Writing Center

What kind of help does the Writing Center offer?

As one of many free support services offered to students, the Berry College Writing Center is available to help you with the writing you do for any course.  The Center is staffed by friendly, experienced peer consultants who have taken a course in tutoring and have been successful writers in their own classes.  They can help you with any part of the invention or drafting process: from brainstorming and organizing ideas, to revising for complexity and quality of thought, to editing your paper for format and grammar.  In essence, they will help you to think through your ideas and to see your paper from the perspective of a real yet sympathetic reader. 

What happens at the Writing Center?

Typically, a student will make an appointment with the Writing Center and meet with a consultant for 30 minutes or so.  The consultant will ask you about your assignment, where you are in the drafting process, your sense of your paper, any concerns that you would like to address, and where you would like them to focus their reading and response.  By the end of the session, you will leave with several concrete suggestions for revision and a better understanding of your paper’s structure and content.  One thing consultants do not do, however, is simply proofread papers; rather, their goal is to help you develop the revision skills needed to do well on both current and future assignments.  It is therefore helpful if you visit the Writing Center early in the drafting process and, perhaps, return again to work on final editing and formatting concerns.

What if I am interested in becoming a Writing Consultant?  

Great!  We are always on the lookout for enthusiastic students who want to help others with writing.  Generally, writing consultants are sophomores or juniors who have completed the first year writing sequence at Berry and have a recommendation from a professor.  To learn more about becoming a peer writing consultant, or if you have any other questions, please contact the Writing Center director, Dr. Chris Diller, by telephone (706-238-5877) or email.

What other services does the Writing Center provide? 

The Writing Center also works with students through a “Writing Associates” program that pairs an experienced peer tutor with a professor and his/her students on an assignment or for the entire semester.  In this way, a tutor works one-on-one with the professor to understand their goals for a particular writing assignment, helps the student with the drafting and revision process for the assignment(s), and provides the professor with feedback about the issues students faced in responding to the assignment.  The program also offers peer writing tutors themselves the benefit of a more advanced work experience.  For more information on the program, click here.