REGISTER NOW!
GRADUATE WRITING AND SPEAKING COURSES
STARTING FROM NEXT WEEK
Dear graduate students,
Welcome to a new academic year and, for many of you, a new graduate program!
The Graduate Centre for Academic Communication (GCAC), a division of the School of Graduate Studies, is offering a number of valuable free, non-credit courses that can help you grow into proficient academic communicators – both written and verbal – of your research. The courses (descriptions below) help you develop strong scholarly writing skills, academic conversation skills, oral presentation skills, and organization and critical skills for communicating at the graduate level, and some begin as early as next week! Registration is currently open for all courses, and you may register for a maximum of two courses at a time.
Please click on this link to register for GCAC courses. You will need your UTORid and password to register.
COURSES TO ORIENT YOU TO GRADUATE-LEVEL WRITING AND SPEAKING
Writing: Conventions of Graduate Writing is a 5-week course that covers the transition to graduate writing by providing guidance on the disciplinary practices of understanding academic genres, integrating sources smoothly, developing an authorial presence through metadiscourse, building an effective writing structure, and developing your identity as a research writer. The course also offers an opportunity to meet individually with the instructor for feedback on a sample of your writing.
Sections offered:
Thursdays, Sep 11 – Oct 9, 10am—12 noon (in person).
Fridays, Sep 12 – Oct 10, 2pm—4 pm (online)
Wednesdays, Sep 17 – Oct 15, 10am—12noon (online)
Thursdays, Sep 18 – Oct 16, 2pm—4pm (online)
Academic Conversation Skills (for non-native speakers of English) is designed to help students develop into stronger listeners and speakers in an academic environment. Over 6 weeks, we help you gain the confidence to participate in academic discussions, both in person and online, by providing guidance on conversation skills that include how to ask and answer challenging questions, how to disagree respectfully, and how to manage academic interactions sensitively.
Sections offered:
Tuesdays, Sep 9 – Oct 14, 2pm—4pm (online)
Thursdays, Sep 11 – Oct 16, 3pm—5pm (in person)
Fridays, Sep 12 – Oct 17, 10am—12pm (in person)
COURSES TO FURTHER BUILD STRONG GRADUATE CONCEPTUAL, WRITING, AND SPEAKING SKILLS
Pre-writing Strategies for Developing and Organizing Your Ideas is a 4-week course designed to help you synthesize scholarly literature and clarify the content and structure of your argument before you begin to write a draft. You will be introduced to a range of strategies for developing and organizing your ideas, from tech tools and spreadsheets to diagramming and Aristotle’s topics, and you will be encouraged to practice strategies that work for your own learning style at both the pre-writing and mid-writing stages.
Mondays, Sep 15 – Oct 6, 4pm—6pm (in person)
Tuesdays, Sep 16 — Oct 7, 10am—12noon (online)
Wednesdays, Sep 24 — Oct 15, 2pm—4pm (online)
Revising: Achieving Flow and Clarity focuses on helping you become a better editor of your own work through developing an informed process for revision. In this course, we cover improving coherence and achieving flow in your writing, learning the principles of clear and stylish sentences, revising for concision, and bringing together these skills to revise long documents. We will also examine the possibilities for using GenAI in the revision process. As part of this 5-week course, you will have an opportunity to meet individually with the instructor to receive editorial feedback on your writing.
Thursdays, Sep 25 – Oct 23, 10am—12noon (online)
Oral Presentation Skills. If you would like to learn how to develop and present polished, focussed presentations to your audience, this 6-week course is for you. We cover tailoring your message to your audience, structuring your presentation, creating strong visuals, managing the question period, and handling nerves. You will be given the opportunity to give a presentation, develop critical presentation skills while providing feedback to your peers, and receive feedback from the instructor.
Sections offered:
Tuesdays, Sep 9 – Oct 14, 10am—12noon (in person)
Wednesdays, Sep 10 – Oct 15, 1pm—3pm (online)
Tuesdays, Sep 16 — Oct 21, 5pm—7pm (in person)
Thusdays, Sep 18 – Oct 23, 6pm—8pm (online)
In addition, we offer free workshops on a range of academic and professional skills, including Writing NSERC Proposals (Sep 8), Writing CIHR Proposals (Sep 9), Building on Your Writing Skills to Speak with Confidence (Sep 17), Writing a Literature Review (Sep 23), Writing an OGS Proposal (Sep 30), Considering the Use of Generative AI in Academic Writing (Oct 2), and Formulating Focused Research Questions (Oct 15), among many others. Please check out the entire list of this semester’s offerings at this link.
Finally, please visit our Writing Centre where you book an appointment to receive feedback and guidance on your graduate assignments, proposals, articles, or theses at any stage of the writing process from one of our consultants.
To receive regular notifications on our range of forthcoming offerings (courses, workshops, and registration dates), please join our listserv and follow us on Instagram (@gcacuoft).