THE ARTS CENTRE FOR ACADEMIC WRITING COURSES
The Centre is offering a
number of group workshops dealing with the major elements of effective essay
writing. All Arts students are welcome to enrol. We ask that you announce these
course offerings to your classes.
THE REGISTRATION DATES FOR
EACH OF THE FOLLOWING GROUP WORKSHOPS WILL BE POSTED IN THE CENTRE, ROOM S329,
ROSS. STUDENTS ARE ADVISED THAT SPACE FILLS QUICKLY SO THAT SPEEDY ENROLMENT IS
NECESSARY.
A. HOW TO DEVELOP A THESIS
This one-hour session will
help you get a good start on your essays. Learn how to develop an effective
thesis statement that tells the reader where you are headed. Monday October 17
@ 10:30 a.m. OR Tuesday October 25 @ 11:30 a.m.
B. WRITING ‘FROM THE GUT’ AND
OTHER PRE-WRITING STRATEGIES
In this workshop we will
prepare you to move from gut reactions – the emotional, visceral reactions you
might have to a text – to writing down an actual response to an argument. This
task will also help you build on good note-taking habits and critical thinking
skills. Thursday October 20
@ 1:30 p.m.
C. ‘UNDER CONSTRUCTION’: THE
PARAGRAPH
In this workshop we will
prepare you to move from taking effective notes to constructing a basic
paragraph. You’ll learn to identify topic sentences and then develop your own
topic sentence and offer an expanded explanation of that topic. Fri October 21
@ 11:30 a.m.
D. ELIMINATING BASIC SENTENCE
ERRORS
Do your essays come back with
comments such as sentence fragment, run-on sentence, comma splice, or short
choppy sentences? Learn to recognize and correct some of the most common errors
of sentence structure. Tuesday October 18 @ 12:30 p.m. OR Wednesday
October 26 @ 1:30 p.m.
E. QUOTATIONS
This session will look at the
difference between quotation and paraphrase and when and how to use and cite
both of these in an essay. Wednesday October 19 @ 11:30 a.m.
Please turn over....
F. STRATEGIES FOR
BUSINESS WRITING
The objective is to help you
become a better business writer, whether your audience is a professor, a TA or
a businessperson. Audience, prewriting strategies, language, style, formatting,
resources and the appropriateness of various communication channels to specific
messages will be touched upon. Tuesday October 18 @ 2:30 p.m.
G. WHAT ARE TAS LOOKING FOR
WHEN GRADING YOUR PAPER
A veteran TA, who has
experience teaching in social science and humanities, will address the
components that are integral to getting top marks on university level essays.
Before lamenting “All marking is subjective, anyway,” learn some strategies to
avoid abysmal results. Wednesday October 19 @ 2:30 p.m.
H. EFFECTIVE EDITING
Do you lose precious essay
marks due to grammatical and stylistic errors? The Effective Editing Workshop
will teach you to analyze your work logically and systematically to improve the
quality and consistency of all your academic assignments. You will learn to
assess content, correct common errors and proofread for accuracy. This is a
hands-on workshop, so bring a writing sample and be ready to use what you learn
right away! Thursday October 20 @ 2:30 p.m.
Students are welcome to enrol
in any one or all of the above mini-courses, but please remind them that their
signature is their commitment to attend.
For a copy of this flyer go
to http://www.arts.yorku.ca/caw