Teaching and Tutoring Writing

Catalog description

This course introduces students to the academic fields of writing studies and writing center studies. These research-based, interdisciplinary fields focus on analyzing the production, consumption, circulation, teaching, and tutoring of writing in various contexts. By exploring and discussing both foundational and recent scholarship in these fields, students will learn about the theories and philosophies behind best teaching and tutoring practices. Subtopics explored in the course include cultural, linguistic, and dialect awareness, genre studies, multiliteracies, multimodal composition, anti-racism, dis/ability and accessibility, and learning transfer. Additionally, the course introduces students to the various research methods used in writing studies, including field observation and interviews. In class, we will examine groups of readings, consider the issues and debates suggested by those readings, and reflect on their significance for writers, tutors, and teachers. Students will build a multimodal ePortfolio to document their learning, including weekly reading responses, a rhetorical and genre analysis of a previous writing experience, an analysis of their writing process, a tutoring observation essay, a group multimodal presentation, and a tutoring and teaching philosophy.