The Writing Center's Role in the Academic Life of an English Foreign Language Student from an Instructor's Perspective

The English Writing Center (WC) has recently become a writing support service in selective Lebanese universities even though it has been a common practice in Western universities for the last twenty years. The article from a university instructor's experience aims to bring forward the reasons the WC at Lebanese universities is slowly attracting students to its provided practices and how disciplinary instructors amongst other socio-cultural factors are contributing towards students misconceptions of the WC philosophy and services. The article first introduces the profile of the Lebanese university English as a foreign language (EFL) student to provide a background on their English language level of proficiency and expectations from the WC tutors and the misguided understanding of the WC philosophies and framework practices that are opposing students' expectations from the WC; and continues to construct the need for the WC to re-evaluate its current writing pedagogy and process between tutor and student. The article concludes by discussing the negotiated roles WC tutors, disciplinary instructors and faculty management should take in order to transfer students' misconception of the WC aims and objectives and to take responsibility for their writing.