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(2) ft* • 1-111fiffft. —CV U.S. Writing Centers. History and Overview Although there are differences in the administration and operation of U.S. universities, the central practice of U.S. writing centers is that students, either undergraduate or graduate, bring a piece of writing they produce for their university courses and in some cases for their theses and dissertations to the university writing center and receive individualized assistance on their writing from tutors. Meetings with tutors are usually appointment based with some cases of walk-ins depending on their availability. It is totally up to students how often they want to visit the writing center and receive help; some only come once for a small portion of their writing and never come back. Others frequently or regularly utilize writing center assistance on different portions of the same piece of writing or on entirely different papers. In some cases, these students meet with the same tutor many times. The body of students which writing centers serve is mainly first language (L1) English students. However, second language (L2) English writers who seek help at writing centers in U.S. universities are increasing, and the issue of L2 writing center studies will be discussed in a separate section in this paper. According to Carter-Tod (1995), the oldest known university writing center in the U.S. was at the University of Iowa, called a writing lab at that time, which was established before 1935. Writing centers or labs in the U.S. then increased in the 1950s and expanded in the 1970s (Carino, 2002), and they can now be found in most major universities in the U.S. (Williams, 2005). Furthermore,. today there is an enormous body of literature on writing. center research and practice, with two major dedicated journals in the field: Writing Center Journal and Writing Lab Newsletter. There are also numerous articles published in major U.S. research journals.. Types of U.S. Writing Centers Regarding writing centers' relationships with universities, Carter-Tod (1995) identifies three main types of affiliation: (1) ones directly under the university English department; (2) ones with no affiliations with any department in the university, and (3) ones connected with other learning centers in the university (e.g., math learning center). The first type of writing centers, those which are connected with the English Department established. based on the fact that the English Department. of the university, were. is usually responsible. for. undergraduate writing instruction, offering freshman English composition courses. As a result,. — 206 —.
(3) WritingCentersin the U.S.and Japan those freshmen who take required English courses often visit the writing center to seek assistance on their writing for the course. In fact, Carino (2002) points out that the group of students who need writing center assistance most is the "struggling freshman" (p. 103), who encounters difficulty adapting to written academic discourse and rhetoric required at the college-level. The second type of writing centers with no affiliations with any department university. in the. can be seen in the example of Writing Tutorial Services (WTS) at Indiana. University, from which I graduated. Having the director who supervises the overall tutorial services, the Indiana University WTS program offers services to all kinds of students, undergraduates. and graduates with both Ll and L2 English backgrounds. For example, in. the academic year 2009-2010,over 75,000 tutorials with 250 to 300 sessions every week were offered at Indiana University's. main campus, which has a total student. enrollment. of. approximately 35,000 (J. Vogt, personal communication, October 11, 2010). Finally, an example of the third type of writing centers, the ones affiliated with university learning centers, is offered by Idaho State University, where I conducted writing center research during my overseas research leave. The Idaho State University Writing Center is part of the Student Success Center, which is a university-wide academic support center. Other than the Writing Center, this academic support center offers tutorial assistance programs to students in such areas as math, content areas, and English as a Second Language (ESL). In the academic year 2008-2009,with a population of approximately 12,000 students on the main campus, the Idaho State University Writing Center offered a total of about 1,600 hours of tutoring (Le Corbeiller, 2010).. Writing Center Goals and Instructional Perspectives As I mentioned earlier, writing centers in U.S. universities started in the 1930s and expanded from the 1950s to the 1970s. According to Carino (2002), the main goal of those early day writing centers was to help Ll English writers who had problems with basic areas of writing, including grammar and punctuation and thus to assist in preparing them for university education by teaching them standard English. This focus on remediation was replaced by a larger focus to help students develop as writers with appropriate. writing. strategies. According to North (1984), new writing centers after the 1970s represent two robust instructional. perspectives,. which include process-oriented. and student-centered. approaches. The process-oriented approach, which is now widely practiced in both Ll and L2. — 207 —.
