• by appointment. To get an appointment, a student can either: 1) talk to a staff member or student worker at the appointment desk, 2) call at 818-240-100, ext. 5330, or 3) e-mail a request via gccwritingcenter2003@yahoo.com.
• as part of a group organized by an instructor.
• tutors may be available for "drop in" tutoring (no appointment needed). This depends on cancellations and other factors.

A student must sign in and present his/her GCC student identification card. Tutoring sessions are limited to thirty minutes a day and a student may be tutored up to twice a week.

What kind of help can students expect?
We will help a student in the pre-writing stage to help formulate and focus ideas. We will provide an assessment of the type of mechanical errors a student may have as well as some suggestions for addressing these errors. We will give a reaction to a rough or final draft, but the student must complete the draft by himself or herself.
In general, we endeavor to provide courteous, respectful, and careful assistance. We do not pose as authorities but rather as coaches of good writing.

How can students help make their tutoring sessions productive?
There are several ways students can assist themselves and us:
-Set your own specific goals for the session.
-Bring the instructor's written assignment or a very clear explanation of what is expected.
-Bring grammar texts or readings, if relevant to the assignment.
-Try and identify your own questions and problems first. Even if you don't know "what's wrong", identify where you think there's a problem. Go over any of the instructor's revisions before you visit us.
-Bring outlines, ideas and drafts if you have them.
-Participate actively in the process. Do not be afraid to ask questions or disagree.
-Manage time well. If you expect to have more than one session concerning a particular assignment, you must allow enough time before the due date to come into the Writing Center on more than one day. This is especially true for research papers.
-Be patient with us, yourself, and the process! It takes time to improve writing skills.

We always welcome comments on our services from students and instructors. Please direct these comments to the classified staff members or Dennis Doyle, the Director of the Learning Center.

WHAT WE DO:

1) We exist to support the learning process and empower students -- not merely to improve student grades.

2) We stress that the process of writing is progressive and has definite stages.

3) We listen to ideas that students have about writing assignments and help limit and focus ideas into manageable topics. We will also help students evaluate their theses as well as the way they have supported and developed their theses.

4) We ask questions in order to help students clarify and fully develop their ideas and reasoning.

5) We make suggestions for organizing students' ideas and information into a logical order and also encourage the use of organizational tools such as clustering/mapping and outlining.

6) We give suggestions for research techniques, time management and planning, and additional resources for practice in specific writing challenges.

7) We help to properly quote, paraphrase, and give credit to sources in order to avoid plagiarism.

8) We read drafts of papers to identify and explain various structural and mechanical errors, letting students then proofread and make corrections.

9) We give honest reactions to student writing and pose questions that develop self-reflecton and critical analysis. For instance, we may indicate how the tone or voice of the paper affects us, whether the introduction arouses our interest, or whether the conclusion is satisfying.

10) We work cooperatively with specific instructors who want us to emphasize particular techniques or methods with their students.

WHAT WE DO NOT DO:

1) The Writing Center is not a proofreading or editing service; we are not here to "fix" papers. We do not point out and correct "all" of the specific errors on the page; this is part of the student's responsibility. There are two major reasons for this. First, if we proofread and edited a student's paper, we would be misleading his or her instructor into thinking that the student is competent in a skill in which he or she may, in fact, lack proficiency. Second, we would also be depriving the student of the opportunity and necessity to recognize his or her own errors -- a process we consider essential to the task of becoming a better writer.

2) We do not write or rewrite sentences for a student. For the process of helping a student understand a concept, we may model improvements on some sentences. After asking a student to explain a thought, we may also write down what the student says and provide suggestions for composition.

3) We will not discuss a grade that an instructor has assigned to a student's writing or predict the grade an instructor will assign a paper. Grading is the duty and prerogative of the instructor alone, and The Writing Center will not violate that area of exclusive responsibility.

4) If we have reason to believe the student is presenting us with work which is not his/her own (plagiarism), we will address the implications of this issue. We reserve the right to discontinue services in certain cases.

5) We will not read entire materials such as articles, essays, etc. that may be used in an assignment. Our main purpose is to help students with the writing process, not the critical analysis or interpretation of outside materials.