• grades,  writing centre

    how 2 write good

    Hi! So I’m a first year who’s taking a lot of English/literature/writing courses. I knew that my marks would drop a lot coming to uni, and I’m proud of myself for the marks I’m getting. However, I was wondering if you have any tips for improving our writing. I always get somewhere in the low 80s for my marks on my essays, and the highest I’ve gotten is an 85. Again, I’m super happy with myself, but I’m just genuinely getting confused on how to improve. I’ve gone to my profs/TAs office hours for feedback, and also go to the writing centre for each assignment. But it seems like regardless of whether I take in their feedback or not, I’m always stuck in this little range of grades. So, I was wondering if you have any tips or advice. Thanks 🙂

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    hey there,

    i hope your first year has been going all right given the circumstances, and i’m glad you reached out about this! you should be proud of yourself, you are doing great during a particularly difficult time to be adjusting to the academic demands of university.

    it’s great that you’re going to office hours for feedback and visiting the writing centre — those are really the two best things you can do. you can also find some really great resources for papers at writing.utoronto.ca, or book an appointment with a learning strategist if you’re interested in improving your paper-writing process.

    i do wonder if there’s a more effective way you could be asking for feedback.

    if you’re able to consistently book time with the same writing centre instructor, for example, they’ll get to know your writing style better and might make stronger recommendations. i’ve been working with the same instructor for over a year now, and during my appointments, i feel like i’m actually receiving really valuable lessons. she now takes the time to explain sentence structure and grammar to me, where she mostly would’ve just made corrections when we didn’t know each other quite as well. if you’re able to try something similar, that might improve the quality of the feedback you receive.

    alternatively, you can try bringing old papers to office hours during the first few weeks of a new class, and ask your instructor to look over your writing style and make early recommendations for things you can work on. if you let them know that you’re really keen on succeeding in their class and improving your skills, i can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to help you.

    you may also want to look into the english students’ union, and see if they run any mentorship or peer help programs. in my experience, most upper years at u of t are really kind and happy to help you succeed, so if you can find someone who’s been studying english for a while, you might be able to get some good pointers that way.

    apart from that, i truly think the best way to become a better writer is to become a more critical reader. if you can learn to deconstruct an essay that you think is particularly well written, figure out why it works, and apply that to your own writing, you’ll be in a much better position. i don’t know if you know this, but i believe the writing centre can actually help you with learning to read more critically. you can bring a reading from class in and go through it with an instructor.

    i’ve actually never taken an english course at u of t, so i don’t feel like the most qualified person to give you tips on this.

    plus, it’s really hard to tell someone how to improve their writing without reading a paper that they’ve written! but i hope something in here has at least given you an idea of how to move forward.

    good luck with the rest of your semester! i hope you’re able to achieve your grade goals soon.

    be Boundless,

    aska

  • innis,  writing,  writing centre

    becky vogan fan club!

    Hi! i’m not sure what college you’re in but was just wondering if you have any experience with innis’ writing centre, or if you know anyone who has experience with the people there! i may be going there for a class to look over a few papers in the coming months and i wanted to hear some things on how each instructor is! sorry if this is silly, thanks 🙂

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    hey there,

    this isn’t silly at all. i do have experience with the innis college writing centre, yes! i’ve only ever booked with one writing centre instructor there, though, so i can’t really give you much of a rundown on all your options.

    that one instructor i know is becky vogan, and i’d highly recommend her! i fully believe that her advice has bumped many of my grades up—she’s so good at her job.

    i think she actually used to work (or still does work??) in the professional publishing industry, so she’s a fantastic editor. i’m constantly impressed by how she can read a paper on a subject she’s unfamiliar with and ask just the right questions to help me draw my ideas out and strengthen my arguments. usually i try to go to a writing centre appointment with a full draft, but whenever i’ve been behind and come with only half a paper written, she’s been a great sounding board for me to bounce ideas off of.

    she’s also a great teacher: when she catches my mechanical errors, she doesn’t just correct me but is patient enough to explain what i did wrong and how i can improve it moving forward.

    on top of that, she’s such a generous and kind person and i genuinely enjoy my appointments with her.

    sorry i can’t provide much more information beyond that—i’m sure the other innis writing centre instructors are also great, i just haven’t met any of them. so don’t rule the rest of them out automatically just based on my advice, because i’m super biased! i’d recommend that you reach out to any innis, cinema studies, urban studies, or writing & rhetoric students that you know, and see if they might have any thoughts as well. these things are usually best crowdsourced.

    i hope this helped!

    be Boundless,

    aska