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Graduate Writing and Speaking Courses
Starting Jan 8, 2025
Dear Graduate Students,
Wishing you a Very Happy New Year!
The Graduate Centre for Academic Communication (GCAC) at the University of Toronto offers a number of resources — courses, workshops, writing centre, and boot camps — to help you receive support with planning, drafting, revising, and presenting your scientific research at an advanced academic level.
Among our free, non-credit course offerings, some starting this week, I’d like to alert you especially to the ones listed below, which you might find valuable. Registration is currently open for these courses, and students will be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis.
Graduate Writing Courses
Graduate Writing 1: Establishing Your Foundations is a five-week course that covers the transition to graduate writing by providing guidance on the disciplinary practices of synthesizing diverse research, integrating sources smoothly, developing an authorial presence through metadiscourse, building effective structure through paragraphing, writing with formality, 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.
3 sections:
Mondays, Jan 13 – Feb 10, 2pm—4pm (online).
Thursdays, Jan 16 – Feb 13, 10am—12noon (online).
Fridays, Jan 17 — Feb 14, 1pm — 3pm (online).
Graduate Writing 2: Revising for Clarity helps you become a better editor of your own work through developing an informed process for revision. In this 5-week course, we cover improving coherence and achieving flow in your writing, learning the principles of clear and stylish sentences, revising for concision, and correcting common errors in grammar and punctuation. As part of this course, you will have an opportunity to meet and discuss your writing individually with the instructor.
Tuesdays, Jan 14 – Feb 11, 10am – 12noon (online)
Graduate Presentation and Academic Conversation Courses
Oral Presentation Skills. If you would like to learn how to develop and deliver polished, focussed presentations, 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, embodying authority through body language and voice, and handling nerves. You will be given the opportunity to give a presentation and receive feedback to strengthen your presentation skills, and to develop the critical capacity to assess what makes for strong presentations across a variety of subjects and genres.
2 Sections:
Wednesdays, Jan 8 – Feb 12, 10am – 12noon (online)
Thursdays, Jan 9 — Feb 13, 5pm — 7pm (in person on the St. George campus)
Academic Conversation Skills (for non-native speakers of English) is designed to help students develop into stronger listeners and speakers in an academic environment. 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.
2 sections:
Tuesdays, Jan 7 – Feb 11, 3pm—5pm (in person on the St. George campus).
Thursdays, Jan 9 – Feb 13, 10am—12noon (online).
Specialty Courses in Science Writing
Thesis Writing in the Physical and Life Sciences (Units 3 and 4) will introduce you to disciplinary expectations around the thesis and guide you through the rhetorical and structural decisions you’ll make to effectively organize and communicate the contexts, justifications, and outcomes that comprise your research project. All graduate students who are currently writing their thesis in the physical and life sciences are welcome to register for this course.
Fridays, Jan 17 – Feb 14, 10am – 12 noon (online).
Communicating Science through the Media: Offered just once a year, this 3-week course taught by award-winning science journalist Ivan Semeniuk is designed for graduate students with an interest in communicating scientific research in the news media. The course will cover how science becomes news, where science journalists find their stories, how to conduct interviews and assemble information, and how to translate complex research into plain language for a mass audience across print, broadcast, and online media. NB: Due to the popularity of this course, registrants must fill out an emailed screening form to be considered for admittance to the class list. Students must also be able to attend all 3 weeks.
Saturdays, Jan 25 – Feb 8, 9am – 12 noon (online).
In addition, the GCAC offers online workshops through the semester on a range of graduate topics including Writing a Thesis or Grant Proposal (Jan 20), Writing a Literature Review (Jan 27), AI and the Modern Scholar (Feb 10), and Improving your Slide Design (Mar 12), among many others. For the full list of workshops offered in the Winter 2025 term along with registration links, please visit: Workshops – School of Graduate Studies (utoronto.ca).
If you would like to receive timely announcements of our forthcoming courses, workshops, registration dates, and other offerings, please join our listserv and follow us on Instagram (@gcacuoft).
Warm wishes for a successful 2025,
Jordana Lobo-Pires