Introduction to Paper Review Services: Teaching Stronger Writers
Monday, May 22, 2017
News and Notes
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Revising
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Writing Center Services
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Writing Process
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While the Instructors of the Walden Writing Center provide
students with many writing-focused services, our Paper Review service is the
most individualized service offered for students. Paper reviews provide an
opportunity for students to work one-on-one with a professional writing
instructor in order to hone their academic writing skills.
The Goal
Writing Instructors use paper reviews to focus on academic
writing conventions such as APA and citation guidelines (see our APA webpages),
organization and paragraph structure, grammatical patterns (see our grammar and composition webpages), logical connections, transitions, clarity, and precision (see our scholarly writing webpages). The goal of a paper review is to help students not only
build and further develop academic writing skills as they intentionally invest
in the iterative process of drafting and revising, but also to gain a sense of
collaboration in the writing process as they receive another set of eyes on
their work.
In other words, our goal is not to fix papers, proofread,
edit, or provide grade predictions or justifications, but instead to help
students learn how to strengthen their academic writing over time. Paper
reviews are meant to be just one step in the overall writing process.
The Appointment Process
In paper reviews, students sign up for an appointment by navigating
to our myPASS scheduling system (see information on how to make an appointment
on the Paper Reviews webpage). The appointment is slotted for a specific day, but the
times given are for organizational purposes only; the appointment is
asynchronous. This means students do not need to be on the phone or on the
computer for their appointment. Instead, they fill out an appointment form to
provide information to their Writing Instructor, and then attach a document by
5am ET the day of their appointment. Writing Instructors then review their work on
that day of the appointment or on the day after. Writing Instructors use their
allotted time to note patterns in the students’ writing that, when addressed, can
improve students’ academic writing skills or clarity in communication.
While Writing Instructors may notice lots of different
patterns or areas for revision, they work to focus their comments on only the most
relevant ones in order to provide students with clear steps for revision.
Instructors may choose to skip over some proofreading (“lower order”) errors
they notice in order to focus more attention on areas of “higher order” concerns—writing
patterns that impact the clarity of students’ communication. For example, if a student could use
instruction in organizing information, creating a strong thesis statement, and
how to use commas, the writing instructor may focus the review on organization
and the thesis, and not comment much or at all on comma usage.
Because they are limited to only 30
minutes/student, Writing Instructors work to provide students with the feedback
that will most benefit them as students continue to build and hone their
academic writing skills.
Once a Writing Instructor has completed a review, he or she
will then attach the reviewed paper to the student’s appointment form and the
student will receive an e-mail letting them know their review is ready in the myPASS
system. Students can then access their reviewed document at any time, and go
back to previous appointments as well within the system.
For the Next Review…
The final component of a paper review appointment is that
the Writing Instructors encourage the implementation of feedback and revision
between appointments. For example, if a Writing Instructor comments on in-text
citations in one draft, the expectation is that if the student makes another
appointment later in that week or the next week, the student has considered the
feedback about in-text citations and done his/her best to apply those
guidelines to the next document they submit for a review.
Writing Instructors
request that students use feedback to make revisions between appointments
because it helps students in developing their academic writing skills, which is
something that takes both time and practice.
Check out some sample paper reviews, take a look through our appointment guidelines, and schedule an appointment to try it out if you’re
interested. We look forward to reviewing your work soon!
Rachel Willard is the Manager of Writing Instructors in the Walden University Writing Center. She loves hearing others' stories. She enjoys people-watching at airports and shopping places that use the grammatically correct "10 items or fewer" signs for the express checkout lanes.
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