KEYWORDS

instructional feedback; tutor ethos; tutor persona; writing in the disciplines;

writing across the curriculum; linguistic justice

ABSTRACT

In this session, tutors will learn about genre, writing in the disciplines, and critical language awareness as they expand their knowledge on how to tutor students across the curriculum with widely varying disciplinary writing needs. Tutors will also develop reflective practices for creating and articulating their individual tutoring philosophy to define their purpose and goals as writing tutors. This training session was originally designed for professional tutors who had writing experience but lacked training in writing tutoring praxis and applying best practices. It can be easily customized to early-service tutors or more advanced tutors through its case study analysis approach and extension options. This session can be conducted in-person or online, preferably synchronously (see Extensions & Adaptations for asynchronous suggestions).

CONTENTS

TRAINING DETAILS

LESSON OVERVIEW

I developed this lesson during my first year at a new university. A stranger to working with professional tutors (who lacked the longitudinal training student tutors often receive), I had to learn the context and identify training needs. At the time, I was serving as my campus’s writing program administrator, a distinct role from the writing center director. While many tutors also taught in the writing program, I did not manage tutors. However, I developed this training as open to anyone in the writing program or writing center, as all would benefit from learning about writing and writing center studies’ theoretical backings and best practices. For the purpose of this lesson, I have tailored the training specifically to tutors. The original participants predominately came from creative writing or literature backgrounds, some had high school teaching experience, and most had little exposure to scholarship in writing studies pedagogy and writing center tutoring. Based on that context, this training asks tutors to start by drawing from their own writing experiences and invites them to consider the network of writing experiences across students’ educational journeys.

This training helps tutors ground their identities as literacy sponsors to more holistically and positively impact students’ academic literacies. As Deborah Brandt (1998), a pioneer in sociocultural literacy research, explains, literacy sponsors “are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way” (p. 166). There were two major goals of this training: 1) to help participants develop their knowledge of literacy theory and approaches to literacy education; and 2) to raise their metacognitive awareness of the significance of their role as literacy sponsors when tutoring clients, recognizing that being a writer, teaching writing, and tutoring writing are all distinct activities with unique funds of knowledge and best practices.

The scholarship backing this training reflects threshold concepts in writing studies and writing center scholarship. Genre studies research that promotes rhetorical awareness and transfer rather than isolated content and disembodied grammars invites tutors to think beyond individual tutoring assignments (Hyland, 2007). Writing in the disciplines-based suggestions oppose tutoring by osmosis and promote explicit disciplinary convention learning, helping tutors frame the kinds of advice they could offer in tutoring sessions (Carter, 2007). Critical language awareness research urges tutors to consider the value and appropriateness of different dialects and grammars that could be employed in various rhetorical situations (Shapiro, 2022). By engaging with these concepts, participants can develop knowledge and metalanguage for supporting students’ writing beyond individual assignments and lower-order concerns.

Participants examine how these scholarly concepts appear in their current tutoring practices through a guided reflection. The reflection activity, known as the tutoring philosophy, aligns with Tardy et al.’s (2018) research on how raising metacognitive awareness about theory learning can enhance writing educators’ practices and influence their identity over time. When tutors identify why they became a tutor and the kind of tutor they want to become, they open opportunities to make praxis learning more meaningful. Tutors can connect their learning to particular aspects of their tutoring identities and therefore functionally understand not only certain strategies and frameworks but also why they might use them. In the original training, because the participants did not have much foundational knowledge of tutoring praxis, starting with something they were familiar with—themselves-–provided a lower entry point to begin engaging with the training content. However, this training works for advanced tutors as well because it is important to ongoingly track our unique tutoring philosophies as we grow as tutors, scholars, and people.

I led this and another stand-alone synchronous online training in Spring 2024. Few participants attended, as we could no longer compensate tutors for their professional development. Therefore, the learning outcomes focused on breadth over depth, introducing participants to a range of potential strategies they could easily add to their toolkits rather than impractically attempting to develop expertise. Scholars will notice many of the key terms shared in the training are defined in my plain language to reduce cognitive overload (foundational texts on these topics are provided in the References and Additional Resources below). Just as writing is a skill developed over time, so too, is writing tutoring; these conditions were not ideal.

Nevertheless, tutors who attended commented on how many of these concepts were new to them and how they appreciated learning explicit writing pedagogy that directly connected with their tutoring (and teaching in the writing program). As is often echoed in areas like the scholarship of teaching and learning and writing in two-year college training contexts, participants appreciated learning immediately applicable tutoring strategies. This is an aspect that facilitators should esteem even in modifications: Especially because of the newness of these concepts in my own context, this lesson could (and should) be extended into a much longer session or larger curriculum—for more information, view Extensions and Adaptations below.

