What to Expect When You Visit the Writing Studio
We promote excellence in writing. Our goal is to improve writers, not just individual pieces of writing:
- We don't tell you how or what to write. We do suggest strategies, offer encouragement, and provide information to help you move forward with your work. We expect students to take responsibility for their choices with regard to their own writing.
- We don't edit or proofread for you. Doing so would violate the Duke Community Standard. We do help you with editing and proofreading techniques you can apply to your own texts.
- We don't know all the answers. We do try to show you how to explore possibilities and will refer you to reference tools for specific issues.
- We don't have the time in a 50-minute session to address every issue in a piece of writing. We do help you set priorities based on your current needs, identifying points of revision that are possible within a particular time frame.
- We don't write for you. We do encourage students to write and take notes during their conference.
- We don't promote a particular style of writing. We do help students analyze assignments from different disciplines and cope with a variety of academic writing conventions.
- We don't speculate about the grade a piece of writing might receive. We do act as an audience and give feedback about how a reader might interpret what is presented.
- We don't ensure whether or not student writing violates the Duke Community Standard. We do guide and train students in proper scholarly procedures.
Writing Studio Use of iPods
In conjunction with the Duke Digital Initiative, the Writing Studio provides tutors with iPods and voice recorders to use as tools to enhance and enrich tutoring practices, both during and outside of tutoring sessions.
With your permission, your tutor will record your face-to-face session on an iPod. We invite you to bring your own iPod and voice recorder to your sessions as well. By recording tutoring sessions, tutor and writer can refer back to key conversational moments during an appointment-- including brainstorming, revising, or editing ideas. Writers can also request that the tutor email them a clip to listen to after the session. In addition, these recorded sessions serve as integral pedagogical materials in tutor training within the Writing Studio community. Please note that the recorded session will not be used outside of the Duke Writing Studio community without your explicit and express consent.
Tutors also include pre-recorded clips with their E-Tutor written comments--different clips depending on the situation (first time E-Tutor user, repeat user, and writer asking for specific help with grammar). These clips help personalize the E-Tutor on-line experience by providing writers with the tutor’s personal voice to accompany and complement the written comments.
Writing Studio Submission Limit Policy
Due to our desire to serve as many students as possible, the Writing Studio limits the number of times writers can meet face-to-face or have E-tutor appointments on the same piece of writing.
Once you have asked tutors to work with you on the same piece four times, you will be advised that you have reached the limit and requested not to schedule another appointment on the same piece. Tutors are, of course, happy to work with you on other writing--with this policy in mind.
If your particular need for assistance doesn't mesh with what the Writing Studio offers, you might find private, local help for hire here.