Writing for success

English Department offers a series of free writing courses

The first in a series of free writing lab workshops offered by the English department and designed to help students improve their writing skills took place Feb. 29 in Village 8310.

“The point here is to educate, not to fix papers,” English professor Jeanine Brown said. “We fix students.”

Brown, who has worked in the lab 19 years, teaches the writing lab workshops, of which there are four.

Each workshop has its own topic: paragraph development, punctuation, intro paragraphs & essay writing and words in context.

“[Workshops] are for any person who’s writing and finds themselves concerned about preparation, or they need someone to look over the first page for error patterns,” Brown said. “That’s the time to come.”

Students sat in a small group with the professor, and learned the work- times, twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, to accommodate students schedules. shop topic as a group through questions, discussion, and analysis.

“I’m taking all of them [workshops]. I think I will feel more comfortable because English is my second language,” registered nursing student Hilda Morella said.

Students can attend workshops and make writing lab appointments to prepare for English placement testing and to possibly increase their Grade Point Average.

Skills: English professor Jeanine Brown teaches at the writing lab workshop.

Each workshop topic is offered four

Schedule of upcoming writing lab workshops

“If a person understands the basis for those errors [in the beginning], that person is empowered to go through and fix the rest of the errors,” Brown said. “That, many times, will raise the grade a letter or two.”

The next workshop in the series will be a paragraph development workshop.