LEARNING OUTCOMES/OBJECTIVES

As a result of completing this training, participants should be able to:

Because of the case study approach, this lesson can be easily adapted to suit participants’ needs, but overall, participants should work towards the learning objectives of identifying and defining key concepts, applying these concepts as praxis in unique tutoring sessions, and considering what a writing center serving genres across the curriculum might entail.

INSTRUCTIONAL PLAN

LESSON OUTLINE

Use the outline below as a guide to detail each step of the lesson plan for another administrator to follow.

PRE-WORK

INTRODUCTION

BODY OF LESSON

CONCLUSION

DETAILED LESSON

"Sponsoring Literacy Sponsors' Literacies" slide deck

PRE-WORK

No pre-work was assigned for this training given the situational constraints, but for contexts allowing pre-work, participants would benefit from (p)reviewing the concepts of genre, transfer, writing across the curriculum, writing in the disciplines, and critical language awareness. Howard Community College’s brief textbook chapter, “GENRE in the WILD: Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical (Eco)systems” (2016) is a useful beginner-level resource. Elon University’s “Statement on Writing Transfer” (2015), The Ohio State University’s “Helping Students Write Across the Disciplines” (n.d.), and the Critical Language Awareness Collective’s “Six Principles for CLA Pedagogy” (n.d.) guides are useful facilitator-facing resources. These can be excerpted and scaffolded to meet local needs. Additionally, the reflective writing listed in Step 1 of the Body of the Lesson could be assigned as pre-work, especially if facilitators want participants to engage more deeply.

INTRODUCTION (10 MINUTES)

Workshop outcomes (Slide 4) 

Welcome participants to the training by previewing what they will learn and highlighting that the session consists of a discussion, collaborative case study assessment, genre analysis, and tutoring philosophy writing activity. Tell them to expect that by the end of the workshop, participants should be able to:

• Explain basic definitions of critical language awareness, metacognition, learning transfer (i.e., teaching for transfer, near transfer, far transfer, low road transfer, high road transfer), genre, writing across the curriculum, and writing in the disciplines;
• Investigate and apply best practices for unique tutoring situations and clients’ prior learning experiences and rhetorical contexts to promote transfer;
• Demonstrate genre knowledge by questioning how texts mediate language, content, and format choices; and 
• Reflect upon their purpose as a writing tutor, revising as they gain knowledge and experiences.

What do you call it?; Recap (Slides 5-8)

To kickstart participants’ engagement and assess their’ knowledge level, invite them to brainstorm definitions in their own words for the terms critical language awareness, metacognition, teaching for transfer, near transfer, far transfer, low road transfer, high road transfer, genre, writing across the curriculum, and writing in the disciplines. Guide participants’ discussion to generate accurate definitions. Whereas the transfer terms are discrete (Perkins & Salomon, 1988), invite participants to define the others in their own words, considering what the most important aspects of the theoretical frameworks are and how to explain them. Plain language definitions are provided on Slides 6 and 8; transfer terms are defined on Slide 7. (Again, for foundational scholarship with traditional definitions and extended explanations of the terms, see sources in the References and Additional Resources sections.)

If participants lack rapport or basic knowledge of these terms, it might be best to invite individual work. However, for situations with greater comfortability with each other and foundational writing studies knowledge, collaborative, public tools like Padlet (for notetaking), Mentimeter (for polling), or a discussion or virtual meeting chat (for an online event) could support learning and community development.

BODY OF LESSON (40 MINS)

Reflection (Slide 9)

Invite participants to create a personal tutoring philosophy by responding to the prompt:

Provide reflective writing time of at least five minutes (or assign this as pre-work). Participants should aim to write at least a paragraph or detailed list, but probably no more than one single-spaced page to balance concision with detail. Within these philosophies, participants might write statements like:

Tutoring philosophies (Slide 10)

Ask participants to review their tutoring philosophy and identify any of the key concepts discussed in the Introduction.

Open discussion about which concepts do (not) appear and how/why. If needed, prompt conversation by asking questions that go concept by concept to see how participants responded, or have participants share their philosophies with the group and adopt a more holistic approach. Depending on time constraints, facilitators might ask all or a subset of participants to respond. Below are potential guiding questions:

Encourage participants to practice mindfulness during the training by considering how they might want to revise their written philosophy and embodied tutoring practices based on what they learn and experience. 

