Internationalizing the Writing Center

“This must-read book offers writing center administrators a roadmap for how and why they should expand services to include native speakers of other languages and those studying and writing in other languages. Though developing programs for all these writers might seem daunting, Lape details what is needed in terms of offering a rationale, theoretical underpinning, plan for development, and resources and strategies for training multilingual tutors. In an internationalized world, Lape invites us to acknowledge that it’s  time to internationalize writing centers.”—Muriel Harris

“Reading Noreen Lape’s book, you will realize what an innovative, interdisciplinary pedagogical and research space the Multilingual Writing Center can be. No other college writing center tutors writing in over ten languages and produces scholarship demonstrating the need and techniques for integrating higher order and linguistic concerns into writing tutorials.”—Carol Severino

INTERNATIONALIZING THE WRITING CENTER provides a rationale, pedagogical plan, and administrative method for developing a multilingual writing center. The book incorporates work from writing center studies as well as second language acquisition studies, including English as a second language, English as a foreign language, second language writing, and foreign language writing. Drawing on ten years of experience directing a multilingual writing center, Lape incorporates the voices and insights of foreign language writing tutors and faculty from surveys, interviews, and tutoring session reports.

Lape describes the dominance of English-medium writing centers in a globalized world and argues for expanding English-centric into multilingual writing centers. She then considers how tutor training differs when the writing center is multilingual as opposed to monolingual and the writing is second language and foreign language as well as “native” language. Chapters on tutor training explore issues such as holistic tutoring, composing in a foreign language, the role of translating in the writing process, creating a positive learning environment, and developing intercultural competence. Lape also shares original exercises that writing center administrators can use to train foreign language writing tutors. and  strategies for engaging faculty and administrators as stakeholders and collaborators.

NOREEN GROOVER LAPE is Associate Provost of Academic Affairs and Director of the Writing Program/Norman M. Eberly Multilingual Writing Center at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.