(4) R*. • 1-111ffilk. writing instruction, views writing as a process from generating ideas and drafting to final editing with an emphasis on multiple revisions (see Casanave, 2004 for the history and details of process writing approaches). This approach thus shifts the instructional focus away from the mere corrections of the product. The student-centered. approach emphasizes writers'. development in learning effective strategies they can transfer to various writing contexts. North (1984) succinctly expresses the essence of those two instructional principles as follows: in a writing center the object is to make sure that writers, and not necessarily their texts, are what get changed by instruction. In axiom form it goes like this: Our job is to produce better writers, not better writing. (p. 438) North's notion of "better writers, not better writing" is in fact often cited in Ll writing center literature, and furthermore it is "almost unanimously agreed upon by the most writing center administrators" (Carter-Tod, 1995, p. 37). Another major operational principle governing writing center theory and practice is collaborative learning, the root of which traces to Bruffee (1984) in that learning can be facilitated through interaction between peers who share similar experiences and backgrounds. This emphasis on learning between peers makes one common model of writing centers, that is, using students as tutors (Williams, 2005). This collaborative learning between peers, along with the two instructional perspectives. of process-orientation. learning has created a distinctive instructional. and emphasis on student. approach at writing centers. Under the. collaborative learning principle, tutors are generally expected to adopt a friendly peer role rather than an authoritative teacher role. Moreover, tutors are usually encouraged to take a nondirective approach, which means asking students questions to help them find answers to problems in their writing rather than telling students how they should change specific words and sentences (Carino, 2002;Powers, 1993). These instructional principles and approaches are the basis for writing center tutoring practice with Ll English writers.. Tutor Population and Training As discussed in the previous section, one common model of U.S. writing centers is using students as tutors. Those student tutors are called peer tutors, who are both undergraduates and graduate students at the universities with which writing centers are affiliated. According to Carter-Tod. (1995), there is another group of tutors called professional tutors, who are. usually not students but those with advanced education or degrees in writing theory and instruction. Although there are differences in tutor populations at different writing centers,. — 208 —.
(5) Writing Centers in the U.S. and Japan. peer tutors seem to be more common than instructional tutors. At Idaho State University, for example, among 15 tutors in the academic year 2010-2011, 12 were peer tutors who were undergraduate. and graduate students mostly from the English Department.. Three were. what they call "instructional tutors" who were faculty members with masters' degrees teaching writing. At Indiana University, however, in the Fall Semester of 2010, all the 36 tutors were either undergraduate. or graduate students. from various disciplines at the. university, and there were no professional tutors. The instructional principles of writing centers discussed earlier, which emphasize the process rather than the product and collaborative learning through questions and answers, are reflected overfly in the written guidelines for tutors at both Indiana University and Idaho State University. Despite the common instructional perspectives, the two universities slightly differ in their peer tutor training programs. At Indiana University, with its large student population, potential undergraduate. tutors are interviewed, and those who are selected are. required to take a course on writing theory and practice in the spring semester. Furthermore, those who do well in the course are allowed to start working as a tutor in the following fall semester. Graduate tutors, who are selected based on interviews, are not required to take a course, but they need to participate in four-hour training sessions in every semester as their undergraduate counterparts do. At Idaho State University, no tutor training courses are offered, but three tutor training sessions in each semester are offered. In the training sessions in the 2010-2011academic year, all of which I attended, tutors were asked to read articles on tutoring practices, comment on portions of sample student writings, and exchange opinions and contribute to the discussion. Furthermore, one full training session in each semester was devoted to citation practices, the in-text citations and reference styles according to the APA Manual, in particular. This training activity reflected the need for tutors to familiarize themselves with the APA style, with which their tutees (student writers) in various disciplines frequently request assistance. Beyond the common instructional principles, the content in students' writings in their specific disciplines matters in writing tutoring sessions. In order to improve the quality of tutorial assistance, the Indiana University WTS program offers matching of students (tutees) and tutors in the same or close areas of discipline, such as engineering, law, and physics. However, due to the time conflicts between the tutee and the tutor for potential appointments, this matching is not always possible (J. Vogt, personal communication, October. 11, 2010). At Idaho State University, no such matching efforts between tutees and tutors are executed due. — 209 —.
