Advice on UWP 1 Student

1. Get Stuck?
Get Help!
This project is about getting help on writing as a student.
Chen Ma

2. My Story
When I first took a writing class, I did not like to get help from others.
But later I found out that I sometimes got the topic wrong and spent a
lot of time revising or even rewriting my paper afterwards. When I
wrote a restaurant review for one of my writing classes, I was
informed that I needed to rewrite it because I misunderstood the
concept of “restaurant review”. If I had asked any other person in my
class about the format that the teacher wants, I would not have had to
start all over again. In order to avoid the same mistake, we should try
getting help from others.

3. Benefits of Getting Help
Saving
Time
Don’t be afraid of asking questions! Other people might happen to know the solutions
and asking the question directly saves you a lot time. Even if none of you know the
answer, you may find the solution through exchanging your ideas. The process of
getting help is very common and helpful in other fields as well. Imagine you are doing
your math homework and are stuck on a certain problem. You refuse to ask anyone
because you’re really good at math and you believe that asking others is just a waste of
time. Finally, you might successfully solve the problem, but you are not saving time as
you think. If you discuss this problem with your friend, you might be able to find the
solution much quicker as your friend can spot your errors easier than yourself.

4. Benefits of Getting Help
More
Professional
You can get more professional advice from specialists on writing and experts on the
topic or find some useful information on the Internet. With the help of others, you can
have new perspectives on those problems and may correct your misunderstanding of
the questions. Especially when you’re writing a research paper, citations from other
authorities in that field is crucial to build the credibility of your essay. If a research
paper only consists of the author’s analysis, it will look more like science fiction than
research paper.

5. Tutors
Classmates
&
Friends
Teachers
Library
Internet
Ways to Get Help

6. Apart from the free tutors that are offered on campus, you can also find other
tutors for extra charge on the Internet. If you do not live on campus and do
not want to spend extra money, you can choose to go to the school’s writing
center; It is a free service that is open to every student on the campus. It is
located on the second floor of Dutton Hall and you can check their website
for more information. They also have some writing advice on their website.
There are two types of writing tutors there: one is drop-in tutors and the
other is specialists. Drop-in tutors mostly consist of students who are trained
to correct students’ mistakes while specialists can be teachers that teach
other writing classes on campus. Also, remember to check the open hours
and go there early if you can. If you would like to meet with a specialist, you
need to make an appointment with him/her online before you go.
Students who live on
campus have tutors at
their service center.
They have tutors for
many subjects, including
math, chemistry, and
writing. Remember to
check the time of
different subjects’
ahead, and get there
early in case there are
too many students there.
Once I went there so late
that I was informed to
leave when entering
because there were too
many students.
Tutors

7. In all the writing courses, we have peer review workshops
for students to give suggestions on their classmates’ essays.
Reading your peers’ essays will help you see how they
write on the same topic, how they respond to your
comments, and how they revise their articles. You
can learn a lot of new techniques from your peers
and you can get feedbacks on your essays, which is
really helpful in revising.
Also, after the peer review workshops, you
can also discuss the problems you have on the
assignments with your classmates, and talk with
them about the parts that need more revision. Through their
advice, you can understand the assignments better as you
get to know different views.
Besides your
classmates, you can also have a friend to
look at your essay. They have not learnt
_about your assignment’s background
__knowledge, so they can spot your
essay’s questions faster. For example, I
_________used the phrase “fuel moisture”
________in my research paper, one of my
_____readers pointed out that I should
_____________explain this word; I
__________understood this word’s
meaning as I was working on this topic,
but other people are not familiar with
this jargon.
Classmates
Friends

8. One of the most important things is always asking
your teacher before you start writing; your teacher
is the one who gives you the assignment, and who
knows this assignment best. It is okay to be told by
the teacher that you need to rewrite even if you
have already finished the first draft: as long as it is
before the final draft, you can make whatever
changes you want. Rewriting is much better than
getting a bad grade on the assignment. Also, you
can always talk with your teacher about the
difficulties that you’ve encountered during your
writing process.
In order to get help from your teachers, you could
choose either to e-mail them your questions, or to
come to their office hours. Their e-mail addresses
and office hour schedules should all be able to be
found in the syllabus. If you have a quick
question, you can also ask them after class. But
you should also be aware of the shortcomings of
these approaches. You might not get an
immediate and detailed response if you choose to
write an e-mail, so ask some small questions that
do not need a quick response, or e-mail them
your questions early. Also, if you cannot come to
their office hours due to time conflicts, you can
talk to them to see if they can schedule a meeting
for you when you’re free. Teachers

9. We should all be familiar with finding resources on the Internet. You can use Google
Scholar to find papers about your topic, use Pew Research Center to find supporting
data and surveys, and use Purdue Owl to check citation formats. There are many useful
online resources, but be aware that not all of them are reliable. Remember to check the
source before citing: if it is from a famous, credible writer or website, feel free to use it.
You can not use Wikipedia as your direct resource, but you can check the references
part on the bottom of the page to see if any of them can be integrated in your paper.
Also, your instructors may provide you with some useful links when they introduce the
assignments; these are all useful resources and be sure to write the addresses down.
These websites are reliable sources that have been checked by your instructors, and
are all relevant to your assignment. By recording them, it saves you a lot of time
searching on the internet.
Internet

10. Our school library has millions of books and you can always find what
you need in the library; even if the library does not have the book you
want, you can send a book request to get the book you need. As a UC
Davis student, you can check out 300 books at a time, which is obviously
enough for your needs. You can use the school library website to find the
material and you can choose to read it in the library or to bring it home.
If you can not find a book that should be in the library, you can talk to
the librarians, they will find it for you; if it was checked out by others,
they will send an e-mail to inform that person to return it in a week.
Besides paper books, you can also use the school library’s services to get access to e-books. Our school’s students
have access to a large online resource database that stores a lot of research papers and journals. The access to
these databases is based on whether you’re using the school’s Internet or not; but even if you are at home, you
can use the school’s VPN service to get the full access to those databases and work from home.
ibrary

11. TheEndTheEnd
Getting help from others is a really important strategy in writing and you have many
choices in respect to where to get help. You can not only find help from other people like
tutors, peers, instructors, but also from the internet and the library. But you also need to
be aware that do not keep asking others once you have a problem. Try to solve it by
yourself first, then find help if you cannot. If you keep seeking help from others, you will
not make any progress and your writing skills will not be improved. Also, do not take
other people’s help for granted, remember to at least say “Thank you” to those people
who have helped you. The ability to find help is also very important in other areas other
than college writing. Even when you’ve started working, you can always find someone
that can be learned from. Through learning other people’s advantages to make up your
disadvantages, you will be more and more professional at that field. Finally, I would like
to thank you for reading my tips and hope you guys can have fun with writing.