Mission

We have chosen to express our own mission in terms of what we as tutors believe in and would like to promote in our sessions. To begin with, Chalmers Writing Centre is a part of the educational organization at Chalmers and its first objective is to promote and improve student learning. This overall objective can be divided into sub-areas that affect our sessions. We try to outline these more detailed objectives in the following list and its details:

Values we promote

One area of our work involves improving student writing and reading in order for student writers to feel confident and be effective writers who enjoy the craft of writing. Therefore, we promote:

  • Taking full advantage of the writing process by getting started early
  • Audience awareness and a careful analysis of the writing assignment context
  • Active reading strategies as natural components of the writing process
  • Repeated rounds of revision to revise for ideas, structure, form, layout and surface characteristics, respectively
  • Acquiring increasing awareness of genre expectations on texts and the strategies available in different communication contexts

Other techniques

Another area of our work involves improving student oral presentation strategies and techniques whenever we get session requests for that, and our work in this area is similar to our work with writing. We try to promote:

  • A process orientation to the task with a strong sense of audience awareness and adaptation
  • An emphasis on the interplay between the different tools and techniques available to you in a communication situation
  • A careful re-reading of the assignment to define what is expected in the educational context

Limitations

Naturally, there are limits to what we can do. On the one hand, our sessions are short and on the other hand we are not involved in the courses you take. So, sometimes we end up referring you back to your course instructor and sometimes we recommend you to take full language courses with a professional language instructor.

  • Note that our work does not involve ’taking care’ of your texts or proofreading them. What we can help you with is to suggest techniques and resources for surface editing and we work with your own editing during sessions
  • Also note that we do not assess texts or discuss grading. What we can do is to discuss what you can do in your revision work!