All News

The Institute for Immigration Research and Fall for the Book will be hosting a webinar on Thursday, April 8 from 1:00-2:00pm Eastern.

The three finalists for the 2020 Institute for Immigration Research New American Voices Award are novelists Ishmael Beah, author of Little Family; Vanessa Hua, author of Deceit and Other Possibilities; and Lysley Tenorio, author of The Son of Good Fortune.

Have you ever wondered how famous writers make such beautiful words flow from their pens (or their word processors)? In this article, I’ll show you what some of the most well-known writers of the century have said about how writing is done.

Being a writing professional in the Writing Center is, in some ways, the opposite of being a ghostwriter. While I trained myself to be a skilled technician who treats the client as the author during my time as a ghostwriter, a writing center tutor’s purpose is to empower the client as a writer.

A year out of college, I got a job at National Journal, a political media company in Washington, D.C. The team I was on researched political advocacy tactics and produced reports recommending certain strategies to our readers. Early in my time there, a humbling experience occurred to me with some frequency.

On the first day of class, your instructor described a future writing assignment. The deadline was nowhere in sight, and you had plenty of time to work on it. Or not work on it. But, eventually, plenty of time dwindled down: the paper is due tomorrow and you still haven’t begun.

If you’re like most people, you probably think of writing as something you do alone at your desk, puzzling out words and paragraphs and organizational structures by yourself. Sure, you might ask a friend for feedback occasionally, or maybe even go to the writing center for a little extra guidance. But those are exceptions.

In addition to email and conventional face-to-face tutoring, the Writing Center now offers video tutoring. Writers can talk to tutors as they do in face-to-face meetings, and share their drafts on the screen. But these benefits of a real-time session come without having to be on campus in the Writing Center.

So, you’re fresh out of high school and getting your start in the world of higher education. You walk into your first composition class, ready to knock out whatever your professor throws your way. Maybe you took an advanced English class or two in high school. Maybe you never learned analysis but scraped by with plenty of summary. You feel good, even confident that this will be a breeze. Then your professor says, “Forget everything you learned in high school English.”

If you’re reading this article, then it means you want to actively improve your writing, which likely means that writing is not your primary field, interest, or occupation. Luckily, we are going to explore a way of looking at writing that you may never have considered before and which may apply more directly to your field, interests, or occupation.

The importance of considering audience often goes overlooked. You might find the thought redundant suspecting (often correctly) only one person reads your paper: the instructor. Yet, tailoring your paper for the teacher may not be the best advice.

How you integrate sources influences your voice as a writer. While original ideas should be credited, they cannot speak for themselves. Their authority depends on how the writer connects quotations to their own points while respecting the original voices they have cited.

Taking the time to reflect on learning is important and I am glad that the Writing Center has offered me a space to reflect on experiences I have had such as writing my thesis.

As writers, we all encounter situations in which we compose sentences that just don’t sound very good. The ideas are there, but the sentence itself is off. You tweak or rewrite the sentence—maybe even a few times—but it still just doesn’t sound quite right. What do you do?

Below, you’ll see some common fallacies writers are likely to encounter. You don’t need to memorize all the different terms to write proficiently, but understanding the concepts helps you see what makes arguments convincing or weak.

We all get rusty after a break, but it’s the start of a new semester, and chances are you already have to write emails and papers. So here are seven miscellaneous writing-related tips for helping you start the new year off right.

When proofreading and editing, don’t just look for mechanical errors, such as spelling, punctuation, and grammar. If you see something missing in any department, fix it! Here are a few different strategies you can use to scan through your paper effectively.

With the semester waning to a close, final papers are readily being turned in. From past experience, I know many students end up writing up to the deadline. But if you can give yourself some time to proofread after writing, you can feel more confident about turning it in.

It is that time of year again, the time when you have to start composing personal statements for grad schools.

November is the month for research papers. It is also the time of the semester when the formulation of a proper Thesis Statement becomes essential.

That is the question. Actually, it’s usually not a question, is it? We know we shouldn’t cram, but we do anyway. We resign ourselves to cramming for exams, writing papers the night before they’re due, and generally stressing ourselves out over things we could have done weeks ago.

Trying to organize your accomplishments and life experiences into established categories, while considering what your potential employer might think, can be very overwhelming.

If you’ve ever had an essay handed back that says (rather vaguely) “too wordy” or just simply “cut excess words” in sharp red letters, but weren't sure what to cut, this article is for you.

As tutors we can only do so much to help you with your paper if you don’t bring your prompt because, well, prompts are important!

Do you keep a personal dictionary? Probably not. What kind of geek keeps a personal dictionary? The smart kind, that’s what kind.

A bibliography is simply a list of citations for sources you will use in your paper. An annotated bibliography, then, is when each of these citations is followed by a short description of the source and an evaluation of its main argument, the context in which it was written, and, most importantly, its relevance to your paper.

The farther a pronoun is from the word it refers to, the easier it is for the reader to lose track of its meaning.

One of the aspects of being back in class that is always the most difficult to adjust to (for me at least) is to tackle all the reading for my courses. There are a few rules that I go by when reading for class so that I don’t get overwhelmed and also so that I can retain/remember what I’ve been reading.

If you tune in to news programs, political speeches, or academic lectures, you’ll start to notice a trend: the misuse of the reflexive pronoun myself. This grammatical misstep is likely a result of hypercorrection; in other words, people are changing something that is right to something that is wrong because the right word doesn’t seem correct.

There are lots of ways to manage organization, but this method works best for me.

There are three words pronounced “to” in the English language and they are frequently mixed up. They are: To, Too, and Two. Grammar check often won’t catch these errors because they are all words.

It’s that point in the semester where you may be struggling to add a couple more pages to your papers before your final deadlines. We’ve gathered some tips to help expand your paper.

... two lists of words/phrases that often get confused as to whether they are made up of a single word or more.

To demonstrate the idea that everything—no matter how seemingly un-argumentative—is an argument, I must slap on my critical lens.

One of the most debilitating parts of a paper can be the last 1 or 2 pages. At this point, you’ve managed to figure out the shape of your argument, you’ve gotten through your most important points and you’re ready to move on with your life. Overcoming the urge to just stop writing at this stage might be the true test of a writer’s mettle.

What if I told you that the spell check feature we now find in all word processing programs has dulled our abilities to, well… spell?

How often do you use the word whom? If you are normal, then you probably don’t use it often. Whom is quickly falling out of use in casual speech, but it hasn’t yet disappeared from academic writing. In fact, it’s still quite important to know when and how to use it in a formal essay.

... a fun and easy way to remember the difference between farther and further.

What commonality is shared by the following time-sucking shows? House of Cards Game of Thrones House of Lies

... a brief list of tips to make even the most analytical writing pleasurable.

Getting fitter and saving money are the two most common American New Year’s resolutions, but did you know that reading more is up there, too?

Dear fellow writers, embrace the chaotic first draft!