The University of Delaware Writing Center is offering free workshops this fall on a variety of specific challenges facing college writers, both undergraduate and graduate students, beginning Sept. 26.

Workshops will be held in the Multimedia Writing Center, 017 Morris Library, from 3:30-5 p.m. The Writing Center is part of the College of Arts and Sciences, but its services are available to all UD students.

“The University Writing Center workshops are among our most popular offerings,” said Melissa Ianetta, professor of English and director of the center. “Students enjoy the opportunity to spend a short, focused period of time improving a specific writing skill or strategy.”  

To sign up for one or more workshops, contact Carolyn Clark, cclark@udel.edu. Following is the workshop schedule.

Learning to Be Your Own Proofreader, Sept. 26 and Nov. 2. This workshop offers suggestions on how to improve your editing skills and polish final papers and provides hands-on experience and tricks for improving proofreading strategies. Participants will work to build a “self-editing” checklist and to apply these principles to their own writing.

Taking the Mystery Out of Citation, Sept. 28. Citing sources can seem like busy work, but doing so is a crucial part of research-based writing. How do you show that you have done your research and have used your sources ethically? This workshop will show you how to cite your sources throughout your paper in different formats (MLA, Chicago, APA), as well as use citation styles to craft how your reader will respond to your sources. Bring a copy of your research paper with you to practice during this interactive session.

Statements of Purpose for Applying to Graduate Schools, Oct. 5 and Nov. 14. For those applying to master’s and doctoral programs in the sciences, social sciences, humanities or arts, this workshop will explore general principles for writing convincing personal essays and statements of purpose ― ones that highlight your undergraduate work and emphasize your research interests successfully.

Writing Reader-Oriented Research Abstracts, Oct. 19. For such opportunities as grant proposals, conference applications and institutional fellowship competitions, we are frequently called upon to summarize our research for a variety of audiences both within and outside our academic disciplines. In this workshop, we will consider commonalities among these different writing occasions as well as learn how to tailor the research abstract for diverse audiences with varying amounts of relevant disciplinary knowledge. Participants are asked to bring a draft of a brief (about 200 words) abstract of their current research.