THE PROBLEM. “Dear (I forgot your name) professor” … “”Could give more clarification about the thing you mentioned in that section of my paper where I discussed it like you told me?” … [first...
Hi folks! This is Robley, a tutor in the Writing Center. In the previous blogcast, Kurtis shared my video Why Write?, which focuses on the writing most people do outside of school (like sympathy...
Academic Writing / Learning for Success
by Kurtis Clements · Published March 12, 2021 · Last modified March 11, 2021
Last week I shared research writing resources located in the Writing Center at Purdue Global University and talked briefly about research writing. One of the resources I mentioned concerned what I can best describe...
Research writing is time consuming, and for many student researchers, questions pop up along the way. Am I citing this source correctly? Have I paraphrased effectively? Am I using too many direct quotations? And...
One of the skills college writers need is the ability to work with sources. Students need to be able to paraphrase, summarize, and quote, and in order to do that they need to be...
Academic Writing / Learning for Success
by Kurtis Clements · Published February 19, 2021 · Last modified February 18, 2021
Whilst I was reading the other day, I noticed the annoying frequency with which the word “whilst” was suddenly being used. I don’t recall the word being used often if at all, but now,...
Academic Success / Academic Writing / Learning for Success
by Kurtis Clements · Published February 12, 2021 · Last modified February 11, 2021
For many new college students, the thought of taking a writing course is greeted with the same kind of enthusiasm you would have for visiting the dentist for a root canal: something that needs...
Academic Writing / Learning for Success
by Kurtis Clements · Published February 5, 2021 · Last modified February 11, 2021
Lately, I’ve been seeing more and more errors in two sound-alike words: the possessive pronoun “its” and the contraction for “it is.” Writers seem confused (or perhaps just too rushed?) about whether or not...
We all know that plagiarism is wrong, and that in the academic world, it is akin to stealing. Document content that doesn’t belong to you is the proverbial rule of thumb professors offer. If...
In the twenty-seven plus years that I have dutifully taught some version of college writing, one of my standard first-day get-to-know-each-other icebreaker questions has been “What do you remember most about high school English?”...