How to Use Our Services

  • Writing Centre policies

    1. You can sign in to see a Learning Advisor any time between 10am and 4pm on Monday to Friday during teaching weeks.
      • We will continue to allow students to book appointments until all the time slots are filled.
    2. You can only sign in 2 times in one week. You are not allowed to see a Learning Advisor more than 2 times in a week.
    3. You can only sign in for yourself. You cannot sign in for a friend.
    4. If you want to work on a group assignment, we can only look at the parts that you have written yourself.
    5. If you speak in an aggressive tone to any of the Learning Advisors or Student Volunteers, you will be barred from using the Writing Centre for the entire semester.
    6. Please do not book a mentoring appointment if you are unwell.
      • If you are an undergraduate student, you can use Studiosity for online feedback, or you can email your tutor.
      • If you are visibly unwell in the Writing Centre, staff may ask you to leave. 
  • How can you best use the Writing Centre service?

    • We are critical readers of your work. We are called Learning Advisors, and we serve as such. We are experienced writers who can support you as you become more experienced writers yourselves. Think of us in this way. We are going to ask you questions. We are going to tell you how a reader reacts to your work, and what a reader expects from your writing.
    • Visit us well before your assignment is due.
    • Be open to ideas to strengthen your writing. If you see us hours before your assignment is due, and are just looking for someone to reassure you that it is ‘ok’, we cannot do that for you. Our job is to help you become a better writer, not just to make you feel mmore confident about one particular assignment.
    • Have specific questions about your writing ready for us when we see you.
    • We don’t cut words for you. You have to decide for yourself the most important words to include and exclude in order to meet your word count. You can also look at our guide how to cut your word count (concise writing) to learn more about how to use less words.
    • We are not a grammar checking service. We are happy to discuss sentence structure and word choice with you. But we want you to know that grammar is not just a right or wrong proposition. It is a set of choices that can strengthen or weaken your writing. You need to do the work of understanding subjects, verbs and objects, and how they should best combine to communicate your ideas. Look at the resources within the guide helpful websites and books to improve your English, and make a daily practice of learning about the grammatical choices open to you.
    • Take ownership over and pride in your writing. This is your chance to communicate your ideas. They are yours and only yours. We want to help you learn how to better express your own ideas.