Writing Center

The Writing Center

The Writing Center offers current Stockton students peer feedback in writing. We encourage you to come, stay awhile, and be part of Stockton's writing community.

 
Why We Exist and What We Do
Writing centers exist to foster writing community, collaboration, and learning. Stockton's Writing Center is a casual environment in which you can discuss writing with other students, faculty, and staff. Engaging regularly in such an environment improves writing knowledge and creates a sense of academic camaraderie.
 
The Writing Center employs undergraduate students trained as a peer test audience with whom to discuss your writing. These peer writers focus on global writing concerns, often thinking along these lines:
  • Are the moves you're making working? If so, what makes them effective? If not, why not? what can we try differently?
  • How will this piece be received by its audience?
  • Does this text fit its genre? If you chose your genre, is it the best possible genre given the purpose of your text?
  • What kinds of writing, both personal and academic, have you done in the past? How do those experiences relate to this assignment?

In short, sessions with peer writers offer opportunities to think critically about the writing situation at hand and revise your work accordingly, but they also create opportunities to reach back to your prior writing experiences and apply them to the present.

 

How to Get the Most from the Writing Center

Writers who engage with the Writing Center frequently throughout the writing process get the most from it. Consider these tips:

  • Have a goal. Before each session, decide what you want to look at and what you want to accomplish.
  • Start working with us early on. One of the best times to work with us is before you've physically started writing, when you're still considering the rhetorical situation and how you might approach it. Start by coming just to talk about your ideas for your text.
  • Write with us, here in our space. We're a casual environment with good natural light, plants, comfortable seating, and free snacks and drinks. Come talk with a peer writer and be part of our writing community—and enjoy a cup of coffee while you're at it.
  • Come back frequently throughout the process. Once you've started drafting, come talk with us again. Use the peer writers' earlier feedback as you continue writing, draft a little more, and then come talk with us again.
  • Let us help you revise. If you've engaged with the Writing Center throughout the process, then you've already received lots of feedback and made lots of changes. Still, once you have a complete draft, come talk with us about it again. If it's a longer text, consider breaking it into multiple visits.
 
What Now?
Join us—on a totally drop-in basis—during any of our scheduled hours. In addition to anything you've already thought up or started drafting, please bring assignment instructions, any feedback you have from your professor (either on that assignment or prior assignments), a goal for your session, and a brain ready to write and engage with others.