Encouraging Student Writing

The campus offers a number of excellent resources to help you and your students with a variety of issues related to student writing.

Encouraging Student Writing Guide.  This booklet has been prepared specifically for faculty who do not teach writing classes, but assign writing as part of their course.  Topics include how to create good assignments, how to help students write better, ideas about grading, and a series of writing tips that can be handed out to students.

The College Writing Programs “serves as a resource on writing and writing instruction to UC Berkeley. We offer undergraduate and graduate courses, public programs, and resources to promote writing and the teaching of writing across the campus.”  Included in the course offerings is College Writing 10A, Introduction to Public Speaking, and College Writing 300, which focuses on teaching philosophies, course designs, instructional methods, and assessment issues in relation to teaching composition. The course meets the campus policy requiring GSIs who teach a Reading and Composition course to complete a semester-long, graduate-level pedagogy course. College Writing faculty are often available to present workshops on writing issues.  For you and your students, the College Writing page also has an excellent resources section, listing a number of online resources, from online writing labs to editing resources and dictionaries and grammar books.

The Writing Program of the Student Learning Center provides individual and group tutoring. The “Program works under the assumption that all writers, regardless of their experience and abilities, benefit from informed, individualized, and personal feedback on their writing. The program is staffed by professional educators and trained peer tutors who work with writers engaged in any stage of the writing process - from brainstorming paper topics, to formulating and organizing arguments, to developing editing skills. While tutors will not "proofread" students' papers, they will help students learn to address issues of style, syntax, grammar, and usage in their writing. Tutors are trained to work with non-native speakers of English and with writers from a variety of disciplines.”

Resources for second language students and their instructors. Both the Student Learning Center and the College Writing Programs provide information and guidance regarding second language issues in writing.

The Teaching Guide for Graduate Student Instructors from the GSI Teaching and Resource Center has an excellent section on Working with Student Writing, including such topics as creating assignments, writing in technical fields, and drafting, editing, and revising.

Academic Services in the Residence Halls provides tutoring in writing, among other resources.

The Athletic Study Center provides tutoring in writing for student athletes.

Writing help for graduate students: The Graduate Division Academic Services Unit assists graduate students in the development of academic skills necessary for the successful completion of their graduate programs such as academic writing, grant writing, dissertation writing, editing, and preparing articles for publication.

Through the Academic Senate Committee on Prizes and Undergraduate Scholarships, Prizes, and Honors, the campus offers a number of prizes in writing from fiction to essays.