Writing Center Review

Rujian, Zhou

12/13/2015

Visited The Writing Center

Last Tuesday, I visited the writing center of our school. I have heard about writing center a lot last year. My English teacher, Mr.G told me that I can get a lot of help from there, and my Writing teacher Mrs.B also said that. But this time is my first visit to the writing center.

The writing center is on the second floor of Humanity. It is different from the other classrooms where near it. Inside of the writing center, there is a long wooden table at the center of it. Around the table, there are 4 tall chairs. The first impression it gave me was warm and welcome. Also, there was a flower perfume smell in the room. I felt very comfortable when I talked about my dairies with Mrs.Swift.

Firstly, Mrs.Swift let me read about my dairies to her. This is a very helpful way to check articles, I did it at my dorm room too. Because I had checked my diary many times before I came, including I did reviews at class, I felt very confident when I read it. I thought that there was no a single mistake in my dairies, and I did not need to spend more than 10 minutes at here. But I was proven wrong just about 5 second later. It was my second sentence of my entry, I wrote “There are no changes, always the same people, same building and same life.” I was complete shock by this, even though I had checked a lot in the dairies, there was still such a careless mistake. I was very impressive, and I quickly changed “are” into “were” before Mrs.Swift said anything.

After that, the real big problem came. When I read the last sentence of my entry “Today, my journey had started”, Mrs. Swift stopped me. Then she said “ Here, because people always write diary at night; usually before going to bed, it is better to use present time.” I was confused and had thought a lot about this sentence myself too. I talked about my reason to use “had” in here to Mrs.Swift, which I thought my whole entry used in past time, so it was reasonable to use past time here. In this way, the times fit each other in the entry. Mrs.swift pointed out that, even though the other sentences were in past time, to this sentence it was happening when the time I was writing. So it was present time to me, as the writer. It was a really confuse and difficult question to me. Mrs.Swift noticed that and gave me more examples about this. Moreover, when she saw I was still not understand of it, she went to her room and took a grammar book from there.

At the moment she was looking for the grammar book, K who is my classmate came to the writing center too. I was very happy that I had a partner with me. After all, I felt very nervous about being one to one with a teacher. K’s coming let me relaxed a lot. Then Mrs.Swift brought her grammar book out. She talked with K when she saw him. After that, she explained about my mistakes to me and K. She told us a sentence that she read from book “People always live in the past”. She explained that, everything people did became the history at the moment the people did it. It was a very hard to understand this sentence, but it explained my problem. I knew that there were several other sentences that I used in past tense, so I went to correct those sentence when Mrs.Swift began checking K’s dairy.

I was in the writing center for about 45 minutes, I left there a little early before my free period end because I needed to change my art class at academy office. I did not realize I had stayed there for how long after I looked at the clock on my ipad. Even though I stayed there for almost a class’ time, I only read and checked my 2 dairies with Mrs.Swift. But I had learnt a lot, except the past tense confusing. Mrs.Swift also talked about comma splice, and run-on sentence to us. She was very conscientious when she listened me reading my diaries and found the mistakes immediately. Moreover, I was impressive that she explained to me very detailed. She used a lot of examples, like she had so many ways to teach me that her idea would run out.

After that, I realized that why so many teachers encourage students in Cheshire Academy go to visit the writing center. It is a place that can bring your articles a lot of changes. I felt my dairies became much better before I went there. And the teachers in the writing center were very kind and patient, they can listen or read your articles for an hour and find every mistakes. The writing center can help student a lot, if you have a chance and want to improve your writing, I suggest you to visit there as well.