English 602.005: Supervised Experience in College Teaching (Writing Tutorial)
R 1:00-2:15pm 308 Boucke
This practicum course is for graduate students and lecturers who have been given the teaching assignment of ENGL 005 (Writing Tutorial) for the first time.  The course brings participants into the conversation of writing center scholars and addresses the rhetorical issues of within topics such as these: 

• Enacting the teaching and learning triangle of student/teacher/tutor through communication logs
• The idea of a writing center
• Responding to student writing and dealing with teacher comments
• Addressing grammar rhetorically
• Tutoring students from the Comprehensive Studies Program and the College Assistance Migrant Program
• Tutoring students with different learning abilities and styles
• Tutoring non-native speakers of English
• Peer observation
• The creative tension between classroom teaching and writing center tutoring

The primary textbook is The St. Martin's Sourcebook for Writing Tutors , 3rd ed.

SPRING

English 250.001: Peer Tutoring in Writing
TR 9:45-11:00am 312 Boucke
ENGL 250 is a writing course—grounded in a rhetoric of identification—that introduces you to the theories and practices of peer tutoring in writing. It encourages your development as a writer, sensitizes you to the needs of other writers, exercises your talents as a collaborative learner, engages you in the literature of the field, and offers you experience in supervised tutoring.  The course counts toward a rhetoric emphasis in the English major.

If you are interested in becoming a peer tutor of writing in the Undergraduate Writing Center (UWC), you will need to take this course. The requirements for enrolling are to (1) love writing; (2) desire to learn from other writers; (3) submit a course application at http://www.psu.edu/dept/cew/writingcenter/UWC/becomingatutor.htm; (4) interview with the instructor; (5) secure a letter of recommendation from an instructor who knows your writing, dependability, intellectual curiosity, and social skills; (6) and complete either ENGL 015 or ENGL 030. (7) Completing—or being concurrently enrolled in—ENGL 202 is preferred but not essential. 

Much of the reading you do will be of one another's writing, though you will also read published texts such as The St. Martin's Sourcebook for Writing Tutors , 3nd ed.;The Writer's Harbrace Handbook, 3rd ed.; Rhetorical Grammar, 5th ed.; and a packet of other readings. In addition to impromptu writing in class, you will write two formal papers as well as peer reviews and writer's responses.  The writing of peer reviews involves rhetorical, critical, and descriptive analysis.  As a class, you will keep an online dialogue journal. The tutoring practicum will include peer and instructor observations and at least ten half-hour tutorials in the UWC. In addition, you will participate with a team to present a workshop to your classmates. Late in the semester, the class will produce a collaborative project that shares collected wisdom with the next generation of ENGL 250 students.