International and multilingual students face the demands of navigating multiple languages and unfamiliar academic systems, drawing on a range of backgrounds and ways of approaching ideas along the way.
Our one-on-one appointment and programs offer support for writing and speaking that is built around your goals, whether that means understanding an assignment, starting or polishing a draft, preparing for a discussion, or finding your footing in a new academic environment.
Here’s how we can help:
Get support any time!
One-on-One Appointments (meet in person, online, or by email)
- Get personalized feedback and answers to your questions
- Come at any stage: brainstorming ideas, working on a draft, or understanding your professor's comments
Online Workshops
- Learn at your own pace, anytime
- Use the whole workshop or just the parts you need
- 30+ topics covering different types of academic writing
Quick Resources
- Need a fast answer or reminder? Check our online guides
- Get at-a-glance tips about academic writing styles and rules
Multilingual Writers' Studio: Revision Strategies
Through structured activities, peer dialogue, and reflective writing, participants will build strategies to negotiate academic expectations while sustaining their own voices and identities as writers.
This 5-week workshop series for graduate students integrates practical revision tools with antiracist and decolonial perspectives on writing. Drawing on Felicia Rose Chavez’s The Antiracist Writing Workshop, the program treats academic writing as a cultural practice shaped by power, rhetorical traditions, and linguistic diversity.
What you'll get:
-
Early sessions establish community agreements using a streamlined, instructor-guided process and introduce revision as meaning-making rather than error correction.
-
Middle sessions explore global rhetorical structures, argument placement, and cultural rhetorical expectations.
-
Final sessions address sentence-level clarity, local grammatical decisions, linguistic justice, and navigating standardized English with conscious choice.
When: Thursdays, October 1 -- November 5 (no class during Reading Week) from 10:00-11:30
Where: SLC 3216 (GSA Grad Lounge)
Who: Graduate students who want to learn revision strategies while sustaining their own voices
Cost: Free
Winter 2027: Language Café
Build confidence in academic writing and research skills.
This free workshop series is designed specifically for international and multilingual students. You will learn how to:
-
Read academic sources effectively
-
Combine ideas from different sources (synthesis)
-
Write using research to support your own arguments
-
Develop your own academic voice in English
W27dates: To be determined, please check here for updates or email amanda.fogaca@uwaterloo.ca.
Conversation Circles
Adjusting to a new country often means navigating a second language, an unfamiliar culture, and a new social and academic environment, all at once!
Our Conversation Circles program gives you a supportive space to connect with other students, practice conversational English, build confidence speaking in class, and feel more at home at Waterloo.
What You'll Get:
-
Small-group conversation practice in a relaxed, low-pressure setting
-
Specialized support from WCC advisors
-
Weekly discussion themes to help you build confidence step by step
-
Free snacks, coffee & tea
-
No preparation required, just show up!
When: Thursdays, September 8 – Oct 22 (no class during Reading Week), from 4:00 – 5:30pm
Where: SCH -102
Who: undergraduate and graduate international students
Cost: Free