We know that students learn better when they are self-motivated. We want UNL students to choose to come to the Writing Center and we need you both to inform students about our services and to encourage all students rather than requiring a few to make use of them. Here are some effective ways of providing positive encouragement to your students:
- Invite a Writing Center representative to give a short presentation about the Writing Center to your class. You may choose to invite us early in the semester or as students begin to work on their first writing assignments for your course.
- Include a paragraph about the UNL Writing Center in your syllabus.
- Include a variety of writing in your courses including formal and informal, graded and un-graded assignments. Initiate and sustain a dialogue with students about their writing that challenges them to complicate their ideas as well as to find language, forms, and structures that effectively represent and communicate that complexity.
- Ask your students to write and revise papers in successive drafts. Encourage them to talk with a Writing Center Consultant as they write and revise.
- Remind students of the integral relationship between ideas or content and syntax. The point is not only to produce a grammatically correct paper, but also to produce a paper that communicates insight to a readership. Spelling and grammar checks are important, but more critical to the success of any writing are the effective conception, design, and execution of research, central arguments, supporting arguments, and conclusions.
- Remind your students that talking with other writers throughout the process of producing writing projects, from conception to revision to completion, is an essential part of successful writing in every context. Urge your students to talk with a Writing Center Consultant.