The Seventh Symposium on Writing Centers in Asia was held at Tokyo International University in Kawagoe, Saitama, on Saturday, March 7, 2015. The 1-day conference was organized by the Writing Centers Association of Japan and featured a variety of 30-minute presentations, two poster sessions, and a plenary speaker. The conference presentations were delivered in either English or Japanese by an international group of practitioners based in Japan, Taiwan, and other Asian countries.

Two concurrent sessions were held in the morning. The first presentation that I attended was “Writing Centers in Taiwan: Cultivation of Teaching Force and Challenges to Meet,” by Jie-Wei of National Taiwan University. In this teaching context, postgraduate students in the disciplines, such as economics or civil engineering, take an elective semester-long course for English academic writing support. From this presentation, audience members understood the importance of strong collaboration between the content and writing teachers who facilitated students’ learning.

The second morning session I attended was titled “Issues Related to Tutoring Activities in the Writing Lounge.” The writing center at the presenter’s institution in Japan is staffed by student tutors who have returned from study abroad and the tutees are referred to the center by their instructors. Because of the small audience, participants working at undergraduate and graduate writing centers in Japan were able to engage in a productive discussion of various issues affecting their writing centers. One common issue was the scope of the tutor’s work; for example, in some writing centers, tutors are designated as “first responders” to basic student questions about essay assignments, while at other writing centers, tutors work in depth with students who are preparing journal articles for publication. Other issues included how to schedule appointments, publicize services, and recruit and retain tutors.

After lunch, I attended several other interesting presentations, such as Wei-Yan Li’s presentation “A Cognitive Exploration Into Teaching Academic Writing: LICA Project”; LICA stands for “learner-centered interactive collaborative approach.” Her research focused on tracking how much students wrote and how many edits they made on their writing tasks. She then discussed the results of efforts to improve students’ writing pace by having them write while not looking at the computer screen, thus actuating automatic response and increasing writing fluency.

Next, four presenters from Waseda University, Diego Oliveria, Safa Choi, Eriko Oshima, and Hiromi Shimada, presented “Looking Back at Waseda’s Training for New Tutors.” They talked about the results of a questionnaire about the tutor training program and how it is perceived by the new and veteran tutors at their writing center. They investigated four parts of the training program: orientation, observation (i.e., new tutors observe experienced tutors), practice sessions (i.e., experienced tutors observe new tutors), and training sheets (which are used by new and veteran tutors to reflect on the practice session). Questionnaire results showed that tutors who were more experienced found the orientation session useful, but new tutors found both the observation and practice sessions useful. The respondents also provided feedback on the observation sessions, stating that the observations need to have clear goals and that the veteran tutors need to have both time and preparation to guide the new tutors through the parts of the training program.

The final presentation I attended was delivered by Ding Yiyin, Hossain Shanawez, and Diana Kartika, from Waseda University, and was titled “Developing the Autonomy of Writers.” At their writing center, students can sign up for 45-minute sessions and there is no rule for the maximum number of visits. The presenters were particularly interested in investigating the positive effects of multiple visits (15 or more) from graduate student tutees who sought assistance with the same task, which was usually a master’s thesis. Survey interviews showed that while there is a risk of dependency, the tutees felt that working with the same tutor provided consistency and efficiency that they felt could not be achieved by working with multiple tutors.

The symposium finished with the plenary address by Dr. Kyoko Oi outlining the basics of contrastive rhetoric and situated its significance within the context of writing education in Japan.

Although the venue was located outside Tokyo, the schedule allowed for travel time before and after the event. Registration was free, but unfortunately five presentations were cancelled without prior warning. The friendly atmosphere encouraged participants to introduce themselves and start discussions about their writing centers. I recommend this professional development event to those who are interested in writing centers and/or the teaching of writing in Asia. Additional information can be found at The Writing Centers Association of Japan.

Mary Hillis is an associate professor in the Intensive English Studies Program and coordinator of the Writing Center at Kansai Gaidai University in Japan. Her interests include writing pedagogy and using literature in language teaching.