Recall, Recognise, Re-Invent: The Value of Facilitating Writing Transfer in the Writing Centre Setting

Abstract

The Writing Centre in Maynooth University, Ireland, is proud of its learner-centred approach (Biggs 1999, Lea et al. 2003). In the Centre we begin where students are, by asking them about their writing concerns. We also appreciate the need to recognise and build on their approaches to writing, their effective writing processes and their writing achievements. We see this under the broader heading of ‘writing transfer’. In this article, we outline our strategies to promote transfer and thinking about transfer with students before and after one-to-one appointments. In a small-scale research project we conducted, our research questions accentuated two potential principles of transfer, as noted in the Elon Statement on Writing Transfer, that ‘[s]uccessful writing transfer occurs when a writer can transform rhetorical knowledge and rhetorical awareness into performance … [when they] draw on previous knowledge and strategies … [and] … transform or repurpose that prior knowledge, if only slightly’, and that University programs can ‘teach for transfer’ (Perkins and Salomon 1988) through the use of enabling practices (Elon 2013: 4). Our work suggests that highlighting transfer in the writing centre context reinforces our learner-centred approach while also acknowledging the literacy archives with which our students present.