About The Writing Center

About the Writing Center
The Writing Center’s primary mission is the development of critical thinking and writing skills via frank peer evaluation conducted by trained student tutors. The Center’s tutors will read or listen to, and then discuss, whatever portion of the writing process a student brings to the Center – whether a formal draft, a few notes, or just a starting idea. The goal of every Writing Center visit is to help you identify and then plan the next stage of your writing process.

Overview
The Center’s technique is fairly straightforward - sit down with your tutor and discuss your ideas (if you are just getting started) or listen to the tutor read your paper out loud so you can experience it as a public document. You’ll be surprised how these seemingly simple techniques, in the hands of a trained tutor, will accelerate and refine your writing process.

Thirty Minute Miracle
Particular techniques vary from tutor to tutor, but every session at the Center is thirty minutes long. At the end of the appointment you and the tutor will discuss what you both have determined to be the next priority of your writing process. While thirty minutes may not seem particularly long, especially if your paper is long, this limit is not arbitrary. Extending the duration of the peer tutoring session, a frequent request at the Center, helps the writing rather than the writer.

How Not to Use the Center
The Writing Center’s goal is to help you improve as a writer for the duration of your academic career. For this reason, the least effective way to use this service is to bring your paper for the first time a few hours before it is due. Doing so assumes that the most complex parts of writing - having a clear thesis, good organization, effective quote integration, and a clear interpretation of the purpose of the assignment – are flawless and the simplest parts – grammar and mechanics - are all that you have left to work on. A working assumption about all visits to the Center is that, because we tend to focus on the more complex issues of organization and structure, you will need significant time after the session to revise your work. Once you have revised your paper, you are encouraged to make another appointment to continue the writing process until completed (or, frankly, abandoned).

For Everyone
The Writing Center is available to all members of the Nazareth academic community, undergraduate, graduate, faculty, and staff. The Center tries to offer evening, and, when possible, weekends hours. This ensures everyone has equal access to this resource.

What We Do
During a peer-tutoring session, students may receive assistance and feedback and instructions on:
• Thesis development & Assignment analysis
• Ways to get started on tough assignments (even if you have not written a thing)
• Common grammar and punctuation problems and the theory behind them
• Cryptology (the Center’s tutors have an uncanny ability to read “professorial” handwriting)
• Introductory APA, MLA, and Chicago citation lessons
• How to effectively integrate quotes and other source material into your writing
• The difference between summarizing, legit paraphrasing, and quoting
• Identifying the gap between what you meant and what you wrote and strategies for how to narrow it
• Using clear and comprehensible language, even when expressing complex ideas
• How to “interrogate your paragraphs” so that each one definitely relates to your paper’s overall purpose
• Reverse outlining your work in order to reorganize your essay
• Techniques for getting started

To Make an Appointment
Since the Center can get quite busy, a scheduled appointment is recommended, though we do plenty of walk-ins, particularly during the start of the semester. To make an appointment, first, check the hours of operation the website. Next, simply call the Writing Center at 585/ 389-2636 and leave a message indicating the dates and times (on the hour or half hour) when you can come in for your appointment. It is often helpful if you state at that time what you would like to work on and when the assignment is due.

Why Don't You Write on Student Papers?
At the center students often wonder why we don't mark errors on their papers or 'correct' their mistakes. The main reason for this is simple: in an academic setting, you are graded on your work. If someone assists you or does your work for you, and you do not indicate so, you have plagiarized. By not marking your paper we are upholding the school's strict and important academic integrity policies. This guarantees that when a professor views work you hand in, there is no doubt that you did your own work and deserve all the credit.