The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors, Third Edition

Rating:
Summary: useful resource
Review: This is an excellent resource for peer tutors, of any discipline. Included are useful descriptions of an ideal tutoring session along with strategies for coping with a variety of obstacles, such as student anxiety, difficult or uncooperative students, ESL, learning disabilities, and writing across disciplines. The handbook also provides an outline of writing center priorities, emphasizing the need to focus on higher order problems, such as organization, thesis statement, and structure, first and lower order problems, such as basic mechanical errors, last. The only downfall -- there is a lot of information packed into a little book. It makes for a valuable reference tool, but the handbook is not ideal for front cover to back cover reading. Still, it is a must have, along with The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring by Paula Gillespie and Neal Lerner, for any writing center administrator or tutor.