Resources

Should I require my entire class to use the Writing Center?

No. We want you to encourage your students to utilize the Writing Center as part of their strategy to strengthen their writing skills, but we do not suggest that visits be required for an entire class. The logistical and pedagogical rationales are outlined below.

While CEWC services complement the instruction in writing courses, we do not have sufficient staff to accommodate individual consultations for all the students in all courses.
Students who visit under some form of requirement do not typically benefit from a consultation as much as those who come of their own volition. They may wish to visit very briefly, simply to obtain a proof-of-service form. Such visits have the potential to develop into beneficial consultations, but often they diminish access for the more self-motivated students.
If you would like one of our Writing Specialists to develop a workshop specifically tailored to your class, or if you would like to ask about an embedded peer tutor or a regularly paired Specialist, please contact the Associate Director, Evin Groundwater, e.groundwater@uci.edu.

How to Instruct Your Students to Utilize the Writing Center

How to Instruct Your Students to Utilize the Writing Center: This one page document describes the center’s three types of services as well as answers some frequently asked questions for instructors.

Workshops

Workshop Request Form: Instructors, use this form if you want to request a specialist to visit your class. Advance notice of at least one month is required.

Writing Center Materials

Writing Tutorial Referral Form: Instructors, use this form if you want to refer a student to the Center and want a report on what was covered during the consultation.
Resources for Sentence-level Choices: This page contains resources for composing and reading sentences.

Course Planning

Writing Requirements: An overview of writing requirements at UCI.
CWC Faculty Resources and Guidelines for Upper-Division Writing Courses: Upper-division writing course guidelines, as well as instructions on how to propose such a course.
Sample Syllabi: Sample syllabi from past upper-division writing courses.
Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse: The WAC Clearinghouse offers a tremendous set of resources for faculty who teach both writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines. Research reports and scholarly studies complement practical advice in this must-see website.
Teaching Multilingual Students: Teaching techniques & activities offered by faculty across disciplines to promote an inclusive classroom environment

Research

Past CWCC Research: One-time and ongoing research projects in writing studies, composition studies, and writing across the curriculum by the Campus Writing & Communication Coordinator.

Writing Program Links

Academic Honesty

UCI Academic Integrity Policy, from the UC Irvine Academic Senate Manual.
Academic Honesty Tips: A tipsheet on proper source citation & avoiding plagiarism, created by UCI instructors.

Comprehensive Writing Guides

University of Wisconsin Writer’s Handbook: A student writer’s handbook with tips on everything from style to essay development to grammar and punctuation.

Here is a list of resources to help you with your writing needs, compiled by the Center for Excellence in Writing and Communication.

Writing Center Materials

Writing Tutorial Referral Form: Bring this form to the Center if you want to give your instructor a report on what was covered during the consultation.
Resources for Sentence-level Choices: This page contains resources for composing and reading sentences.
Tips for Writing Effective Emails: This resource contains guidelines and a checklist for writing effective emails to professors, advisors, and anyone else.

Recorded Workshops/Events

Coming soon!

Comprehensive Writing Guides

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center Tip sheets: UNC Chapel Hill’s website has a variety of helpful tip sheets and videos on grammar and essay development.
University of Wisconsin Writer’s Handbook: This student writer’s handbook has a variety of tips on everything from style to essay development to grammar and punctuation.
Writing Across the Curriculum: Links for Writers: This collection of web-based resources cover a variety of topics, including business writing, citation guides, grammar guides, and resumes and cover letters.
Purdue OWL: This page is a resource for any grammar topic as well as a guide to editing, subject-specific writing, and correct use of citations.

This page contains resources for composing and reading sentences. Because of English’s flexibility, its intent is to provide resources for sentence-level choices, rather than prescribe a specific writing style. It is also available as a PDF onesheet here.

Click on a header to jump to descriptions, examples, and links.

Sentence Structures word order, clause boundaries, punctuation Verbs tense, agreement, transitive/intransitive, active/passive Other Rhetorical Choices formality, idiomatic language, concision, code-switching	Nouns count/non-count, singular/plural, common/proper Noun Determiners articles (the, a, an), possessives, quantifiers Word Choice & Word Form fixed phrases, word accuracy

Sentence Structures

Sentences convey ideas and how they are related. They may have multiple ideas and relationships, so different structures help to separate a sentence’s information.

