What is the ICC Writing Clinic?

The ICC Writing Clinic is a one-on-one, educational support service designed to help nonnative English speakers improve the writing skills they need to succeed in their academic work.

What does the Writing Clinic do?

The Writing Clinic helps students with a variety of academic literacy issues. For example, we help students:

• improve basic skills such as constructing sentences and linking paragraphs
• write abstacts, research papers, and other academic papers
• develop or clarify an idea for a writing assignment
• understand cultural differences and expectations which can interfere with a nonnative speaker's ability to write clearly in academic English
• cite sources correctly and avoid plagiarism
• read critically and learn how to develop ideas about a text for writing

How does the Writing Clinic work?

• Students may sign up in the ICC office for forty-minute, one-on-one Writing Clinic appointments. If there are no appointments available, students may put their names on a wait-list. Wait-listed students are often able to get appointments.
• Students should bring a piece of their own writing to the appointment such as a homework assignment or a writing sample used for practice, and source texts such as reading assignments, if applicable.
• At the beginning of each appointment, a student should explain to the instructor what the areas of concern are. That way, the instructor can focus on particular errors that the student finds troublesome.

Can Writing Clinic help with reading?

Yes. Reading is often the basis for academic writing and we find that students who are having trouble reading and interpreting sources often struggle with writing. To address these challenges, we encourage students to bring their source texts to Writing Clinic appointments. Students who wish to work on reading skills in more depth may make an appointment with Sarah Jameson Carvalho at sjameson@andrew.cmu.edu

What does the Writing Clinic not do?

Writing Clinic does not provide the following: proofreading (quickly scanning a paper to check for mistakes) or editing (taking the primary role in finding corrections to writing problems). The instructor's role is to teach and not simply to find and correct as many errors as possible in a forty-minute session.

The Writing Clinic's mission is to help students develop better writing skills. When students are actively involved in the process of revision (through questioning, explaining, and providing examples), they are able to learn from mistakes and to become competent and confident writers.

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