To make an appointment, use the appointment scheduler. Appointments are not required, but they are strongly recommended. You may sign up to meet with a tutor for either 30 or 60 minutes. If you want to work regularly with a particular tutor throughout the term, that can usually be arranged. To make a special tutor arrangement, contact Anne Brubaker in the Writing Program: abrubake@wellesley.edu
Tutors work with you one-on-one, helping you with your writing assignments, including summaries, response papers, essays, research papers, lab findings and reports, and senior theses. Tutors can help you with any English-language writing assignment for any course. In addition, tutors can advise you on application essays for fellowships or graduate or professional school.
The tutors' goal is to help students generate, organize, revise, and improve their writing. Tutors will look at work at any stage of the writing process. In fact, you can meet with a tutor before you've even written a draft just to brainstorm ideas for a paper. While tutors will work with you to address problems of grammar or usage, they will not proofread your paper or correct mistakes for you.
You can expect the tutor to ask you lots of questions about your paper's subject matter, its organization, and your goals for the assignment. The tutor will read over your draft and offer advice and strategies for creating a more effective paper.
Bring your assignment prompt to the tutor session, along with any writing you have done. Also bring specific questions: the more specific you are in directing tutors to the main sources of your concern, the more productive the tutoring session will be. Don't expect to simply ask the tutor to read your paper and tell you if it is "good" or not.
The earlier in the writing process you see a tutor, the better. Consider seeing a tutor as soon as you get an assignment. At the least, aim to see a tutor a day or two before an assignment is due. That way, you'll have time to absorb and apply what you learned in the tutoring session. Meeting with a tutor on the same day that something is due is not advised.
Writing tutors offer in-person appoints in the The Pforzheimer Learning and Teaching Center (PLTC) and online.
Any of the tutors can help you with most writing issues. Students who would like more intensive language support may schedule a session with Nancy Decker, our professional tutor for multilingual/ELL students, or one of our specially-trained peer tutors who focus on working with multilingual students. You can schedule appointments with them using the appointment scheduler. Visit the Resources for Multilingual Students webpage for more information.
Any of the tutors can help you with lab reports, research findings, or any other assignment you receive for your science classes. However, if you would like to see someone who specializes in science writing, such a tutor is available a few hours per week through our online scheduler.
Contact the PLTC and request a department tutor.
Any currently-enrolled Wellesley student can work with the writing tutors.
No. Writing tutors are available to currently-enrolled Wellesley students free of charge.
Students may schedule tutorials that last either 30 or 60 minutes. Students may not work with a tutor on a single paper for more than 60 minutes on a given day. After an hour, the student will have plenty of advice to act upon. In addition, work beyond an hour may put the tutor in the position of collaborator, rather than advisor, and this may lead to a violation of the Honor Code.
Students may meet with tutors up to 3 hours per week.
When a writing tutor position is open, it will be listed in Handshake. Typically, tutor applications are due in late March or early April for jobs that start the following school year.