(6) • 1-111ffilk. to the relatively small population size of tutors and their predominant disciplinary affiliation with the English Department However, minimal efforts of matching are made in such a case when a doctoral student working on a dissertation is matched with a doctoral student tutor, not an undergraduate tutor. In summary, despite some differences in student and tutor populations and tutor training at different universities, writing centers in the U.S. operate on major principles of process-oriented and student-centered. approaches that are realized through collaborative. learning between peers. These operational principles, however, are based on the perspective of assisting Ll English writers (native speakers of English who were educated in the U.S), and thus there are issues and concerns as to whether L2 English writers who visit writing centers should be assisted in the same way as Ll English writers. The next section reports studies that address L2 students in U.S. writing centers. The relevant studies are introduced under two major categories: theories on appropriate writing center instructional strategies for L2 English writers and empirical studies that document what occurs in writing center tutoring sessions with L2 students.. L2 Writing Center Studies Appropriate Tutoring Strategies with L2 English Writers In the early 1990s, writing centers in U.S. universities started facing an emerging population of L2 English writers with various linguistic and cultural backgrounds.. The. encounter with L2 English writers, who are in many ways different from Ll English writers, prompted many scholars' discussions and suggestions for appropriate tutoring strategies for L2 English writers (e.g., Kennedy, 1993; Harris & Silva, 1993; Powers, 1993; Severino, 1993; Thonus, 1993). Harris and Silva (1993), for example, noted L2 English writers' unfamiliarity with and confusion over collaborative peer tutoring styles at U.S. writing centers when those L2 students. came from cultural. and educational. backgrounds. with expectations. of. authoritative teacher roles. Thus, Harris and Silva suggested the need for writing center tutors to assume the role of "tellers" (1993, p. 533) to some extent. Similarly, Powers (1993) claimed that what she called the "Socratic" (p. 40) approach in tutoring through questions and answers, which seemed to work well with Ll English writers, was not effective with L2 English writers. Thus, she suggested a more directive and more didactic approach to L2 writers by tutors being cultural informants in that they specifically show L2 writers what expected U.S. academic discourse should look like.. — 210 —.
(7) WritingCentersin the U.S.and Japan Powers's (1993) call for a more directive tutoring approach to L2 English writers stimulated many scholars' subsequent discussion on effective tutoring with L2 writers. The directive tutoring approach included explicit grammar and language instruction, which was discouraged for Ll English writers. Blau and Hall (2002) supported the directive approach with L2 writers, but they emphasized the balancing of global (the meaning) and local (e.g., grammar, word-choice, and punctuation) issues in L2 tutoring practice. Disagreeing with the directive approach, Cogie, Strain, and Lorinskas (1999) promoted the idea of teaching L2 English writers self-editing strategies in tutoring sessions in order to help them function independently as writers. Myers (2003), on the other hand, opposed to the idea of teaching self-editing strategies, endorsing explicit language instruction for L2 English writers by claiming that the teaching of grammar was part of a tutor's job as cultural informant. The discussion on effective tutoring practice with L2 English writers has continued to the present date, and the recent discussion includes theories from wider disciplines including Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Cogie (2006), for example, connects writing center research and SLA theories by addressing the value of L2 writers' active participation in tutoring sessions as a way to facilitate their second language acquisition processes. Bell and Youmans (2006) bring the Politeness Theory discussed in sociolinguistics into writing center discourse with L2 English writers. Pointing out L2 English writers' unfamiliarity with expected politeness discourse strategies from praise to criticism employed by Ll English tutors, Bell and Youmans suggest making this cultural practice of politeness more visible to L2 English writers, as well as raising Ll tutors' awareness of their linguistic cultural politeness strategies. Williams (2002) also explores insights from SLA research in L2 writing center studies, and Williams and Severino (2004) further discuss the potentials of future L2 writing center studies with a wider variety of disciplines including psychology, education, and linguistics.. L2 Writing Center Empirical Studies L2 writing center studies have also been evolving with the emergence of empirical research, that is, documentation of what actually happens in writing center tutoring sessions with L2 English writers. Among those empirical studies, those conducted by Thonus (1999a,b, 2002, 2004) have greatly contributed to the field by illuminating salient discourse features in interactions. between tutors and tutees. Some of those features include tutor-dominant. discourse patterns with both Ll and L2 tutees (Thonus, 1999a, 2004), politeness discourse. —211. —.
