Warner Hall 308
5000 Forbes Avenue,
Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890
Office: (412) 268-4979
email: eslhelp@andrew.cmu.edu
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| What
is the ICC Writing Clinic? |
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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? |
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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? |
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- 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? |
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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? |
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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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