Inside. . . This report details the problems with writing instruction at the University of Texas and outlines specific recommendations for improvement across the campus. The report focuses on solutions to these and other problems, but points out that additional resources are needed to provide institutional support for the various improvements. The Undergraduate Writing Center figures prominently in the committee's recommendations for supporting student writing and writing instruction at the University. Even if classroom instructors can describe these processes, and even if students grasp the concepts in theory, most still have trouble moving from theory to practice.
Application poses a problem.
Plato saw that the final dimension of rhetoric arose in the movement from an abstract rhetorical concept to application of the concept in a specific rhetorical situation, from the ideal to the real. It is no accident that the Greek educational model was the tutorial. The student gets immediate feedback from a trained consultant, someone who, like the teacher, can give professional advice, but who does not have to assign a grade to the student's first attempts to enter the discourse of a field. In the supportive environment of the UWC, a student can try out an idea or writing strategy and find out immediately whether it works, then learn about another strategy, try it, talk about it-and so on. We work vigorously with student ideas-we question the thesis, stress developing the argument, challenge the evidence.