The University Writing Center (UWrite): About UWrite

Our Philosophy

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."    Maimonides

The philosophy of our writing centre is the same as that set forth in the famous quote above.

Our primary objective is to help students become better writers in the long-term. We aim to achieve this by helping students improve and develop their writing skills so that they can produce clear, well-organised and effective assignments. Instead of simply proofreading students’ work before submission, writing instructors will provide helpful feedback on different aspects of students' work in order to ensure their ongoing development as writers.

Mission

Based within the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), our mission is to help CHSS students become more effective writers by engaging them in critical conversations about their writing at any stage of the writing process.

In support of this mission, AWARE seeks to support students by providing one-to-one consultations and academic writing workshops. A comprehensive collection of online resources, using both in-house materials and external sources, is also available and regularly updated on the AWARE LibGuide pages.

Vision

AWARE’s goal is to develop capable and confident independent writers while becoming a trusted and reliable college resource.

FAQs

Who is the centre for?

AWARE is a service that is available to all CHSS students. This means that that we are happy to assist students from any programme and/ or level of English language competency. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that we are not subject specialists and can therefore not offer content knowledge for specific programmes.

We understand that for some students this will be their first time studying in English in higher education, while for others it will be something they have already experienced. AWARE welcomes all students regardless of the degree of assistance they require, and our ultimate goal always remains the same – to help develop better writers.

We also encourage faculty to use our services, especially if they feel we can assist their students in a particular task or aspect of writing.

What do we do?

We aim to assist students with their academic writing assignments/ thesis by primarily offering the following services:

1. Paper review sessions. These are one-to-one pre-booked 50-minute consultations (face-to-face, e-tutoring, or synchronous online).
2. Workshops on different aspects of academic writing and research.
3. Provision of relevant writing resources/ handouts (via our LibGuide: https://libguides.tii.qa/aware)

The goal of the Writing Centre is to empower you to improve your writing skills so that you will produce clear, effective writing. We can look at one assignment per Paper Review session, and we will review the document as requested. Accordingly, it is important that you should have a clear idea of what you would like to focus on during the session (e.g. outlining, sentence structure, academic writing style, punctuation etc.). Instructors will provide helpful feedback about different patterns that appear in your writing so that you can improve the quality of your work immediately, and most importantly, over the long-term.

Please note that we do not promise to cover a certain amount of words or pages within a 50-minute session as every paper is unique.

In our review of your paper, we provide constructive feedback on student writing, which includes the following areas:

• the writing process
• how to tackle different academic writing assignment types
• cohesion, flow, and organization.
• grammar, sentence structure and punctuation.
• academic writing style and word choice.
• how to avoid plagiarism/ citation and referencing.
• and we highlight the weakest elements of your writing so you can focus on them when revising your paper.

We can also help you to:

• understand assignment topics better.
• develop your ideas/ thesis/ argument.
• learn the writing process effectively.
• improve your introductions, conclusions and body paragraphs.
• construct more effective sentences.
• utilize a variety of transitions and reporting verbs in your writing

What do we not do?

• Our writing instructors are not subject matter experts, so they cannot comment on the validity of the academic content of a student’s work. More specifically, we cannot provide feedback on:
  • The correctness of any claims students make relating to their topic.
  • The accurateness of student research and / or translated text.
• We do not tell you what you should think.
• Writing instructors are in no way responsible for ensuring that students complete assignments in accordance with assignment deadlines. Accordingly, students should have reasonable expectations regarding the amount of work that can be reviewed during a 50-minute session.  
• In order to allow as many students as possible to receive feedback on academic coursework, the Writing Centre does not generally review personal statements, CVs, or scholarship applications. However, if possible, we will try to accommodate your requests.

Opening Hours

AWARE is open Sunday to Thursday for paper review sessions (one-to-one consultations). Please register/ log in to our online booking system for timings and writing instructor availability: https://hbku.mywconline.com

Location

We are currently located in the Academic Resource Centre (CHSS Library), LAS Building (Penrose House), First Floor (above Starbucks).