Prof. Peter Elbow
Professor of English Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
How Student Experience with Everyday Speaking and Spoken Language Can Improve their Academic Writing
He directed the Writing Program there--and earlier at SUNY Stony Brook. He also taught at M.I.T., Franconia College, and Evergreen State College. He has degrees from Williams College, Oxford University, and Brandeis University. He has written various books about writing, most recently Everyone Can Write: Essays Toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing (2000). Others: Oppositions in Chaucer (1975); Embracing Contraries (1986), a book about teaching and learning; What is English? (1990), a book about the profession. Writing About Media: Teaching Writing, Teaching Media (2008), published as a DVD from Media Education Foundation.
With Pat Belanoff, he wrote a textbook, A Community of Writers and shorter version Being a Writer (2001). A short section is published separately, Sharing and Responding, as a pamphlet to help students with peer feedback. He has a new book in press with Oxford UP: Vernacular Eloquence: What Has Speech Got that Writing Needs? In it he explores informal unplanned speech to show the many linguistic and rhetorical features that will benefit even the most careful writing.
Two recent articles: “A Unilateral Grading Contract to Improve Learning and Teaching” (2009); “Freewriting and Free Speech: A Pragmatic Perspective” (co-authored with Janet Bean). Everyone Can Write was given the James Britton Award by the Conference on English Education; NCTE gave him the James Squire Award “for his transforming influence and lasting intellectual contribution”; and in 2007 CCCC gave him the Exemplar Award for “representing the highest ideals of scholarship, teaching, and service.”
Dr. Katrin Girgensohn
Writing Center Director, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder)
How Student Experience can Shape Writing Centers
Katrin Girgensohn is founder and scientific director of the Writing Center at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder)/Germany. For her doctoral thesis she examined autonomous student writing groups. She was an EATAW Board member from 2003 to 2005 and is currently chair of the European Writing Centers Association (EWCA). She published a workbook on creative writing, an anthology on writing center work with international PhD students, a novel and several compilations of creative memoirs. (Photo by Heidi Fest).
Keynote Panel of Peer-tutors
Constanze Alpen (University of Cologne), Lisa Breford (University of Limerick) and Simone Tschirpke (Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder)
Peer tutoring: Through the eyes of the student tutor
Constanze Alpen is part of the team of the writing skills center at the University of Cologne since 2009. She works there as a peer tutor for consultations and holds courses about academic writing for students with focus on arrangement and argument structure of academic papers. At the University of Cologne she studies modern and contemporary history, politics, German studies and Spanish.
Lisa Breford graduated from the University of Limerick with a Master of Arts in International Studies in 2008. She then started her PhD here in the Department of Politics and Public Administration in September 2008. She has been working as a peer-tutor in the Regional Writing Centre since January 2009.
Simone Tschirpke works as a peer tutor at the writing center of the European University Viadrina (EUV) since 2008. She organizes writing groups for students writing their Bachelor- or Masterthesis and is member of staff in the project ‘Peertutoring in writing for students from students’ in secondary schools. She is also co-editor of JoSch (German journal on tutoring writing). At EUV she studies Intercultural Communication.