(8) ft* • 1-111fifflk strategies employed by tutors (Thonus, 1999b), and components of successful tutorial practice perceived by tutors and tutees (Thonus, 2002). Furthermore, Thonus (2001) investigated the perceptions of the tutors' role by tutors, tutees, and course instructors. and found little. consensus among those three parties. As one of the implications from her study, Thonus (2001) emphasizes the importance of empirical evidence to discuss tutoring practice, not through anecdotal evidence or prescriptive views of how tutorial practice should be. The emphasis on empirical evidence through descriptions of tutor-tutee interactions is also carried over in subsequent studies of writing center discourse including a tutee's advising-resisting by Waring (2005) from a Conversation Analysis (CA) perspective, and a study by Williams (2005) on an identification of fixed yet negotiated roles between tutors and tutees toward tutor dominance and authority. L2 writing center empirical studies have also started documenting writing center practice other than tutor-tutee interactions. Williams (2004), for example, investigated the relationship between tutoring talk and tutees' post-tutoring revisions on their drafts and found that the focus of the revision was usually motivated by the focus of the discussion during the tutoring sessions. Weigle and Nelson (2004) added to the literature by investigating novice tutors' development and their negotiated roles with their tutees in the context of tutoring as part of a graduate L2 writing theory and practice course required for the tutors. More recently, Nakamaru's. (2010) study focusing on lexical issues of L2 writing tutoring has. expanded the scope of the field which tended to be dominated by grammar issues. In addition to the increasing number of studies documenting L2 writing center practice, the field has also started recognizing the issues of diversity among L2 English writers who seek writing center help. The prevalent notion of L2 English writers is those students who have completed high school and/or. undergraduate. university. education in their home. countries and have received formal English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education back home. Another group of L2 English writers who have been receiving increasing attention is the so called Generation 1.5 students, who came to the U.S. at a relatively young age, have developed good listening and speaking skills in English, but have difficulty with advanced academic writing skills. Several authors have noted the issues of those Generation 1.5 students in writing. center. aforementioned. tutoring. (Leki, 2009; Ritter & Sandvik, 2009; Thonus, 2003). The. study by Nakamaru. (2010) pays particular. attention. to the issue of. differences between Generation 1.5 writers, whom she calls "US-educated multilingual writers". (p. 96) and traditional. English as a Second Language. — 212 —. (ESL) writers in her.
(9) Writing Centers in the U.S. and Japan. investigation of lexical aspects of L2 writing center tutoring. As shown in the section above, L2 writing center studies have been evolving in the theoretical discussion on appropriate tutoring strategies with L2 writers and empirical studies that document tutoring practice with L2 students and their writing issues. However, one underexplored. area of research about U.S. writing centers is assessment. Thonus (2003). comments that writing center assessment is rarely connected with the assessment of student writing in terms of change after the writing center tutoring session. Furthermore, Williams (2004) claims that the writing center community even resists assessment of student writing after the tutoring; they place more emphasis on the writing center conversation than the outcomes of the tutoring. Based on the issues and questions that have arisen from U.S. writing center studies with L2 English writers, the next section focuses on writing centers in Japan with their current situation and issues to be addressed in future research and practice.. Writing Centers in Japan Overview Compared with U.S. writing centers that have been in existence for about 80 years, writing centers in Japan have less than 10 years of history. According to Johnston, Cornwell, and Yoshida (2010), in 2004 Waseda University established a writing center with its start of the School of International. Liberal Studies. In the same year, Osaka Jogakuin College. developed a once a week service of the writing clinic into a writing center with more extended (six days a week) assistance. Since then the number of Japanese universities and colleges which have started writing centers has increased to 11 in Japan as of 2009 (Johnston, 2009). Although little is known about the details of each of those writing centers, Johnston et al. (2010) and Yoshida, Johnston, and Cornwell (2010), both of which are involved with the same research project, provide an overview of writing centers in Japan in their beginning period. In order to better understand the experience and the needs of the students utilizing writing centers, Johnston, Cornwell, and Yoshida visited many domestic and overseas writing centers from 2007 to 2009 and filed reports in the two studies mentioned above. The writing centers they visited included four in Japan, three in the U.S., one Japanese branch of a U.S. university in Japan, three in Korea and one in Singapore. The following discussion focuses on the Japanese writing centers Johnston et al. studied in addition to some of the writing centers which were launched after their study. According to Johnston et al. (2010) and Yoshida et al. (2010), there is no one model. — 213 —.
