Book a consultation with the Academic Support Centre

Support in writing

If you want support in academic writing, you need to send the text to the Academic Support Centre by email at least 24 hours before the consultation. The text is to be sent to the email address supplied in the confirmation email you received in the booking process. The document must be in Word format.

Feel free to send the whole text but do indicate which pages you would like to concentrate on during the consultation. If there is a particular part of the content that you would like to focus on, write that in the email too. Remember, your text does not need to be ready, but do not forget to read through the text yourself before you send it to us.

Please send any assignment instructions along with any other relevant information.
Remember that if you are writing an essay, we are never able to read more than approximately 30% of the total text, or a few pages.

Before the writing consultation, we recommend that you:

• Identify which part of the text you would like the language and study consultants to read. Send that information when you submit your text, not later than 24 hours before the consultation.
• Attach assignment instructions, if the advice you are seeking relates to a take-home exam or a short assignment.
• If you have already had a response to your text from a member of teaching staff or a supervisor, we ask you to include that information too.
• Check that your document is a Word file. The Academic Support Centre is not able to open Google Docs links.

You should also watch our pre-recorded lecture about effective writing strategies in Canvas:

Effective writing strategies with the Academic Support Centre (requires login)

Support in study skills

Before the consultation on study skills, we recommend that you:

• Try to identify your current study routines and think about whether or how they can be improved. 
• Write down questions you would like to ask about your planning.
• Consider and write down whether you have any strategies on, for example, academic reading and how you approach a long reading list.
• Look through the Academic Support Centre’s videos about study skills, to gain an understanding of what we may focus on during the session. You will find the videos in Canvas via the link below.

Study skills with the Academic Support Centre in Canvas (requires login)

A consultation is around 45 minutes long. Before the session, you will receive a confirmation email containing instructions about how it works, depending on whether we are going to meet physically or via Zoom.

The consultation is an opportunity for you to discuss your writing or your study skills with us. We therefore encourage you to be active during the conversation. If we make written notes about your text, you will receive them afterwards, but please feel free to make your own notes during the session.

If there are several of you writing together, we recommend that you all participate in the meeting. If you have sent in a text, we use that as the basis of the consultation. As a starting point, we use concrete examples from the text and discuss how you could improve both the text in question and your writing in general.

Support in writing

• Please do make notes during the consultation.
• Be active and ask questions about the comments that the language and study consultant has made in your document.
• Ask for further clarification if necessary.

Support in study skills

If you have booked support in study skills, we will take your study situation as our starting point and together arrive at what strategies you could use to improve your study situation.

• Please make notes during the consultation.
• Ask questions about what we talk about, for example about the strategies discussed.
• Ask the language and study consultant to explain if there is anything you do not understand or would like to know more about, for example how revision and note-taking strategies could be used in your planning.

Support in writing

If you have received writing support, you should go through the language and study consultant comments and your own notes as soon as possible after the session and use that information to work through the text. If it is a longer text, the idea is that you should also use the advice received to improve the text as a whole.

If you feel the need for another meeting, you can make another appointment Remember, you are expected to work independently between consultations.

Support in study skills

If you have received study skills support, you should test the strategies that have arisen during the consultation. Please reflect both on what works well, and what works less well, since that gives you the opportunity to continue working on your study skills.

You can also:

• Read through and revisit your notes after the consultation.
• Send feedback to the Academic Support Centre and ask questions via email.