The first time I tutored someone at Virginia Tech’s Writing Center, I was a nervous wreck. I’ve always felt kind of awkward when first meeting or talking to people, and I was afraid that it would show and then affect my ability to help my client.

Fortunately, though, that did not happen. This particular session actually made me excited about becoming a writing coach because I was able to make a connection with my client, and through our conversation she was able to come up with her own ideas and fix her own mistakes.

Virginia Tech, Radford University, and New River Community College (NRCC) all have free writing resources for students. The Virginia Tech Writing Center is its own entity while Radford’s writing center is apart of the Learning Assistance and Resource Center (LARC) and NRCC’s writing center is part of Academic Assistance.

What most people don’t know about writing center services are you can’t simply drop your paper off and leave. I’ve talked to a number of people about my job at the writing center, and a majority of the time they’ll say, “Oh, so you do proofreading?” I’ll also get new clients that will come in and ask me to edit their paper. People seem surprised when I tell them that I’m not allowed to edit, proofread, or even touch a student’s paper. Tutors at Radford and NRCC follow the same policy.

“We don’t proofread; we don’t edit. Writing tutors are cautioned never to touch a paper,” said Janet Hanks, faculty director of Academic Assistance at NRCC and former writing center director. “The student does all the work while the tutor coaches.” Hanks said the writing center saw about 300 students last year.

“We’re quick to tell folks that we’re not an editing service,” said Theresa Burris, former director of Radford’s LARC. “And we try to address what we call HOC (pronounced like hawk) and LOC (pronounced like lock), which are higher order concerns and lower order concerns.”

Higher order concerns include thesis statement or focus, organization, and clarity, and lower order concerns include sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling. While both types of concerns are important, tutors are trained to address the higher order concerns first because they have a bigger effect on the quality of the paper.

Students, especially new clients, are also sometimes surprised at how tutors conduct a tutoring session.

“The student will either read his or her paper out loud or the tutor will read it out loud, because what will happen is they will catch errors on their own,” Burris said. “We want them to self-correct as much as possible.”

The LARC reported that last year it had about 1,500 visits by more than 600 students in the fall and more than 1,200 visits and about 500 students in the spring.  A large number of students work online, too.

“We try to get the students to listen to their own work,” Hanks said. “Often, a tutor will have a student read his or her work out loud, and they hear how they sound.”

Virginia Tech writing tutors are all undergraduate and graduate students while Radford and NRCC writing tutors are both students and hired professionals. Before any tutor can begin helping students they have to go through extensive training, such as taking a course, completing a training program, and tutoring a certain number of hours under supervision and evaluation. Writing tutors at VT saw students for about 1,800 hours last year and served about 1,100 students.

All three writing centers have students from all majors and backgrounds who come in for help, but Virginia Tech’s writing center in particular has a large presence of English as a Second Language (ESL) students who use its services.

Edwoardo Nicoli, an Italian Ph.D. student in the department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, and Manutchanok “MJ” Jongpraisthporn, a Thai Ph.D. student in the department of Industrial and Systems Engineering who I’ve actually worked with a few times, both frequently visit the Virginia Tech Writing Center.

“They give assistance to a poor guy who doesn’t speak English as a first language,” Nicoli said while laughing. “Like they go through the biggest mistakes one can make while writing and give hints about English-related problems.”

“I like it because when I have to write something and I’m not sure if my professor is going to understand what I say, than I need someone to help me clear things up and help make [my writing] more like the English language as much as possible,” MJ said.

The directors said that while they have received mostly positive feedback about the writing services, there are still some improvements that could be made. Students have also made some suggestions.

“I think the most important thing is to train the tutoring staff,” Hanks said. “I wish we could hire more professional staff and solve some of that problem.”

“We could do more with more funding,” said Jennifer Lawrence, assistant director of the Virginia Tech Writing Center. “I would love to have more hours available, and I would also like to be able to hire a small staff over the summer, when a lot of graduate students are trying to get work done on their projects.”

Some students aren’t really aware that such services are available.

“They should publicize it a little bit more,” Nicoli said. “Maybe they could advertise with the various departments on campus, like this department is about 80 percent international students, so there’s a lot of people who could use help with writing and would probably take advantage if they knew more about it.”

Although tutors are there to help students with their specific needs, the students are always reminded that it’s their own writing and they must do the work.

“Once in awhile you get a student who will come in and say, ‘I worked very hard on this paper and got a D,’ and you’re like, ‘Well it’s your stuff!’ We can’t write it for you,” Hanks said.

Those in charge of the writing centers try to stress that there’s no such thing as perfection. Writing is a skill that everyone has to practice.

“Students are often extremely relieved to find the writing center and to realize that they can improve their writing and also become more confident in their writing,” Lawrence said. “I think there’s sometimes an assumption that writing is some sort of natural gift and therefore can’t be improved. It’s good to break this myth.”

“The overall goal is to create interdependent learners,” Burris said. “Meaning that they’re not dependent or independent, but recognize that a certain amount of work is required on their own part, but also recognize that there’s nothing wrong with asking for help.

“When I talked to my own students, or in the past when I was representing the LARC, I tell folks that even the best, most well-known authors have editors,” Burris continued. “It’s important to always get a second pair of eyes to look at your writing.”

Before I became a tutor at the Virginia Tech Writing Center, I would write a paper the night before and wouldn’t even bother giving it a second look after I finished. While watching others go through the writing process I discovered my own strengths and weaknesses and was then able to build upon them. I know that there will always be room for improvement, but I’m now more confident than I’ve ever been.

Lindsey Macdonald is an intern for the New River Voice and a student at Virginia Tech. She continues to be a writing tutor.