Descriptions	Examples
Word order is a language’s mostly fixed sequence for ideas and relationships, combining subjects and verbs respectively. English’s word order is subject-verb-object, where subjects and objects can be, but are not limited to, nouns.	A team of several people developed the video game.
Clause boundaries indicate where one [subject-verb combination] is ending and being connected to another [subject-verb combination].	[Not everyone had the same responsibility] [because development required different skills].
Punctuation refers to the different symbols that writing systems use to split up information to increase comprehensibility.	When development began, the team did not have a main studio or office.

Useful links:

Verbs

Verbs indicate the actions and relationships among ideas. They carry important information such as the time or the number of ideas in the sentence.

Descriptions	Examples
Verb tense indicates a sentence’s time frame.	Currently, the team works in a rented space downtown.
Subject-verb agreement reiterates the number of ideas in a sentence’s subject.	Some members work from off-site locations.
Verb transitivity indicates whether two or more ideas in a sentence are related as subject and object (using a transitive verb), or if the sentence only contains a subject (using an intransitive verb).	Team leaders hold occasional team-building meetings as a result. Everyone participates.
Active/passive voice indicates which idea takes the focus in the sentence. Passive voice shifts the focus from the subject to the object using a grammatical structure (be + verb) followed by an optional phrase (by + subject), and as a result, is only possible with transitive verbs.	These meetings are led by different team members each week.

Useful links:

Other Rhetorical Choices

Rhetorical choices give writing an effect that can help readers better understand the writer’s context or purpose.

Descriptions	Examples
Formality tells the reader if the writing is situated in a casual context, professional context, or anything in between.	Some meetings are casual, and members are encouraged to “just hang out and chill.”
Idiomatic language conveys information using common word combinations that is meant to use cultural or contextual familiarity to deliver meaning.	One all-nighter had a self-serve, Taco Tuesday-themed meeting because it was during crunch time.
Concision shortens a sentence or any of its pieces to simplify the sentence to its most important ideas, which may change depending on the writer and reader’s background knowledge or attitude towards the topic.	Various protein options were available for team members with dietary restrictions.
Code-switching is any instance where a writer uses another language in a sentence to convey additional or more accurate meaning.	Team members were not limited to eating tacos; they could also have tamales, quesadillas, or sopes.

Useful links:

Nouns

Nouns are the ideas in a sentence and contain information like specificity or quantity.

Descriptions	Examples
Count nouns can take an -s at their end to indicate quantity, whereas non-count nouns typically cannot be made plural because they usually represent concepts.	One big component of video game development is the code.
Singular/plural nouns tell the reader the number of count nouns, which is also reiterated by the verb’s form.	The project is comprised of several pieces, with code being integral to many of them.
Common/proper nouns specify if one idea that is representative of many is being discussed, or if a very specific, named idea (with a capitalized first letter) is being discussed.	One common language for video game code is Java.

Useful links:

Noun Determiners

Noun determiners appear with nouns to add specificity, ownership, or quantity.

Descriptions	Examples
Articles specify to the reader if the noun refers to one specific idea, one example in a group, or all of them everywhere.	It is common for ∅ team members to have ∅ diverse previous work experiences, so an important first step is to agree on the style for the code.
Possessives tell the reader if the noun in the sentence belongs to another noun.	If two members divide a task by objects, their code needs to compile and link together.
Quantifiers tell the reader how much or how many of the noun is being discussed.	If some code does not compile, all objects might not link properly.

Useful links:

Word Choice & Word Form

Word choice and word form indicate a writer’s familiarity and their intended reader’s familiarity in a context by following systematic rules and idiosyncratic rules.

Descriptions	Examples
Fixed phrases are word combinations that appear together in high frequency in a context, which can show the writer’s familiarity with their writing context.	In some cases, another team member may run a program to check the code.
Word accuracy is the level of specificity a writer uses to refer to an idea, which influences the reader’s engagement.	This is called “debugging“, which is a process for meticulously checking code.

Useful links:

Inspired by: Ferris, D., & Hedgcock, J. (1998). Teaching ESL Composition: Purpose, Process, and Practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.