A good piece of writing requires a wide range of skills from planning, ensuring paragraph unity, to proofreading. LCSS offers a series of workshops on how to improve your writing techniques, including:
Workshop topics include the following (click on a title to see more information about a particular workshop):
- Planning and Organizing your Writing
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
- Writing Complex Sentences
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
- Avoiding Run-ons and Fragments
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
- Effective Support and Elaboration
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
- Revision Strategies
Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs):
- Identify “focus areas” to guide your revision.
- Develop various revision strategies.
- Revise your own writing more effectively.
- Paragraph Unity
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
- Incorporating Sources
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
- Troubleshooting Paragraphs
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
- Editing for Clarity and 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
- Proofreading Techniques
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.
