Make an Appointment
with an English Writing Consultant

The English Writing Consultants operate within three dimensions, helping international graduate students in the following ways:

Language needs awareness

  • Diagnose English writing difficulties and understand own needs for language improvement,
  • Discuss writing issues in a culturally sensitive environment,
  • Understand cross-cultural differences in logic, topic development, rhetorical patterns, and/or argumentation,
  • Clarify misunderstandings of faculty feedback,
  • Locate and effectively use resources for independent and/or guided English writing practice and developement.

Macro-level writing difficulties

  • Understand the linguistic realizations of the conventions of research genres,
  • Enhance overall communicative effectiveness, substantiation of claims, and use of appropriate discourse features,

  • Clarify purpose to ensure appropriate discourse structure,
  • Choose appropriate linguistic signals and signposts in the development of scientific arguments,
  • Use appropriate language structures to sustain consistency and cohesion,
  • Improve understanding and use of strategies for concise and precise writing,
  • Use appropriate language structures to express author stance.

Micro-level writing difficulties

  • Address recurrent grammatical and stylistic errors,
  • Clarify the meaning of unclear sentences and phrases,
  • Make appropriate lexical choices to clearly express intended meaning in small stretches of text,
  • Expand academic English vocabulary.