors whom we have worked to better serve. We have especially sought, for example, to assist with dissertation writing and academic job materials, and graduate writers now account for upwards of 40% of all appointments.

The Writers Workshop hopes this growth and expansion will continue. As Pemberton underscored, the Writers Workshop is a special place because “we are not there to judge, or to evaluate, or to point out errors, per se, in a student composition, as much as we are there to be a sounding board.” He further reinforced the necessity of this experience because writing consultants can help student writers “turn [their writing] into something that they really want it to be.”

By Martha Larkin, English, PhD candidate, & Liz Matresse, English, PhD candidate

Consultant Spotlight: Rayven Morrow

Rayven Morrow, a doctoral student in education policy, organization, and leadership, has been with the Writers Workshop since Fall 2020 and served as an assistant director in the 2022-2023 academic year. Her experiences teaching writing mechanics as a high school summer English teacher drove her to apply. Since she began, Rayven’s work with writers has allowed her to explore a variety of subjects including “Gambian fishmeal factories [and] therapeutic dance theories of the 20th century.” She added, “I mean, at this point, I feel like I’ve helped so many people complete their dissertations that I deserve an extra PhD or two when I graduate with my own… I’ve been able to truly leave college knowing just a tiny bit about everything.” Given how many writers Rayven has guided, that seems reasonable! 

To current and future consultants, Rayven advises: “Maintain professionalism while offering support and guidance; build a connection, but remember you are a part of their support team, not their academic coach. They are responsible for their own success, and you are just there to support their efforts.” For writers, she encourages “active engagement in honing [your] writing skills; we are a teaching center, so be prepared to learn. We guide you as consultants, but you’ve got to do the work to become a great writer. We are just one element of that journey to becoming a great writer.” 

Unsurprisingly, being at the Writers Workshop has only bolstered Rayven’s faith in effective communication across all disciplines and in academic and professional worlds. The Writers Workshop has “reignited my passion for writing beyond academia, leading me to journal and blog regularly. Writing has become a fundamental part of my personhood, thanks to my time at the WW.” 

After graduating, Rayven looks forward to finding a job that values her whole skill set – as a writer, educator, and researcher – in no small part thanks to her experiences at the Writers Workshop, which emphasized the intensity and importance of research-based writing. Wherever Rayven goes next, they will be lucky to have her.

Former Consultant Spotlight: Eva Cornman

My first semester of freshman year, my advisor pointed me toward the Writers Workshop after I’d anxiously vented to her about an imposing college paper. I took her advice and met online with a consultant who managed not only to help me refine my writing, but also calm and encourage me. I came back for guidance as I worked through the next essay, remembering how much of an impact the consultant who helped me had on my organization skills, wording, and overall confidence. That consultant was Eva Cornman, whom I had the privilege to interview about her experiences and her postgraduate journey.

Eva Cornman joined the Writers Workshop in the Spring 2021, after taking the WRIT 300: Issues in Tutoring Writing course her junior year, and she was a consultant until she graduated in May 2022. As a molecular and cellular biology major and creative writing minor, Eva had a broad background of expertise. More importantly, she had a passion for writing and enjoyed sharing that passion with others: “I find it exhilarating to have someone who kind of hates writing, or has just been really struggling with something, and [to be able] to give them feedback on it and help them feel better.”

Her favorite part of the Writers Workshop was working with returning writers – those who make another appointment with the same consultant – and building rapport with those writers. She remembers particularly one writer whose recurring written feedback appointments involved chapters of a novel; that writer has since shared their finalized manuscript. Despite having never met this writer face to face, Eva had virtual rapport with the writer whose story had been such an exciting part of her Writers Workshop journey.

Consultants grow throughout their time with the Writers Workshop, and often that means recognizing room for improvement in our earlier approach. If Eva could talk to herself in Spring 2020, when she started, she would remind herself to relax. “I think I set really high expectations for myself, and I didn’t want to let [the Workshop or the writer] down. But I think it probably would have been to my benefit to just relax and not put so much pressure on it… and have fun with it.”

In her current studies at the Science Writing Graduate Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Eva explores different ways to communicate scientific discoveries and phenomena to a broad audience, including making a podcast, which she described as “the dream” full-time job. Workshopping writing frequently takes place in this program, where Eva has a chance to put into practice the skills she honed at the Writers Workshop, including giving explanations for her suggestions, building rapport and encouraging the writer to ask questions, and supporting writers’ improvement generally.

Looking ahead, Eva will be graduating from MIT in October. She plans to pursue science communications work after graduation, helping wider audiences “understand something they totally can” and making scientific literature, discoveries, and debates more accessible to the general public. We at the Writers Workshop look forward to cheering her on.

By Elizabeth Scherschel, Classics major, History and Anthropology minors, junior