(10) ft* • 1-111fifflk among writing centers in Japan and each writing center offers assistance that matches the needs of its students. Waseda University, for example, follows a peer tutoring model in which trained Japanese graduate students and international students serve as peer tutors and assist students from all the departments with English writing including term papers and theses. According to the website of the Waseda University Writing Center ( "Writing Center summary," 2011), they offer English-Japanese bilingual writing tutorials where students have a choice to receive tutors' assistance in either English or Japanese. In addition, their writing center also offers assistance in Japanese writing to both native-Japanese-speaking students and international students. Osaka Jogakuin College, on the other hand, offers individual writing tutoring conducted only in English by instructor tutors who are all native-Englishspeaking full-time or part-time teachers at the college. They help students with various kinds of course-related. English writing such as summaries,. essays, and papers. In 2008 the. University of Tokyo (Komaba Campus) started one-to-one writing consultations for students enrolled in Active Learning of English for Science Students (ALESS) who seek help with their writing assignments. (see "ALESS," 2011 for more details). Other writing centers in. Japan studied by Johnston et al. include Sophia University, which offers a writing center similar to the one in the U.S.,and Kanda Gaigo Gakuin, the details of which were not reported. For English writing assistance, Hays (2010) and Hays and Narita (2011) report a program equivalent to a writing center, which they call the Writing Lounge at Tokyo International University. The Writing Lounge, which started in 2008, follows a peer tutoring model in which qualified students serve as peer tutors and help undergraduate students with their English writing. Some of the university writing centers in Japan which were established after the study by Johnston et al. (2010) and Yoshida et al. (2010) specialize in helping students. with. advanced academic writing skills in English. For example, Seisaku Kenkyu Daigakuin Daigaku (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies or GRIPS) established an academic writing center through which writing workshops and individual consultations are offered. Their writing workshops focus on research writing skills including formulating research questions, organizing ideas, incorporating source materials into writing, and using academic writing conventions properly. Consequently, individual writing tutoring sessions also serve as a place to help students with organization and logical thinking in their academic papers ( "The Academic Writing Center at GRIPS," 2011). Similarly, Nagoya University established the Meidai Academic Writing Unit in 2010 by setting a goal of promoting students' academic. — 214 —.
(11) Writing Centers in the U.S. and Japan. publications. Under the Academic Writing Unit, courses are offered where students learn logical thinking and how to write specific sections of an academic paper such as an abstract, introduction, and conclusion. They also offer one-to-one basis writing tutorials on academic papers or dissertations where students learn how to formulate thesis statements and build their logical arguments. Those writing tutorials are offered by professors who are specialized in logical thinking skills and academic writing in English, French, German, and Chinese ( "Meiwriting site," 2011). Except for Waseda University and Nagoya University, all the writing center programs introduced so far are mainly concerned with providing assistance for Japanese students' English writing. However, there are universities that have writing centers to assist Japanese students. with Japanese. writing.. For example, Kanazawa. Kogyo University. offers. individualized assistance for various kinds of Japanese writing, including editing for students' essays and papers for course assignments and purpose statements and Curriculum Vitas (CVs) for job applications (Yoshida et al., 2010). Similarly, Tsuda College, which advocates producing independent. writers through writing center tutoring, offers consultation for. Japanese writing for both class assignments and job applications although they do not offer editorial services (Yoshida et al., 2010). To conclude the writing centers in Japan they studied, Yoshida et al. (2010) emphasize that there is a common educational principle among them despite the differences in the target student population and the kinds of assistance they provide. The common principle is the view of writing centers as a place to help students become independent writers and also develop their ideas through writing. This principle seems to coincide with the agreed upon principle of U.S. writing centers, that is, the idea of better writers, not better products based on North (1984) as introduced earlier. While the basic educational principle of U.S. writing centers may be easily introduced to writing centers in Japan, there seem to be many issues to be considered for the sound and effective implementation of writing centers and student writing development. Among those issues, the next section focuses on two major issues: collaborative tutoring practice and process approach to writing. These two issues are related to the fundamental educational principles of U.S. writing centers discussed in an earlier section of this study. The following discussion addresses. how those two educational. perspectives from U.S. writing centers can be effectively practiced in writing centers in Japan.. — 215 —.
