Here at the Chalmers Writing Centre you are welcome to discuss any and all questions that you might have regarding writing a specific text, or writing and presentations in general. Our focus is always on helping you to improve as a writer. You can send in your text in advance in order to prepare the tutor for discussing a specific passage or section, but it is not a requirement. You are always free to stop by and discuss any communication matters that you find challenging!

Sometimes, it can be a struggle to know how to discuss your written text with another person. Here, we present some useful expressions and strategies that you might find useful before your booked tutoring session.

Higher order concerns (HOC)

As a writer/presenter you are always asked to give a short description of what you want to do during the session, so it would mostly involve some conversations between you and your tutor on your higher order concerns. Higher order concerns mostly refer to the organization or development of your text/presentation. At this stage your tutor will help you to improve the structure of your text/presentation and see if it

1. has a logical flow
2. has a suitable content addressing your assignment topic or the specific group of audience
3. is organized according to a particular format or scheme
4. offers enough supporting details and examples
5. explains relationship between different parts and ideas and so on.

Later order concerns (LOC)

After the issues regarding the organization and development of your text/presentation have been solved, you and your tutor will spend some time on later order concerns. This can involve some sentence-level revisions, strengthening and varying sentences as well as refining the style of your writing/presentation. At this stage your tutor will help you to concentrate on a small section of your writing/presentation in order to recognize and correct some common writing problems such as wordiness, inappropriate language or choppiness if any. You can then apply what you have learned to the rest of your writing/presentation after the session.

Planning a text

The tutor can help you to sort your ideas and plan for a text when you are still at the very first stages of your writing/presenting process. This can be done by first listening to your ideas, trying to paraphrase them into written thoughts, questions, sentences or phrases in order to make it easier to follow. The tutor might also ask questions about your assignment and audience to see if your text/presentation adapts to the requirements. 

Editing

Since our mission is to help you become better writers/presenters and feel more comfortable while writing/reading English texts, we try to help you to learn how to solve your writing issues on your own. So, instead of editing your text tutors will help you to review a part of your text and then you can continue on your own later on. You are always welcome back to bring your new questions concerning your issues on editing and proofreading.

Proofreading

Proofreading usually means to read through your text/presentation with the aim of detecting and correcting any written “surface errors”. These errors can be regarding to spelling, punctuation, grammar and word choice. At CWC we don’t proofread your texts/presentations, as we aim to help you improve your own skills. However, we can help you to do it yourself on a small section of your writing and then continue it on your own after the session.