Re: WC in Comm. Coll -Reply

[Todd McCann <MCCANNT@BAYDENOC.CC.MI.US>]

Denise,

You mention "quite a few people...who are hung up on grammar errors..." 
in writing centers, especially those in community colleges.  I simply 
don't see this.  I have the feeling that most cc wc's are much more 
"with it" than you might think.

A while ago on WCenter, there was some discussion about the myth of 
early writing centers as proofreading shops.  Many of us just assumed 
that they had existed, and that we had evolved from them--until someone 
questioned the assumption.  Sure, some proofreading shops did exist, 
some probably still do, but not all early wc's were such beasts.  The 
same goes for the community-college-writing-center-as-remedial-writing- 
center myth.  In many (most, I hope) cases, it's simply not true.  Any 
writing center--community college or private university--is only as 
good as those who work there.  Where it's located has nothing to do with 
anything.  (Next to a body of water is nice, though.)  :-)

Todd McCann
mccannt@baydenoc.cc.mi.us

On 7/13/95, Denise wrote:

> Hi Bill,
> 
> I'm kinda interested in this, too.  I wonder if there really *are*
> many non-remedial writing centers in the area--university *or*
> community college.  I mean, there are still quite a few people out
> there who claim to be non-remedial, but who are really hung-up on
> grammar errors and things like the 5-paragraph theme.  In fact, that
> was true enough that I ended up writing a paper on "freeing the WC." 
> After having read many of the postings here, I'm confused:  People on
> the list seem to have some very interesting stances on things like
> error correction.  But the colleges in this area--and even many of
> the universities, it seems--still seem to focus on grammar. 
> Community colleg2es and open-enrollment schools seem to be the ones
> who most stubbornly adhere to that approach.
> 
> Anyway, here I am, about to take this stupid paper to conference, and
> I'm wondering if I'm not just being redundant as blazes!  So what
> really *is* going on out there?
> 
> By the way, our WC (small, private university) is *very* different,
> it seems.  We have 25 Macintosh computers, and everything is done
> on-line.  What I mean is that the center functions as anything from a
> typing lab to a full-fledged WC, complete with informed readers and a
> staff of people trained in using the gobs and gobs of software we
> have.  We even have whole classes that come in and use the center. 
> Mostly what we do is teach students to use the electronic and paper
> tools we make available to them.  We are changing a little to include
> a sort of limited-access OWL.  We'll see how it goes.  But
> remediation?  Most students aren't interested.  Neither, it seems,
> are most instructors. (That's supposed to be the job of fyc classes.)
> 
> Anyway, I'm glad you asked.  I hope you gets lotsa response.
> 
> Denise Dilworth
> Madonna U.
> Livonia, MI
> dilworth@smtp.munet.edu