Teaching One-To-One: The Writing Conference

by Muriel Harris

Paperback

Published January 1, 1986

About the author

Muriel "Mickey" Harris was the director of the Purdue Writing Center where she worked elbow-to-elbow with students for over twenty-five years. Based on her experience assisting thousands of writing students, she authored the Prentice Hall Reference Guide.

She joined the Purdue faculty in 1976 as an assistant professor. Collaborating with several graduate students, she started the Purdue Writing Lab and began theorizing writing center scholarship and tutorial approaches, plus developing instructional materials for student and faculty use. Those materials were later revised and made available on the Purdue website as the Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab). The Purdue OWL is currently visited annually by several million users across the globe.

Harris’ research focuses on tutorial collaboration in writing, differences in individual writing processes, writing center theory and practice, and political and public perception of writing centers. She initiated and continues to serve as editor of the first journal for writing center scholarship, now entitled WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship. Harris’ books include Teaching One-to-One: The Writing Conference, The Prentice Hall Reference Guide (9th ed.), and Writer’s FAQs (6th ed.)

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though there is some advice about working with English language learners that seems a bit dated, the bulk of the advice that this book offers to anyone who works one-on-one with writers is as relevant today as when this book was published 20 years ago. There are lots of excellent ideas and strategies in this book, as well as compelling rationale for why writing conferences work.

[Jessica Geist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heavy on the theory side for a training manual, but it does have good points. Even though much has been written on conferencing since this book's publication, it's still a good introductory text on the matter.