College life is all about getting together
in groups, finding like-minded individuals that share common interests and
moulding one’s talent. Sometimes this can be undertaken by way of the various
clubs found in colleges and programmes offered at an institute. The Writing
Centre is one such venture.
The Writing Centre is supposed to
be the only one of its kind in the country and aims to offer students
focused, extended, and personalised tutoring so as to facilitate intellectual
development by developing English writing and communication skills so as
to produce independent, efficient and confident writers. Advisors at
the Writing Centre help students understand their topic, refine
their ideas, organise and structure facts, identify spelling or grammatical
errors and improve their written work. The methods used at
the Writing Centre are multi-faceted, flexible, and
collaborative. The Writing Centre also invites faculty from other Writing
Centres to interact and conduct sessions for the students. Some of the
international faculty members include Professor Robert Witmer, Professor at
University of Sophia, Japan, Prof. Marie-Lise Blain, University of Ottawa,
Canada, Prof. Georgia Lyons, Nipissing University, Canada, Prof. Robert Witmer,
Sophia University, Japan, Dr Saori Sadoshima, Waseda University, Japan, Prof.
Tom Gally, Tokyo University, Japan and Dr Dee Broughton, University of Idaho,
USA.
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Vernul Sequeira, the Advisor at the Writing
Centre at Chowgule College shares how the Writing Centre helps students,
saying, “The Writing Centre proactively pursues its mission of helping students
to become more effective and confident writers. The staff conducts one-on-one
sessions with the students, wherein we help them with academic thesis, writing
to composing short essays. We also conduct fun activities like Just a Minute,
Scrabble, Film Screening and Talk Time to improve student’s skills.”
The basic objectives of the Writing Cell
are: to impress upon the students the importance of good written communication
skills, to raise the level of communication skills of the students at Chowgule
College and to improve the employability of Chowgule College Graduates by
responding to the needs of potential employers.
Adding to this, Vernul talks about the
centre’s plans for the future. “Some of the plans for the Writing Centre
include that of starting a research writing course for Second Year students at
Chowgule College. We want to publish more research papers related to academic
writing. We also want to continue to come up with pioneering workshops on
topics related to academics and research writing. Presently, the Writing Centre
has three advisors and three graduate tutors who train the students and conduct
different workshops and sessions at Chowgule College.”
