The role of the language expert in the management of a writing center

Abstract

This paper presents a reflection on the role played by the language expert in the management of a writing center –an initiative to support academic writing in a teachers’ training school. It arises from the narrative reconstruction of its creation in a Escuela normal in Guanajuato, on which emerges the significance of the actions that provide a sense of challenge and opportunity for the linguist: the unavoidable positioning face to pedagogical trends on teaching of writing, the analysis (first for learning purposes, then critical) of previous experiences on tutoring programs and practices and, emphatically: the essential knowledge of academic text as object –medium, tool, artifact– its production and its contexts, all of which requires a permanent theoretical work.This paper presents a reflection on the role played by the language expert in the management of a writing center –an initiative to support academic writing in a teachers’ training school. It arises from the narrative reconstruction of its creation in a Escuela normal in Guanajuato, on which emerges the significance of the actions that provide a sense of challenge and opportunity for the linguist: the unavoidable positioning face to pedagogical trends on teaching of writing, the analysis (first for learning purposes, then critical) of previous experiences on tutoring programs and practices and, emphatically: the essential knowledge of academic text as object –medium, tool, artifact– its production and its contexts, all of which requires a permanent theoretical work.