Graduate Writing and Speaking Courses
starting from next week
The end of term can be an intense time for graduates as you work on your assignments, articles, theses, proposals, or course and conference presentations. The Graduate Centre for Academic Communication (GCAC) offers short, non-credit courses designed to support you at every stage of the writing or speaking process.
Below you will find our current course offerings, some of which start next week. Please click on this link to be taken to the registration page; you will need your UTORid and password, and you may register for up to 2 courses at a time. You will receive an email confirmation after registration.
Courses to Develop Graduate Thinking, Writing, and Revising Skills
Prewriting: Strategies for Developing and Organizing Your Ideas is a four-week course designed to help you clarify the content and structure of your argument before you begin a draft. You will be introduced to a range of thinking and organizational strategies — freewriting, diagramming arguments, using spreadsheets to synthesize scholarship, tech tools, effective note-taking techniques, and Aristotle’s topics — and you will be encouraged to integrate these strategies with your own learning style.
Fridays, Mar 6 – Mar 27, 10am — 12 noon (online)
Writing: Conventions of Graduate Writing 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.
Wednesdays, Feb 25 — Mar 25, 10am—12 noon (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. Over five weeks, we cover improving coherence and achieving flow in your writing, learning the principles of clear and stylish sentences, achieving concision, correcting common grammatical errors, and drawing these elements into an effective editorial process. As part of this course, you will have an opportunity to meet and discuss your writing individually with the instructor.
Fridays, Feb 27 — Mar 27, 1pm — 3pm (online)
Courses to Develop Confident Presentation Skills
Oral Presentation Skills. If you would like to learn how to develop and present polished, focused 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, 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 valuable feedback on your own presentation.
2 Sections:
Mondays, Feb 23 — Mar 30, 5:30pm–7:30pm (online)
Tuesdays, Feb 24 — Mar 31, 4pm– 6pm (in person at the St. George campus)
Once again, here is the course registration page.
In addition, the GCAC offers individual feedback on any aspects of your writing through our Writing Centre; and live, online workshops through the semester on a range of graduate topics, including Cultivating Competencies in Generative AI and Academic Writing (Feb 24), Writing a Thesis or Grant Proposal (Mar 11), and Writing Effective Literature Reviews (Mar 18), among many others. The full list of workshops offered until the end of this term is available on our Workshops page.
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). For help or inquiries regarding registration, please contact our GCAC administrator at sgs.gcacreg@utoronto.ca.
Warm wishes as you head into the home stretch of this Winter term!