Case Studies to Try Out What You Know (Slide 11-13)

Have participants set aside their tutoring philosophy. Transition to the case study portion of this training by inviting them to apply the goals and beliefs established in their philosophies and key terms to the cases below.

Case study #1 (Slide 12)

Case Study #1: A junior nursing major is in [health or professional communication course at local institution]. His assignment is to identify an academic article from his discipline, summarize its main findings, and generate the APA citation for the text. He has found and read the article. He comes to you asking for help with the summary and citation.

Case study #2 (Slide 13) 

Case Study #2: An undeclared, multilingual freshman is in [lower-level writing or English language course at local institution]. She participated in an in-class lesson on rules for avoiding run-on sentences and sentence fragments in English. Her assignment is to revise her essay accordingly. She comes to you with a middle-stage draft asking for revision help.

The case studies could first be analyzed independently or in small groups but should ultimately be discussed in a whole-group setting to help participants establish analytical frameworks and calibrate their approaches.

Discussion (15 mins)

For each case study, conduct an open discussion guided by the following questions.

Facilitators can progress to the next step as participants successfully operationalize their theory knowledge to collect information about a client’s background, brainstorm connections and conventions that could help client comprehension, and consider sociolinguistic factors, even when encountering new clients, genres, and disciplines.

Facilitators should note that, depending on group size and dynamics, participants may want to spend more time on discussion. Facilitators may plan to spread this training into a longer session or multiple sessions depending on tutors’ skill and engagement levels. To keep the conversation on track, facilitators can focus the conversation by discussing elements common to the local context, like the kinds of projects or students that frequent the writing center. Facilitators could also modify the case studies to be more relatable to the local context.

Practice genre analysis; genre analysis 101 (Slide 14-15)

For the final activity in the Body of the Lesson, have participants conduct a genre analysis to gain experience analyzing different kinds of texts to understand their structures and functions. The purpose of genre analysis is to identify the rhetorical situation in which a genre appears so that readers can better understand the messages conveyed in the text and so that writers can create texts that meet the situation’s needs. In tutoring sessions, tutors can employ this practice to help clients identify what textual elements they need to understand or create; make this explicit to participants. This activity has multiple steps that build upon each other. Depending on how conversations about the case studies go and participants’ level of familiarity with the genre and genre analysis, this could push the training over an hour. Recommendations for reducing and increasing content to fulfill time limits are provided.

Identify genre samples (Slide 14)

Ahead of the training, identify a specific genre that participants will analyze. Choose genres that are likely to appear in the local context, being careful to avoid “false” genres that are not tied to any specific rhetorical situation, like “research paper” or “argument essay.” If time is limited, genres with lower word counts like an email will require less time to analyze. In the original training, participants analyzed paragraph-long introductions to engineering grant proposals in fifteen minutes. Facilitators could assign only the genre analysis, or if more time is available, have participants analyze multiple genres or create their own case studies of tutoring a session with the unfamiliar genre, which they could perform or discuss with the group. Examples of genres (clearly tied to disciplinary writing situations) to analyze include:

• • A natural scientist’s lab report
  • An engineer’s grant proposal
  • A marketer’s pitch deck
  • A linguist’s literature review
  • A political scientist’s policy memo
  • A graphic designer’s resume
  • A filmmaker’s film review
  • An anthropologist’s ethnography
  • A writer’s literacy narrative
  • A student’s grade change request email to a professor

Facilitators may want to source genre samples beforehand for participants to use or ask participants to find their own samples to analyze. When conducting a basic genre analysis, three sample texts from the genre are sufficient.

Genre analysis 101 (Slide 15)

In the training, divide participants into small groups and introduce the activity using the following directions:

• Invite participants to analyze the genre to develop a functional understanding of it by using these questions:
• • Rhetorical situation questions:
  • • What are the social, cultural, and situational circumstances in which this text is used?
    • What are the primary goals of the text?
    • With what kind of audience does this text communicate?
    • What does it seem like the audience values?
    • What medium is used?

• Textual elements questions: 
• • How is the information organized? 
  • How is evidence provided? 
  • What assumptions are being made?
  • What language and linguistic features appear? 
  • How is it designed? 
  • What modes are used?

