How to Get the Most from Meeting with a Writing Advisor
Summary: This guide was created for an upper level class in which students worked in groups to evaluate and improve a collaborative research project. Trained writing advisors who were familiar with the subject area met with teams of students to facilitate the writing of the final report. This guide was given to students to help them prepare for meetings with their writing advisor.
To the Meeting, Bring
- A copy of the assignment marked with any areas you feel are problematic, unclear, or as yet unresolved.
- Enough copies of the report-in-progress so that everyone, including your writing advisor, can read the material during the discussion.
- Relevant data, rough notes, and any preliminary writing that haven’t yet been included in the work in its final form. Even a draft that shows where you have been can be of help in identifying what you like and don’t like about where the draft is going.
- A completed version of the sentence that begins “When I leave this meeting, I want to have _____________.” Imagine what would be the best possible outcome of this meeting would be.
Ask Yourself and Others In the Group
- How well integrated do you think the voice of the paper is as a whole?
- Have your individual contributions merged together harmoniously or have you simply included a series of “specialized” sub-reports that are not clearly linked?
- What ties each of your sections to the purpose of the report as a whole?
Isolate
Problems you recognize but haven’t had time to fix. If you can set these problems aside for later, it will save you, your advisor, and the group time for things you do want to discuss.
Remember
- Everyone in the group should have read the report in its final form.
- You are your own best and wisest critics.
Know
- Why your examples are important to what you are saying.
- What your audience needs to know in order to understand your argument.
Assess
- Think in terms of a current outline to describe your work in progress. How does this basic or ideal structure compare to the paper as it stands? And as you would like it to be?
- Are there specific parts you could rearrange? Does your order come from the assignment? A specific genre? Necessity? Does it fit the shape of your argument?
- Do your transitions do what you want? That is, can you explain why you begin and end sections, or paragraphs, as you do? How do transition sentences add to, or detract from, the progress of your central premise or thesis?
- Try giving a one or two-sentence reason for why a section, or even a paragraph, comes when and where it does.
Prepare
A list of things you think or know you need help with.
Comments, questions, feedback, criticisms?
Send feedback
- E-mail the author of the module, How to Get the Most from Meeting with a Writing Advisor
Footer
More about this content: Metadata | Version History
This work is licensed by The Cain Project in Engineering and Professional Communication under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 2.0).
Last edited by The Cain Project in Engineering and Professional Communication on Jun 10, 2008 1:40 pm GMT-5.