Writing tutoring

Please note the following before you make an appointment: 

• If you want to make an appointment because you have questions about your planning, your motivation or, for example, postponing tasks, make an appointment for study coaching. 

However, do you want to talk about your writing assignment? You've come to the right place: make an appointment for writing tutoring below.  

• Please make one appointment only (duration: 45 minutes). A follow-up session can be scheduled with your writing tutor.

Writing tutoring is individual counselling that focuses on making you a better writer, to enhance your academic writing skills.

The tutoring will focus on the development of strategies that you can repeatedly use in the planning, writing, and revision stages of your work. These strategies can be used to evaluate and improve your own work.

How do we do that?

In conversation, your tutor will challenge you to look at your own writing process or text in a new way, allowing you to discover where and how you can improve.

You decide what you want to discuss with your writing tutor. For example: can I make my writing process more efficient? How do I process the feedback that was given to me? How do I formulate a good research question? How do I improve the structure of my text? What should be in my theoretical framework? What is an academic writing style?

When?

You are welcome whenever; from the moment you receive the assignment until the moment you’re putting the finishing touches on your text. Don’t leave it till the last moment, though, or you won’t have time to apply the new strategies you learned. 

What can you expect from your writing tutors?

1. They will ask a lot of questions to sharpen your thinking: about your key message, for example, or the writing obstacles you want to overcome.
2. They will give you pointers on improving your writing skills. For example, they might teach you how to work out which information you need to include in the introduction, how to set up a paragraph, or how to determine whether your writing style is academic.
3. They can tell you what other training and tools are available at UU. 

What you can’t expect from your writing tutors

1. The writing tutors will not fix your problem for you, though they’ll guide you towards fixing it yourself. Quick fixes are not in our repertoire.
2. The writing tutor is no expert on your subject matter and can say little about selecting the right theories or methods. For questions like that, you should consult a teacher, supervisor, or fellow student. Your peer tutor may, however, ask you questions about the content of your document (for example: Why do you describe this here? What do you mean by this? What is the connection between this paragraph and the next?)
3. The writing tutor is not a language teacher. If you want to improve your basic language skills, we can refer you to other service providers.