To emphasize disciplinary writing in this training, facilitators could guide participants to consider the discipline in which the genre appears to create an even more robust understanding of the genre and discourse community. For example, science writers often prefer to use APA style and IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) format because they value relevant information that is clearly articulated to emphasize accuracy and relevancy. Meanwhile, humanist writers often prefer to use MLA style and more creative formats because they value artful language, and that research is usually less concerned with data collection and empirical results. Raising participants’ awareness of discourse communities can also boost tutors’ capacities for empathy and rapport building when communicating with clients from specific communities in addition to their rhetorical resourcefulness.

Remind participants that rhetorical and textual elements inform each other, so they need to look at both the details and big picture. Encourage them that by using this skillset to identify commonalities across texts, they become informed on genres, even unfamiliar ones, which enables them to give informed advice across all kinds of texts.

Inform participants to keep these guidelines in mind as they analyze the three samples:

• If an element occurs in all three samples, consider this a mandatory move/convention, meaning that an author must develop this element to successfully create a text in the genre.
• If an element occurs in two samples, consider this a recommended move/convention.
• If an element occurs in only one sample, consider whether this might be a deviant that should be avoided or a stylistic outlier.

Facilitators might want to use this as an opportunity to further explore critical language awareness by inviting participants to consider the dynamics between agency and genre conventions. Even when authors know genre conventions, they may still choose to go against them. Ask participants to hypothesize if the elements occurring in only one sample seem purposeful for a desired effect or if they seem accidental. Regardless of the choices that a writer makes, there will be consequences. Tutors that help clients think through potential actions and consequences to promote clients’ agency to make the choices that feel most authentic and purposeful to them. Invite participants to consider how they can study genre conventions with clients while letting clients know that, ultimately, the decisions about their writing are theirs to make. To deepen the conversation, facilitators can ask participants to question the origins of a genre, focusing on the reasons it emerged, its early creators and maintainers, or ways it has evolved over time and why. Considering power and authority through this lens blends critical language awareness and genre analysis to help participants conceive of the texts and clients that enter a writing center as connected to a social fabric that is much larger than the session, center, or school alone. 

Debrief participants’ analyses. Guide the conversation to a collaboratively created “definition” of the genre’s features that a tutor could use to walk a client through it.

CONCLUSION (10 MINUTES)

Debrief (Slide 16)

Open debriefing discussion about the case studies and genre analysis guided by the following questions:

• What did you learn about your own rhetorical knowledge and command of different genres and positionalities? How can you expand or refine this knowledge to better support a wide variety of clients?
• How does the consideration of genre and disciplinary writing (such as grammar, tone, voice, active language, and punctuation) impact your understanding of language effectiveness? How will you apply this knowledge to your tutoring sessions?
• What kinds of strategies can you employ to facilitate conversations with clients to critically approach language use and agency in specific genres and disciplines?
• What kinds of strategies can you employ to facilitate conversations with clients to help raise your own awareness about unfamiliar genres and their metacognition of writing transfer and development?

Reflection (Slide 17)

End the training by asking participants to return to their tutoring philosophy. Provide reflective writing time for participants to revise and develop their tutoring philosophies. This could easily be extended into a post-training assignment.

ASSESSING FOR UNDERSTANDING

There are two immediate assessment measures.

1. Facilitators should watch how participants approach the case studies. Consider the depth of analysis and the takeaways, attending in particular to any biases that could arise as harmful to the client (or tutor). Listen for key concepts and how they are being applied to the case studies and genre analyses. 

2. Facilitators should review the tutoring philosophies to see how participants apply their newly developed knowledge through the context of their goals. An extra measure could be examining the tutoring philosophy first drafts and second drafts as pre- and post-training comparative data points. Look for connections between praxis and how participants see themselves and understand their work at the present as well as in consideration with the goals and ideals they establish.

For more longitudinal development and assessment, continue to the Extensions and Adaptations section.

EXTENSIONS AND ADAPTATIONS

FOR SIGNIFICANT EXTENSIONS

As described above, combining this much information into one training session was not ideal, and largely possible only to the group’s small size. This training would be better if broken into some combination of pre-work and post-work, or adding time or sessions, especially for less experienced tutors. Below, I provide two extended scenarios for extension that can be adapted to facilitators’ local needs: an orientation for new tutors and a semester-long monthly professional development workshop series

Multi-day new tutor orientation

This could be one of the very first activities to establish a baseline of new tutors’ beliefs, regardless of implementing the philosophy alone or the entire training at once. Have participants return to their tutoring philosophies and revise at the end of each day of training, working through the parts of this lesson as well as other key topics explored at orientation. At the end of orientation, have participants identify an actionable step to work towards during the first month of tutoring. They can log instances of engagement with this step and then debrief through a revised philosophy or meeting with a writing center administrator. Similarly, participants could log the different genres they encounter. Extend reflection and revision throughout tutors’ first semester or year to track their development at an even more longitudinal scale. This would encourage continuous experimentation and iteration, which is a useful practice to instill in novice tutors.

