Director's Welcome Message
Welcome to The Write Way
I would like to thank you for visiting The Write Way. The Write Way English Writing Center is a private educational institution located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that provides English language instruction for ESL students of all ages. We offer a variety of courses tailored to meet the needs of our students. The main focus of our instruction deals with the skills of writing. Whether the student is a young third grader writing a short story or a graduate student writing their dissertation, The Write Way can guide you in the right direction.
As we embark on this journey, I hope to meet many eager minds at The Write Way.
Daniel Lee, M.A. TESOL
Director
The Mission
The Write Way (TWW) was established to provide one-to-one and small group writing support for writers with academic and personal goals. TWW teaches and promotes an assortment of writing workshops in a variety of contexts, conceiving of its task as creating more effective communicators, independent thinkers, and decision-makers.
The Philosophy
Language-learning research (e.g., Cumming, 1992; Izumi & Iwasaki, 2004; Krashen, 2002) shows that written language is best learned in a context of one-to-one and small group settings and through interaction with natural texts. Thus, TWW is committed to providing focused writing instruction for small groups and to integrating authentic reading and writing activities into the classroom.
The composition of high-quality writing requires writers to go through a process. At TWW, students actively engage in the writing process: pre-writing, multiple drafting, rereading, revising, and editing. Through intensive reading and writing, students expand their vocabulary, develop mastery over rhetorical styles and writing conventions (e.g., grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling), and gain valuable critical thinking skills.
We firmly believe that good writing is the result of good critical thinking skills. It is an ongoing goal of TWW to foster the development of lifelong thinking skills and strategies in our students. Through a variety of methods including the use of technology, drama, and educational games, our students are exposed to a range of methods with which to approach critical inquiry. By becoming proficient in these approaches, students develop writing and thinking skills that are rewarded in the Western educational system.
Our center also recognizes the importance of self-monitoring in writing, particularly for writers using a second language. While the actual drafting process is open only to implicit knowledge, students can make use of their explicit knowledge when revising. Being able to recognize and change differences between their product and conventions of the target language can enable students to go through multiple iterations, creating successful written products. Therefore, we emphasize the ability to self-assess as an important component of independent writing.