Our tutors are graduate and undergraduate students who have experience as peer collaborators. They work with students on personal writing or specific writing assignments. Our philosophy is based on the ideal that knowledge is constructed in an academic community of knowledgeable peer collaborators, that peer tutoring is collaborative learning, and that our center can create a place where students can talk to each other about their work and about their writing. In our center, writing is not treated as an isolated skill, learned by drills and rote, but rather, as part of the process of discovery and learning and sharing.
Conversation is part of that process, always, and is an integral component of our system.
Our tutors engage writers in discussions about their work, showing them how a reader thinks about a piece of writing. Our goal is to help students internalize the skills of dialogical thinking that a mature writer uses. Methods Tutors guide students as they explore assigned topics, learn strategies for generating ideas, and discover methods of development and organization. Tutors also help students with drafts by reviewing rules of grammar, punctuation, organization and general rhetorical skills. Special students Radford's Writing Center is equipped to work with our international students.