The purpose of this paper is to suggest an effective guideline for improving college students' writing skill by analyzing education programs and writing consulting sessions provided by university writing centers.
As writing skill has become ever more ...
The purpose of this paper is to suggest an effective guideline for improving college students' writing skill by analyzing education programs and writing consulting sessions provided by university writing centers.
As writing skill has become ever more important in the society recently, many universities have established writing education institutions. Most universities have provided writing courses in their liberal arts curriculum, and such courses have been improved due to the increasing importance of writing skill.
The reason why universities pay attention to writing education is because the modern society requires each individual to have a sufficient level of writing skill. In the modern society, writing serves as a means to express one’s thoughts and is an important tool to communicate with other people. In other words, writing skill is required not just for writing college admission essays and academic papers. Rather, it has become a new communication tool in our daily lives.
Acknowledging this change, each university tries to provide systematic writing education. However, despite such an effort, they have failed to produce satisfying results so far. This is because most college writing courses are given in a large lecture class when a small group session is proper for efficient writing education. Facing such a problem, universities have established and operated college writing centers as an alternative in order to offer more practical wiring education.
Dongguk university opened a writing center in August 2007, and has provided writing consulting and writing lecture programs, etc. ever since. Especially, writing consulting is a basic program where consultants offer customized advice on undergraduate student's writings. This paper focuses on the role of the writing center as a college writing education institution, and proposes effective guidelines for teaching writing to university students such as systematic
consultant education and training, establishing a consulting manual, consulting evaluation and feedback, and diversifying programs, based on student survey on their consulting and writing experience.
Most of all, writing consulting should not be a one-off event. Rather, repeated revisions and consulting will have a bigger effect. Also, the program should focus on revisions through a one-on-one session with consultants. Result-oriented writing education will not help students to develop their writing proficiency. Writing education accompanied by consulting at the writing center will have a positive impact on improving students' writing skill through repeated revisions based on discussions and debates.