Course Description and Goals
ENGL 390A prepares students to work as first year composition writing tutors in the Writing Lab at Purdue.  You will review writing processes and rhetorical approaches for traditional print-based writing projects as well as multimedia-based projects which students in ENGL 106 and 108 will be producing.  The course also covers tutoring strategies and tutoring theory and provides hands-on experience in the Writing Lab. ENGL 390A can be taken for two or three credit hours, either for a grade or with a pass/no pass option.

Course Meeting Time
The course meets on Monday 11:30-12:20 in HEAV 227.  In addition to this regularly scheduled time, you must also complete additional scheduled hours of observation, mock tutorials, and activities per week in the Writing Lab. 

Office Hours
Monday 10:30-11:30 and by appointment.

Textbooks

• Gillespie, Paula and Neal Lerner.  The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring, Second Edition.  This text is available only from Von’s.

   

• Course e-book, available in TK3 format on CD-Rom.  A downloadable copy of TK3 Reader, used to access the e-book, will be packaged with the CD-Rom, and you can install this on your home computer.

   

Additional Assistance
You are expected to keep up with the reading and writing requirements of this course, and I encourage you to take advantage of any assistance available to you at Purdue. This includes making an appointment with a Writing Lab tutor for help with any 390A assignments. You may also visit me during my office hours, or you can schedule an appointment with me.

If you have a documented disability and need accommodations for this course, please notify me by the second week of classes. For more information about accommodations and disabilities, please see Adaptive Programs in the Dean of Students Office and visit http://www.purdue.edu/odos/adpro/index.htm.

Class Resources
A number of books and journals about writing center theory and practice are available in the Writing Lab, which you may use for any of your assignments. I encourage you to browse through these resources during your in-Lab hours, and feel free to ask me or any tutor for information about articles on specific topics. The UTAs and GTAs are especially good about suggesting articles and Tutor’s Columns in the Writing Lab Newsletter.

If you’d like to check out a book in the resource library, please see Hsiao-Ming.