For the six-week summer session, Monday June 22 through August 4, 2020, the Cornell Writing Center will be offering online, synchronous tutoring sessions by appointment. Trained graduate student tutors will be available Sundays—Thursdays 4:00-5:00pm ET and 7:00-10:00pm ET. Writers will need to register accounts and make appointments.
The Cornell Summer Writing Center (CWC) provides support for individuals at any stage of the writing process. It is a free resource available to all of Cornell—undergraduate students, pre-freshman and high schoolers in summer programs, graduate students, staff, faculty, and alumni—for nearly any kind of writing project: applications, presentations, lab reports, essays, papers, and more. Tutors (trained graduate students) serve as responsive listeners and readers who can address questions about the writing process or about particular pieces of writing. They will ask questions that foster critical thinking about your writing, and they will also consider questions of confidence, reading, analytic thought, imagination, and research. All tutors have training in supporting multilingual writers and working with writers remotely online.
Our online appointments offer the option for video-conferencing or text-box chatting, and in order to “show up” for an appointment, you simply need to login to the schedule, click on your appointment, and then click the yellow link that says “START OR JOIN CONVERSATION.” Our tutors will be prepared to help you navigate technology issues—they will email you to check-in and offer help should you have any trouble “showing up.”
Though we work hard to ensure smooth online appointments, due to the regularity of technical and other unforeseen issues, we ask all writers to make hour-long appointments.
While the Writing Center can support writers in many of the same ways we always have, this semester our tutors have noticed that online tutoring also offers a unique opportunity for connection, encouragement, and support in a time of isolation and more autonomous work expectations. Read their reflections!
In order to get the best tutoring experience possible, we encourage writers to:
- Select 4-6 pages to focus on in one session
- Come with specific questions you have about your writing
- Bring the assignment prompt, if you have one
- Be prepared to engage in discussion and do some collaborative work
We look forward to working with you!
