The writing center is open for business for Spring 2020 and our tutors are ready to work with your students.  Here is some helpful information, especially if you are new to College of Lake County or new to the CLC Writing Center.

Any Writing, Any Class:  We work with writers at all levels and across the curriculum.  Not matter what your discipline, if you assign written work, our tutors can help support your students in their writing process.  We help at any stage—from students needing to brainstorm topics or figure out the specifics of an assignment to students wanting to polish near-final drafts and everywhere in-between.   We will not edit a student’s paper FOR them, but we will help them work on issues of grammar, punctuation, and word choice as well as on strategies to help them become better editors of their own work.  Since our focus is on the writer and their learning, a visit to the writing center will not result in a perfect error-free text.  However, most writers will leave with a stronger draft than they came in with and with a better idea of what they need to do to keep improving.

Not Just Writing but Reading:  In addition to helping students with written work, tutors can also help students improve their active and critical reading strategies to tackle college-level texts.  Tutors have been trained to scaffold students’ learning by modeling different metacognitive reading strategies, practicing the strategies with the student, and then encouraging the student to try them out on their own while they coach from the sidelines.  In addition, many students simply benefit from the opportunity to talk to someone about the text they’re reading.

Speaking Too:  The CLC Writing Center offers support to students as they work on speeches for CMM121 – Fundamentals of Speech or on other types of oral presentations.  Tutors can help students brainstorm and organize their ideas as well as practice presenting their speeches in one of our individual tutoring rooms.

Our Writing Center Staff:  Our tutoring staff in the Writing Center is a mix of peer (student) tutors and professionals (tutors with a bachelor’s degree or higher) but all tutors undergo an extensive initial training.  Most take English 260 (Intro to Writing Center Theory & Practice, a 3-credit course) unless they are a professional tutor with at least a year of prior writing center experience/training.  In addition, the writing center provides monthly professional development opportunities for its staff on a wide range of topics.

If you have any questions about the writing center or its services on any of the three campuses, please contact Dr. Jenny Staben, Faculty Coordinator of the Writing Center at 847-543-2594 or jstaben@clcillinois.edu.