Issue date: 3/4/09 Section: News

Bridget Sanchez, a freshman family and consumer sciences major, works on an assignment for her English class Tuesday night in the Writing Center in Coleman Hall. The Writing Center provides one-on-one consultations for students of all majors who need help with writing assignments. (Erin Matheny / The Daily Eastern News)

The Writing Center at Eastern is presenting a series of workshops in March and April to help students with their research papers.

The themes of these workshops will revolve around the areas of proofreading, citations and writing drafts.

Tim Taylor, director of the Writing Center, encourages students to bring in their first drafts of their paper before the due dates.

"We're open to help student writers at any stage of the writing process, from brainstorming to the finishing stages," he said.

"Drafting Strategies," which will be the first workshop on at 4 p.m. Monday, is aimed towards improving writing of students.

The workshop is designed to give students an outlook of the first draft, and these strategies may be used in future writing projects.

"We will talk with students about how to organize their papers, focus on paragraph unity, effective transition/internal cohesion with paragraphs, sentence level clarity, precision and emphasis, and organization of ideas and support," said Ashok Bhusal, graduate assistant and consultant for the Writing Center.

The follow up workshop, "Final Draft and Proofreading Strategies," will take place in the writing center at 4 p.m. March 30.

The workshop will also be taught by Bhusal and will focus on the strategies of preparing a final draft for its final stages.

While it's not required students attend "Drafting Strategies," they are encouraged by Bhusal to bring in their assignments that need revisions.

"Give your time to revise — running a spell check doesn't count as revision," he said.

At 3:30 p.m. March 11, Mary Lieske, graduate assistant and consultant for the Writing Center, is hosting the working "Preparing for Spring Break: Don't Forget to Write!"

Since most students don't write over spring break, Lieske has designed a writing plan to accomplish this task.

The workshop will focus on planning a paper and encouraging students to pre-write their first drafts.

"Have some sort of plan for working on the papers that are due at the end of the semester over the break," Lieske said. "It doesn't have to be detailed — even something as simple as saying you will work for an hour each day on one of your papers is better than doing nothing at all."

Students should bring questions related to these workshops and can make follow-up appointments in the Writing Center.

The Writing Center is open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Fridays. It is located in 3110 Coleman Hall.


Jennifer Brown can be reached at 581-7942 or at jebrown2@eiu.edu.

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