In my work as a peer tutor at the writing center, I have had many sessions where students book an appointment solely to focus on grammar. As a rule of thumb, the writing center encourages its employees to not simply proofread a paper, as ew are there to share ideas of writing and to talk about larger topics in addition to the nuts and bolts of grammatical errors and individual sentence structure. This has frustrated several of the people that I have tutored, as they think that is just what I am there for. However, I believe writing is much more than the grammar that it instills, even though that is also incredibly important. I believe students need to overcome the fear of what they are saying as being wrong, and instead express their ideas in a consistent manner. What is most important is the ideas, and as long as long as the grammatical errors are not atrocious and not impeding the interpretation of the piece, the focus of writing center sessions should be about the voice of the speaker, and if the message and thesis is passionate and consistent.
Grammar
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