Lijst Calimero pleads for opening Academic Writing Centre

by | Jan 17, 2017 | News | 0 comments

Whether we like it or not, academic writing is an important skill that takes practice to master. Unfortunately, the teaching in academic writing at the University of Groningen is not always what it should be. There are students who are required to write a thesis in English without any preceding courses in academic English. In another case, teaching in academic skills was omitted from the bachelor programme. Furthermore, in large programmes with hundreds of students, it’s hard to provide each student with individual feedback. Therefore, Lijst Calimero proposes to establish an Academic Writing Centre (AWC) at the University of Groningen to provide additional coaching in academic writing to those students who want or need it. With this, the University of Groningen would follow the example of many Dutch and renowned international universities.

For years, Lijst Calimero has pled for small-scale and interactive education. There should be sufficient attention to the development of academic skills, including writing, within the regular study programmes. However, with its high student-staff ratio, the University of Groningen faces a challenge when it comes to providing adequate individual feedback to students, especially in study programmes with hundreds of students per year. In our vision, it is very important that students do receive this individual feedback because writing is a very personal process. You need to practice and receive feedback before you master this skill. Especially for those students who need some extra guidance, or students who want to further improve their writing skills, there should be the possibility to receive the individual coaching that is often not possible, or not provided, within the regular study programmes.

The Academic Writing Centre will offer individual coaching to students who want to improve their academic writing skills. The centre will also offer workshops on common issues in academic writing, for example: how to write an introduction, or how to use online databases? The goal of the AWC is to help students become better writers. The writing coaches will help students with structure, argumentation and academic language, but will not correct spelling mistakes, and the like. Moreover, the AWC will have a digital component where students can find information on, for example, how to use references. All students from the University of Groningen would be able to make free use of the services provided by the AWC. We wrote this memo in close collaboration with Prof. Dr. Kees de Glopper, Prof. Dr. Carel Jansen and the Language Centre.

Did you know?

Top universities such as Harvard, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Oxford and Stanford University all have an AWC. But also Dutch universities such as Radboud University, the University of Amsterdam and Wageningen University have successful writing centres.

Download the memo here!