Philosophy

As part of UCLA Writing Programs, the Undergraduate Student Writing Center’s mission is to enrich the education of undergraduate students in all disciplines through individualized consultations on writing.

Our goal is not only to help students with a particular writing assignment, but also to help them become more effective and confident writers. This means that we work on two levels at once: we help writers 1) to gain insight into how they write most productively and efficiently, and 2) to meet the intellectual and rhetorical demands of specific writing tasks or assignments.

We offer support at any point in the writing process: when writers are starting a writing assignment; after they have written a draft or part of a draft; after they have gotten feedback from a professor or TA and want to begin revising; as they are polishing a paper and want help in learning how to proofread and edit their own writing.

Serving as attentive and experienced readers, peer learning facilitators (PLFs) work collaboratively with writers and tailor sessions to the writers’ needs and concerns. PLFs can help writers discover, explore, and articulate their ideas as well as suggest writing strategies and alternatives for the writer to consider. PLFs can also provide instruction in the conventions of academic writing, appropriate use of sources, and language use and editing strategies. In the end, however, PLFs leave the decisions and actual writing and editing to the writers.