Timetables
Registration

Writing

Writing Workshops Writing Studio

Speaking

Presentation Skills Workshops Pronunciation Workshops Public Speaking Workshop Speaking Studio Chat Groups English Language Mentoring Scheme (ELMS)

Workplace English

How to Write Polite Emails Plain English: Improving Written Business Communication Socialising at Work Interview Skills

IELTS

Reading, Listening, Speaking & Writing

Scholarship Personal Statements

1. brainstorming and preparing the outline 2. 1: Content and Organisation 2. 2: Content, Organisation and Language Use

A good piece of writing requires a wide range of skills from planning, ensuring paragraph unity, to proofreading.

ELSS offers a series of workshops on how to improve your writing techniques, including:

  • Getting started can sometimes be the most difficult part of the writing process. Writers may have difficulties in thinking of ideas to include in an assignment, selecting the best ideas to include, and organising these ideas.
    Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs):
    • Use free writing to brainstorm content for your written assignments
    • Develop specific strategies to plan and organize your information
    • Plan the organisation of your writing by grouping ideas and establishing relationships
  • In this workshop you will practise writing complex sentences and apply this skill to your own writing.
    Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs):
    • Identify simple sentences and complex sentences within a short text
    • Construct complex sentences by combining 2 or more simple sentences or by adding information to simple sentences
    • Revise your own writing to include more complex sentences
  • Two common problems of student writing are run-on sentences (sentences which are too long and confusing) and sentence fragments (sentences which are incomplete). During this workshop you will practise identifying and correcting these two common errors, and apply this skill to your own writing.
    Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs):
    • Identify run-on sentences and fragments
    • Construct sentences free of fragments and run-ons, using conjunctions and transitions
    • Revise your own writing to effectively use conjunctions and transitions
  • This workshop focuses on how to provide effective elaboration to support your claims and main ideas.
    Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs):
    • Identify various types of elaboration to support claims and main ideas
    • Brainstorm supporting information to develop main ideas
    • Revise your own writing to provide effective support and elaboration of your ideas
  • If you revise your written assignments, you tend to produce better papers and receive higher grades. However, you may not know how to revise your paper effectively.
    Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs):
    • Identify “focus areas” to guide your revision.
    • Develop various revision strategies.
    • Revise your own writing more effectively.
  • For many student writers, like yourself, a common problem is maintaining a clear focus throughout the piece of writing. Ideas may seem to you, as the writer, relevant to the topic and related to each other, but may be irrelevant, unrelated and confusing for the reader.
    Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs):
    • Identify irrelevant information within a paragraph
    • Interpret information in a paragraph to show how the information is linked to the main idea
    • Revise your own writing to maintain the focus of paragraphs
  • When using outside sources to provide evidence in your writing, you not only need to find appropriate sources and use a correct format to give your citation, but you also need to integrate the information with your own ideas and analyse the information.
    Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs):
    • Identify weak and strong uses of evidence from outside sources.
    • Relate evidence from outside sources to the claims in a paragraph.
    • Analyse and comment on the information from sources
    • Revise your own paragraphs to provide stronger use of evidence from sources
  • An effective paragraph should express one controlling idea, have a clear focus, and show logical relationships between ideas. This workshop will help you pinpoint and solve problems in your paragraphs related to these three areas.
    Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs):
    • Identify problems with using topic sentences, achieving unity, and expressing logical relationships
    • Implement solutions to these problems
    • Analyse your own writing to troubleshoot your paragraphs and solve problems related to focus and clarity of ideas
  • Before turning in any written assignment, it is a good idea to ensure that your paper is easy to read, expresses ideas clearly, and uses an appropriate academic style.
    Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs):
    • Use online tools and resources to help you identify problems with academic style
    • Check writing for issues related to clarity and style
    • Revise your own writing to improve the clarity of ideas
  • A well-written paper that is free of errors can contribute to a higher grade. However, you may often find it difficult to spot errors in your own writing, even when you “know the rule” for avoiding a particular error. Using specific strategies and techniques can help you with the proofreading process.
    Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs):
    • Identify and correct errors using specific proofreading strategies

Other Related Services

Each workshop lasts 50 minutes. Booking online is highly recommended, although walk-ins are possible subject to availability. Due to limited places, you are advised to come earlier in the semester.