(12) • 1-111ffilk. Collaborative Learning with Peer Tutors As discussed earlier, there has been a great deal of discussion on appropriate tutoring strategies with L2 English writers in U.S. writing centers. Some claim the ineffectiveness of the collaborative tutoring practice, in which peer tutors are discouraged from telling answers and solutions to the questions and problems student writers have with their writing, and attribute. the problem to the cultural and linguistic backgrounds. of L2 writers. More. specifically, some L2 writers may not be familiar with the collaborative learning environment with peers due to their cultural backgrounds where teachers are the authority providing them with answers and solutions (Harris & Silva, 1993). In addition, more intervention is necessary for tutoring L2 English writers than Ll writers because they are not familiar with expected U.S. academic discourse (Powers, 1993). Thus, both Harris and Silva and Powers suggest that writing center tutors assume more teacher roles with L2 English students and take a more directive approach in telling them how they should change their writing. The problems with the collaborative tutoring practice with L2 English students have been pointed out by some authors in the context of writing centers in Japan and possible solutions have been suggested. Hays (2010), for example, characterizes Japanese university education as teacher-centered, and consequently he assumes that Japanese peer tutors are playing the role of tellers instead of collaborators due to their cultural backgrounds. Despite the Japanese cultural and educational background, Hays also claims that tutors should try to minimize the telling part of their job only when it is appropriate. As Powers (1993) advocates a more directive approach with L2 English students in the U.S., Yasuda (2006) suggests a directive and corrective approach as an alternate way of writing center tutoring in Japan. In order to make the directive approach effective, Yasuda emphasizes that explanation should be added when tutors change students' writing for example, the removal of a sentence should be accompanied. by explanations. including the irrelevance. to the topic sentence. or. redundancy. While concurring that a more directive approach may be appropriate for Japanese students, the collaborative learning approach as a source of confusion for Japanese students might need to be viewed critically. Despite Hays's (2010) characterization. of Japanese. university education as teacher-centered, Japanese students have been increasingly exposed to group work including peer response activities in English writing classes and group projects and presentations in content-area courses. Thus, Japanese students may not resist the idea of learning from peers, and collaborative writing center practice may work effectively depending. — 216 —.
(13) Writing Centers in the U.S. and Japan. on the students' prior experience working with peers. More importantly, writing center practice should be reviewed and improved based on the responses of students who utilize writing center assistance. To obtain student responses and describe writing center tutoring, empirical writing center studies need to be conducted in the Japanese context. Although there has been little empirical research done on writing center tutoring practice in Japan so far, there are some studies which show positive responses from writing center users. Based on the questionnaire results of students who utilized the writing center (the Writing Lounge) at Tokyo International University, Hays (2010) reported that students on average responded positively to their experience in the writing tutoring. Furthermore, those students were found to be satisfied with the friendly attitude of the peer tutors and the kinds of help they received from the tutors. Hays and Narita (2011) further investigated the effectiveness of the Writing Lounge by conducting a case study of one Japanese student struggling with a five-paragraph English essay as a course assignment and reported her L2 writing development and change in attitude as she utilized the Writing Lounge assistance. In the same study, Hays and Narita also reported. excerpts of tutor and tutee comments. regarding their tutoring experiences. Their comments reveal positive learning experiences both as a tutor and a tutee, as well as the challenging aspects of tutoring. Some of the difficulties peer tutors encountered include the failure to understand students' perceived areas of problems in their writing and self-doubts about their effectiveness as a tutor. Tutees also expressed concerns such as difficulty explaining in English their specific problems with writing, and the sense of embarrassment of being helped with their writing. Those comments from both tutors and tutees are valuable resources for the improved practice of writing center tutoring, and more empirical studies with tutor and tutee responses. through. questionnaires, interviews, and observations need to be conducted.. Process Approach to Writing Besides the collaborative learning approach, another salient issue of bringing U.S. writing center principles into the Japanese. context is the process-centered. approach.. According to Kobayashi and Rinnert (2002, as cited in Yasuda, 2006), Japanese students lack academic writing training both in Ll and L2 up until the point when they enter universities. The lack of academic literacy training means not only academic writing conventions including thesis statements or topic sentences but also critical thinking skills and finding outside sources and incorporating. the information from the sources into their writing. Besides these. — 217 —.