Semester-long monthly professional development workshop series

Assign a first draft of the tutoring philosophy to be completed before any combination of readings suggested here or additional materials as pre-work. Then, host a first workshop that focuses on unpacking and understanding theoretical knowledge. Have participants create a field notes-style log of their tutoring experiences that connects to any of the key concepts and assign a revision of the tutoring philosophy to complete ahead of the subsequent workshop.

At the second workshop, use the log experiment and revision as a conduit for connecting the previous workshop’s content to tutoring practices by examining the case studies. Have participants create another field notes-style log, this time cataloging all of the genres they encounter in the writing center in their tutoring appointments and assign a revision of the tutoring philosophy to complete ahead of the third workshop.

At the third workshop, use the data to strategize tutoring for the kinds of disciplinary genres that frequent the center, implementing genre analysis to do so. Have participants repeat the field notes-style log of experiences and key concepts, adding in the genre catalogue to create a thorough snapshot of their embodied praxis experiences. Assign a roleplay inspired by their logged experiences to perform at the fourth and final workshop.

At that final workshop, use the performances as a culminating touchstone for processing the semester’s training and applications. Have participants finish the workshop series by submitting a polished tutoring philosophy.

FOR LOW-LIFT ADAPTATIONS

The key terms and case study model is highly adaptable to a range of content knowledge and applications, as facilitators can exchange them to best fit local needs.

Depending on tutors’ career status (e.g., high school, undergraduate, professional tutors), facilitators can adapt the depth of exploration into theory. For more significant discussions of theory, see the Additional Resources section.

If extending this training across multiple sessions, have participants develop and perform a role play scenario recreating a tutoring session where they employ the key concepts, like tutoring an unfamiliar genre or working with a client from a language background different than the target language. Have them debrief the session, highlighting successes, learning opportunities, and areas for improvement.

Following the genre analysis activity, collaboratively compile collected samples (and analyses) into a shared space (e.g., online repository, binder at tutoring stations) that tutors can access during sessions to use as resources for facilitating the session.

If extending this training across multiple sessions, have participants analyze new genres for each meeting, either as prework or during the session. For a more substantial extension, have participants present their analyses to the group. Worden’s (2019) “unfamiliar genre project” demonstrates extended work with unfamiliar genres; see the Additional Resources section.

For asynchronous adaptations, facilitators could have participants contribute through online discussion boards and submit video recordings of role plays.

Bickmore, L. (2016). 49. GENRE in the WILD: Understanding genre within rhetorical (eco)systems. In D. Buck (Ed.), Essentials for ENGL-121: Texts on writing, language, and literacy. Howard Community College. Retrieved October 16, 2025, from https://pressbooks.howardcc.edu/essentials/chapter/genre-in-the-wild-understanding-genre-within-rhetorical-ecosystems/

Elon University Center for Engaged Learning. (2015). Elon statement on writing transfer. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/elon_statement_writing_transfer.pdf

The Ohio State University Teaching & Learning Resource Center. (n.d.). Helping students write across the disciplines. https://teaching.resources.osu.edu/teaching-topics/helping-students-write-across

Shapiro, S. (n.d.). Welcome to the CLA Collective! https://cla.middcreate.net/

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to the one who started it all Samford University Communication Resource Center former director, Dr. Charlotte Brammer. 

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Analeigh E. Horton

Fairleigh Dickinson University

Analeigh E. Horton is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & Composition at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She applies her interdisciplinarity in literacy, second language writing, writing across the curriculum, and program administration to investigate identity and user experiences, emergent technologies, and organizational culture. Analeigh is guided by sociocultural and sociolinguistic theories to study how people interact with their environment. Her scholarship appears in edited collections and journals such as Composition Forum, Computers and Composition, Journal of Writing Assessment, and The WAC Journal. Analeigh is Chair of the CCCC Second Language Writing Standing Group, Co-Chair of the Critical Language Awareness Collective Writing Centers Group, and NGO Delegate to the United Nations. A CWPA Graduate Research Award winner (2021), AAC&U Future Leaders Award finalist (2022), and Fulbright alumna (2016-17), Analeigh has taught in China, England, Mexico, Spain, the UK, and the US.

 

• Horton, Center Moves, no. 5, 2026