Piloting a model for the development of a writing centre to support discipline-specific academic and professional writing: Progress so far

Although second-language (L2) undergraduate students at one university receive support for writing in general education curriculum, the subjects they take are broadening in nature and hence outside of their chosen discipline. There are very few opportunities to seek support for writing in their disciplinary fields. Feedback on genre and language is not is mostly limited to either feedback given by subject teachers on content or as corrective feedback for those who book (one of a limited number of) sessions with language teachers. This project explores models used by various writing centres around the world to develop a model suitable for L2 contexts. Protocols and training packages have been developed for peer mentors to support student writing from the four broad disciplines of Arts and Humanities, Life Sciences Physical Science and Social Sciences (Nesi and Gardner, 2020; Gardner and Nesi, 2013). Disciplinary expertise will be harnessed through peer tutors recruited and trained by the ELC staff. In this paper, we will report on the progress of this project and present the model developed for piloting.