(14) • 1-111ffilk. components for academic writing skills, Japanese students probably do not hold the view of writing as a process and that they lack experience engaging in the practice of a writing process from generating ideas, drafting, and final editing with multiple revisions in between. Consequently, Japanese students may hold the view that the first draft could and should be the final draft or that a good piece of writing consists of error-free sentences and thus they should be only concerned with grammatical correctness. This view of writing as a product and as a collection of error-free sentences can make a significant impact on the attitude of students when they utilize writing centers. They may be frustrated when their main concern is to get grammatical mistakes corrected while their tutors address such issues as clarity of ideas or organization, as briefly reported by Hays (2010). In order for students to get optimal benefits from writing center tutoring, it is necessary to help them develop the view of writing as a process and engage in the process approach outside writing center tutoring sessions. The process-oriented practice of writing should be encouraged and exercised in content-area courses as well as in English writing courses. The process-oriented approach could be realized without a great deal of difficulty in English writing classes. Students can learn to modify their ideas and earlier drafts as they receive feedback from the teacher and their peers in such areas as the clarity of ideas, organization, and audience awareness (see Liu & Hansen, 2002 for resources for an effective practice of peer response activities on L2 writing). If students have a positive experience with the process-approach of writing in their regular English writing classes, it is easier for them to transfer this to their experience in writing center tutoring sessions. In addition to promoting the process approach of writing in English writing classes, it is beneficial to students if the process approach is incorporated into their disciplinary contentarea courses conducted in Japanese. Japanese university students engage in many writing assignments including research papers in their disciplinary courses and theses. Despite the fact that they write those academic demonstrates. papers in their native language,. their writing. many problems such as clarity of ideas. Moreover, according to Sadoshima. (2011), one of the serious problems with Japanese students' academic writing in Japanese is a lack of proper citations, due to the lack of Ll academic writing training mentioned earlier. Thus, Japanese students need to be taught academic writing conventions in their Li, and as part of their Ll academic literacy training the process approach should be incorporated. If students understand the concept of the process approach and develop the necessary writing. — 218 —.
(15) WritingCentersin the U.S.and Japan skills in 1,1, they will transfer this experience more easily to their L2 English writing and consequently their writing center sessions may become more meaningful. However, promoting the teaching of writing and the process approach in disciplinary courses is not an easy task. In this regard, Yasuda (2006) emphasizes the role of writing centers in facilitating a campus-wide program in raising the faculty's awareness of the importance of writing and providing them with practical ideas to help students develop their academic writing skills. Based on the idea of a partnership. between writing centers and. Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) in U.S. universities through which writing centers offer workshops for faculty members to learn how to create and grade writing assignments effectively, Yasuda suggests that writing centers in Japanese universities take a central role of developing a campus-wide writing environment so that all the faculty members take responsibility. for helping students. develop academic. writing. skills through. course. assignments. In addition to the faculty's involvement in a campus-wide writing program, writing centers can provide invited lectures and workshops by guest speakers such as journalists or novelists in order to raise students' awareness of writing as a form of communication and writing as a process. In Japan, Tsuda College has been active in offering those invited workshops about Japanese writing through their writing center, and their program could provide a good example of a writing center's role in promoting a campus-wide writing program (see "Tsuda Writing Center," 2011 for more details). In summary, the educational perspectives of collaborative learning with peers and the process approach to writing, on which U.S. writing centers operate, can be smoothly transferred to the context of writing centers in Japan, if students have enough experience learning from peers and engaging in the process approach of writing outside writing center tutoring sessions. In order to provide students with academic writing experience, not only English writing courses but disciplinary courses need to offer opportunities for students to engage in learning necessary academic writing skills including expected structures of writing and the process of writing. This means that promoting students' academic writing skills is a mission in which all the faculty members, both those teaching English writing and those teaching disciplinary courses in Japanese, need to be involved. For that mission, writing centers should take responsibility in leading and guiding the campus-wide writing program.. — 219 —.
