During these past four months, I have had the opportunity to work with a diverse range of students through drop-ins at the library as well as during appointments at the Writing and Communication Centre. Among the teaching and communication skills that I have learned through this experience, I am also thankful for the lessons learned. Here are a few:
What is a superfood? Is it food that wears a cape and fights crime? Yes and no. Superfoods are foods that are nutrient dense. These foods can help you feel energized throughout the day so that you can be productive and skip on the afternoon chip cravings. Some of them also have the ability to fight diseases!
One of my biggest challenges while writing is to do just that. In a society where we move on from one idea to the next rapidly, such as ten-second snapchat stories or brief tweets about our day, it is easy to lose focus on a task. Although there are a variety of things that can distract me from my work, I have narrowed it down to the top three and how I have dealt with them to increase productivity.
Sometimes you have to work backwards to move forward. If you ever find yourself stuck while writing (and unable to make it to the Writing and Communication Centre), creating a reverse outline may be your solution. This strategy entails looking at each of your paragraphs and summarizing the main idea you are trying to portray in 1-2 sentences. Even with an initial outline, your ideas change as you write, so this strategy allows you to take a step back and ensure that your writing flows like Niagara Falls.
Writing is a necessary skill no matter your program or academic year. Fortunately, most universities and colleges offer a free resource centre for assistance with improving this skill. If you ever struggle or need a helping hand with academic writing, the Writing and Communication Centre (WCC) is the place to be! If you still aren't convinced, here are five reasons to visit us.
In our last two writing genre series blog posts, I offered some tips on Graduate School Applications and Catharina discussed the conventions of Lab Report writing. Her upcoming genre topic will be Visual Arts Analysis and you can check it out on April 16th! In this writing genre instalment, on Poetry Analysis, I will provide pointers for poking and prying at poems to peruse and pick up on the poem’s pronouncements and purport.
Since September 2017, the Writing and Communication Centre has been providing the space and materials for a quilt composed of student voices. Quilting is a metaphor for the community that we have here, as well as the writing process itself since both involve parts coming together to form a whole.
Some of the thought-provoking prompts suggested by staff include “What are your opinions/frustrations/joys about writing?” “How do you feel about writing today?” and “I like writing because…”
In our last blog post, we talked about different strategies for writing grad school applications. That was our first instalment of a new series on our blog where we will be exploring different writing genres throughout the term. Today’s topic is lab report writing!
All throughout high school, you have learned countless techniques, rules and tricks for academic writing. In high school, there is predictability, reliability, and structure, which often carries over into the writing process. One of the biggest worries for students entering their first year of university is the transition from high school to university writing. Whether it’s assignments, papers, presentations, reports and the like, writing seems to change in university – or at least the expectations do.
When a professor announces a new assignment and tells the class that you will all have to pick a topic to write about, you might feel lost and wish they had simply given you a list to choose from. In academic settings, we’re used to structured assignments where we are told what to do, so when it’s left up to us to decide, we will often have questions like: