Frequently Asked Questions
Who Can Use the Writing Center
Yes, any active student of the University of Arizona can use our services. Whether you are a first-year student beginning your undergraduate career or a PhD candidate working on your dissertation, our peer tutors are trained to help you improve your writing.
The Graduate Writing Lab (GWL) offers free appointments to University-enrolled graduate students only. Whether you are a first-year graduate student or ABD, our trained and certified graduate writing consultants offer helpful feedback on any kind of writing at any point in the process.
How Sessions Work
For any of our session styles, you can access the Writing Center’s scheduling system and sign in with your university credentials. You can then select THINK TANK Writing Center on the first homepage and then choose your desired session style from the list of options on the second homepage.
Once you have signed in to our scheduling system, you select your desired appointment style and time. In-person and Zoom sessions can be up to 45 minutes. Students can have up to two in-person or Zoom sessions per day, with at least 30 minutes between sessions.
During a session, a tutor will get acquainted with the piece of writing you are working on, identify patterns, make recommendations, and then help you come up with a plan for moving forward. They can also help you interpret an assignment prompt or brainstorm even before you have words on the page.
Our Feedback Loop sessions are completely asynchronous, meaning that you will not meet with a tutor face-to-face to review your writing.
Once you have signed in to our scheduling system and selected THINK TANK Writing Center on the first homepage and then Feedback Loop on the second homepage, you will answer several questions about your writing and upload the document you would like reviewed in a .doc, .docx, or .pdf format. It is also very helpful to upload a prompt and/or rubric so that our tutors better understand the expectations for your writing.
Once you submit your intake form and document, you will receive a confirmation email that you have scheduled a Feedback Loop session. At the time you selected, a tutor will spend up to 45 minutes reviewing your document and providing feedback through comments. Within 4 hours of the session, you will receive two emails: one with your post-session notes and one with the tutor's in-text feedback in a file attachment.
You can cancel your session or attach an updated draft of your writing up to 30 minutes before the start time by logging back into the scheduling system and viewing the details on the My Appointments page.
Locations and Hours
The Writing Center's current hours can be found on our Appointments page.
What to Expect
At the Writing Center, you can book up to two synchronous (Zoom/in-person) appointments and one asynchronous (Feedback Loop) session per day. The Writing Center’s policy is that same-day sessions must be scheduled at least 30 minutes apart. We do this because we want to create space for you to review the feedback from your first session, apply suggestions as needed, and reflect on what other questions you have prior to meeting with another tutor.
At the Graduate Writing Lab, there is a limit of one session per day and two sessions per week. Please book no more than three sessions at a time.
Feel free to bring whatever is most helpful for you to get something out of the session. That could be just your thoughts, the prompt/rubric, a rough draft of your paper, or anything in between. Anything is helpful so that our tutors better understand the expectations for your writing.
Our tutors can help you with nearly anything writing-related: essays for class, creative writing projects, lab reports, personal statements, applications, professional correspondence, you name it! Our tutors are trained to be expert readers, which means they may not have expertise in your particular field, but can still provide valuable insights and suggestions about your writing. Our tutors will engage with your writing, notice patterns, ask you questions, and provide meaningful feedback. They can also help you put together a plan for how to move forward with your project.
Tutors generally spend the first few minutes of the session getting to know you, your audience, and the context of your writing. In other words, who is going to be reading this, what are their expectations, and what kinds of decisions are you making as a writer? It is helpful for you to bring a prompt/rubric to go over together and have specific goals or questions in mind.
When reviewing your draft, the tutor may ask you to read it aloud or read it aloud themselves to help you recognize things you may not have initially noticed while writing. Our tutors are trained to identify patterns in your writing. They are not going to point out every grammatical or stylistic error, but they will collaborate with you to address the concerns that impact readability most. By asking you some questions and making suggestions, they will work with you to revise your writing.
“Writing” isn’t just limited to words you’ve already put on a page. Research about writing has increasingly shown that writing is a mode of thinking and important to the process of developing our ideas. Our tutors are trained to ask questions that will help you brainstorm and organize your thoughts. This can happen just as productively whether you have something written or you’re just getting started and are trying to figure out your approach. It is helpful for you to bring a prompt/rubric to go over together and have specific goals or questions in mind to direct the session.
Ways We Can Help
While our tutors are happy to give feedback and make comments about grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, or word choice, their job is not to line edit. While a proofreader’s job is to mark up your paper with errors, our tutors are here to support your development and confidence as a writer through collaboration. The goal is to improve your overall writing skills beyond just one particular piece of writing.
Absolutely! While grammar is among the topics tutors are trained to address, it is helpful if you are able to point to specific areas of concern. The tutors will identify reoccurring issues, explain the grammatical conventions, and provide suggestions for improvement. It is up to the students to apply these suggestions to the rest of the writing project.
Yes! Tutors regularly offer reader feedback on resumes, CVs, personal statements, and a variety of other professional documents. The tutors can focus on developing your language, articulating your experience and qualifications, and anticipating audience expectations.
Our tutors can collaborate with you on any kind of writing project at any stage in the process unless your professor explicitly says otherwise. Please check with your instructor and/or review the assignment prompt, the course syllabus, or any other class materials for guidance.
Our tutors will offer feedback based in writing techniques and process but will rely on the student’s understanding of the subject matter and course content. Students maintain ownership of their work in all of our session styles. The tutors will provide techniques and strategies, not the specific words, to address areas of concern in the student’s work.
No. Our Writing Center tutors and Graduate Writing Lab consultants are unable to offer feedback on writing related to graduate comprehensive exams. If you have any questions about this policy, please contact Shelley Hawthorne Smith (shellh@arizona.edu).
Our Tutors
Actually, no! Our Writing Center tutors and Graduate Writing Lab consultants represent a variety of university disciplines, from the sciences to the fine arts. They all share an interest in language and a desire to support their peers’ writing development.
Contacts
Please contact our Front Desk at 520-626-0530, through our live chat (click the Need Help? Ask! tab below), or by email at SLS-writingcenter@arizona.edu.