(16) • I1-111,!filkil.--./. Conclusion Writing centers in U.S. universities, with their many years of history, have evolved from a place of remedial education to a place to promote students' development as writers. The idea of the writing center as a place for promoting students' learning through writing applies to the basic concept of writing centers in Japan. However, with their short history writing centers in Japan have many issues to be considered for their successful implementation. As key issues for effective writing center practice, collaborative learning with peers and the process approach to writing were discussed. Those educational perspectives govern U.S. writing center practice as well, yet writing centers in Japan may need to adjust and modify those educational principles based on students' cultural and educational backgrounds and their needs to utilize writing centers. At the same time, Japanese university education needs to change in such a way as to make students' learning experience match that in the writing centers. Moreover, writing centers are expected to serve as a liaison to create a campus-wide learning environment for students' learning through writing. Although writing centers in Japan are still in their starting period, it is crucial for administrators and faculty members to have a critical view of what to learn from U.S. writing center theory and practice and how to apply the knowledge gained from U.S. writing center studies to the development of writing centers in Japan.. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Charles Clark and Professor David Dalsky for their valuable comments and suggestions on the earlier versions of this manuscript and my two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful comments and constructive feedback.. — 220 —.
(17) WritingCentersin the U.S.and Japan References. ALESS (Active Learning of English for Science Students),. the University. of Tokyo.. (2011). Retrieved from http://aless.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/?page_id=190 Bell, D., & Youmans, M. (2006). Politeness and praise: Rhetorical issues in ESL (L2) writing center conferences. Writing Center Journal, 26, 31-47. Blau, S., & Hall, J. (2002). Guilt-free tutoring:. Rethinking. how we tutor. non-native. English speaking students. Wring Center Journal, 23, 23-44. Bruffee, K. A. (1984). Collaborative learning and the "conversation of mankind." College English, 46, 635-652. Carino, P. (2002). Reading our own words: Rhetorical. analysis and the institutional. discourse of writing centers. In P. Gillespie, A. Gillam, L. F. Brown, & B. Stay (Eds.),. Writing center research:. Extending. the conversation.. Mahwah,. NJ:. Lawrence Erlbaum. Carter-Tod,. S. (1995). The role of the writing center in the writing practices. students. (Doctoral dissertation).. Available from ProQuest. of L2. Dissertations. and. Theses database. (AAT 9606230). Casanave,. C. P. (2004). Controversies. in second language. writing:. Dilemmas. and. decisions in research and instruction. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Cogie, J. (2006). ESL student participation. in writing center sessions. Writing Center. Journal, 26, 48-66. Cogie, J., Strain, K., & Lorinskas, S. (1999). Avoiding the proofreading trap: The value of the error correction process. Writing Center Journal, 19, 7-32. Harris, M., & Silva, T. (1993). Tutoring Composition and Communication, Hays, G. (2010). Learners. helping learners. ESL students:. Issues and options. College. 44, 525-537. in an EFL writing center. In A. M. Stoke. (Ed.), JALT 2009 Conference Proceeding, 1-8. Tokyo: Japan Association. for. Language Teaching. Hays, G., & Narita, M. (2011, June). How can I help you?: Exploring tutor/tutee interactions in an EFL writing center in Japan. Paper presented at the Symposium on Second Language Writing, Taipei, Taiwan. Johnston, S. (2009). Writing centers in Japan and Asia. The Language Teacher, 33(6),. — 221 —.
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