Reading between the Lines: Professional Tutor Training with the Stanislavski System for Actors

his chapter presents exercises developed in an Irish university writing center for postgraduate, or what I term professional, writing center tutors. Drawn from the work of Constantin Stanislavski, these exercises have been created to help tutors to engage with the students text at a deep level without judging or criticizing the text and thus compromising the writing centers identity as a nonjudgmental and supportive space. In designing these exercises, I drew on my experience as a manager of the Academic Writing Centre (AWC), a busy writing center catering to the entire student population of the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG). While the structure of the AWC, which I describe in more detail in the next section, might differ from its counterparts elsewhere, I believe the lessons learned here are applicable to writing centers worldwide.