Our writing center, like others across the country and
increasingly the world, seeks to, in the words of Stephen
North, “make better writers, not necessarily better
writing.”
Generally speaking, the Writing
Center advocates a “global, then local” approach to responding
to student writing. During initial visits, it's usually best to
focus on global concerns: organization, understanding of the
assignment, cohesiveness of the central idea, and so on. Then, once
the text has been revised, it makes more sense to zero in on local
or “lower order” prose concerns like syntax, usage, and
punctuation. Ideally, students share our preference to champion
global issues over local ones. Often, students will show up wanting
nothing but a “fix it” session, wishing to quickly correct their
errors. In these cases we work with them to model and practice
effective strategies for editing, such as slowly reading aloud or
reviewing sentences from the back of the paper to the front. We
always take our cue from the students and work from their immediate
needs.