This page explains the services offered by the RCC Writing Center, and the requirements for your class related to it. You should be sure you understand those requirements, and use this part of the website as an overview to the center. However, the Writing Center also has its own website, which has been redesigned and has lots of great, useful links that you should investigate.

You have available to you an amazing and invaluable resource in the Writing Center Lab. All English 1A students are required to log eighteen hours of Writing Center time over the semester (this is about an hour a week – so try to make it a part of your regular schedule and you won’t get behind on hours). You need to acquaint yourself with the center and its many resources (English department faculty, tutoring appointments, workshops, reference books for writing and computers for word-processing and computer-assisted writing and reading programs). English 14 students should take seriously the recommendation to enroll in English 96 or 97; these are half and one-unit courses that allow you to access the many services of the Writing Center.

Writing Centers are there to help you to rethink your paper and the Center is not a drop-off service. When you have a consultation with a faculty person or a tutor, go with paper in hand, prepared to look it over with the person assisting you and with a question or problem area in mind.

What they will help you do:

• Generate ideas for writing assignments
• Clarify the purpose and audience for a paper
• Analyze choices for structuring your writing
• Make your writing more clear and understandable
• Identify and review a variety of writing problems
• Use writing reference sources
• Develop your writing process and confidence so you can better "say what you mean"

What they won’t do:

• Proofread, edit or otherwise "correct" your paper for you
• Choose a topic for you or dictate what you should write
• Tell you "what your teacher wants"
• Type your paper for you
• Work on non-course writing such as letters, resumes, etc.
• Help you very much if you show up just before a paper is due