You may be familiar with the UW-Madison Undergraduate Writing Fellows Program which brings talented undergraduates and committed faculty together in a cooperative effort to improve student writing in a variety of courses across the College of Letters and Science. Writing Fellows work with faculty to provide one-on-one writing conferences to students in their courses working on two longer writing assignments. What you may not know is that Writing Fellows are also engaged in research about writing, working on projects for English 403, Seminar on Tutoring Writing Across the Curriculum, and often presenting their work at the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing (NCPTW).
This past October, three Writing Fellows, Grace Feller, Marie Meyer, and Michelle Pan, presented at the 2024 NCPTW Conference in Tacoma, Washington. Their panel, “Diverse Tactics, Common Goals: Tutoring and Multilingual Writers on a (Mostly) Monolingual Campus,” responded to the conference theme, “NCPTW at 40: Where Are We Now?” by focusing on developing effective conferencing approaches for students who bring a diverse range of language and cultural backgrounds to UW-Madison.
Grace, Marie, and Michelle share some reflections on their experiences presenting their research and what they learned at NCPTW.
Grace Feller: I presented my research on the preferred tutoring methods for non-native-English-speaking, multilingual, international tutees at the university, the academic structures that may be particularly challenging, and how to handle requests for grammar correction. One presentation I found particularly interesting addressed a multidisciplinary Writing Center and how each and every major can contribute a unique perspective of writing based on their academic experiences. That outlook is definitely inspiring for my own background as a History and English major! The experience was extremely rewarding. Sharing my research and hearing presentations from people with the same passions as myself was exciting, and I’m so glad I got the chance to go to the conference!
Marie Meyer: I had the opportunity to present my research on how tutors approach tutoring multilingual students and how they deal with negotiating with the dilemma of standard English vs helping students develop their own unique voice at NCPTW! I had an amazing time and it was such a great learning experience as I got to talk with many peer tutors and writing center staff from all over the country. Many of the presentations at the conference were on AI in the writing center and how the writing center can adapt to the environment that this newfound technology has created. There was very interesting discourse presented surrounding AI and how to use it ethnically, which has better prepared me to have conversations surrounding the usage of AI with my students!
Michelle Pan: My research was on the topic of ethnolinguistic bias within the UW-Madison Writing Fellows program and the nuanced nature of the skills that make us effective and suitable peer commentators. Among the various presentations, my favorite was the conference discussing the ways in which we can integrate our multidisciplinary knowledge as fellows to enhance our feedback, combining our unique strengths (ex., expressiveness from an art student, structure from a STEM student) to support students and their experience in writing better. I was captivated by the diversity of research and studies shared by fellows, interns, and directors, highlighting how the individualized strengths of each college have contributed to our perspective and exploration of topics. Yet sharing these viewpoints is essential, as it contributes to the larger conversation and advocacy for the roles of writing fellows and writing centers in universities.