UWC Presentations offers presentations and workshops on a variety of writing-related topics which provide cross-disciplinary writing support for student writers. Our presentations have been developed in-house over the past 35 years and are updated regularly.
Our presentations listed below are conducted in-person or online by undergraduate and graduate students working at the UWC. They typically present to more than 100 UT classes and more than 2,000 students annually. In 2022-23, our presentations team reached students in 10 colleges and 35 different departments.
These presentations can be booked by instructors, student organizations, and groups visiting UT. If desired, we will train instructors and TAs to deliver any of our presentations on their own. We also offer pedagogy-focused trainings, such as “Improving Responses to Student Writing,” to help instructors refine their approach to supporting student writers.
To help you choose which presentation best suits your needs, you can read through the descriptions and click on the presentation link to view the slides. Before making your presentation request, please read about our presentations and our policies.
Presentation Policies
Scheduling
Presentations may be scheduled from 8am-6pm throughout the long sessions and 8am-5pm during the short sessions. Scheduling requests should happen at least two weeks in advance.
If you want to request a presentation or workshop outside of our regular hours, please contact the Presentations Coordinators. We do our best to accommodate every instructor’s first date/time preferences.
Attending
We require the requesting instructor or TA to be present during the presentation. We’ve found that students get the most out of presentations and workshops when their TA or instructor is present. Please do not request a presentation for a day you know you will have to miss class.
For revision and peer review workshops, they should have paper copies of their most recent drafts and writing utensils in three different colors.
Presenting
On rare occasions, we are able to present presentations to each section of a course. If your multi-section course has a lecture that everyone attends, please schedule the presentation during the lecture.
If you wish to record your UWC presentation, please do not distribute any recordings outside of the context of the course.
The Basics
| Introduction to the UWC (10-15 min) | Showing your writing to a stranger can be intimidating. To help students feel more comfortable about coming to the UWC, many instructors invite one of our consultants to their class to give a ten-minute presentation. This is a presentation that provides all the essential details about the center (hours, location and policies) and allows students to ask questions about how we can meet their individual needs. If requested, we can provide UWC bookmarks and copies of a “Getting the Most from your visit to the UWC” handout which details what students should expect when visiting. Audience: General, Undergraduate |
| Graduate Services at the UWC (15-20 min) | This is a presentation that introduces the UWC’s services for graduate students, including consultations, writing groups, retreats, and workshops. It is available for graduate seminars, orientation events, and informal graduate student groups. Printed brochures on UWC Graduate Services are also available upon request. Audience: General, Undergraduate |
| Grammarly Presentation (30-35 min) | This presentation offers ways of using the writing assistant software Grammarly effectively. This presentation will show you how to use Grammarly as a supplemental tool, so that you can both edit and improve your writing. Audience: Consultants, Undergraduate, Graduate |
| Avoiding Plagiarism (25-35min) – Avoiding Plagiarism Activity | This presentation advises students on how to research and write in an academically responsible way. Specifically, it defines plagiarism and academic dishonesty; discusses why academic honesty is important; and advises students on some best practices for avoiding plagiarism in their own writing. This presentation does not cover all the discipline- or style-specific rules for citing sources. It is intended to be generally applicable to any academic or professional discipline that adheres to Western notions of intellectual and academic honesty. Audience: General, Undergraduate, Graduate |
| Writing in Process (15-30 min) | This is a presentation that focuses on the basics of writing college-level papers. It is applicable to writing in all academic genres and all disciplines. We walk students through strategies for writing planning, for creating and structuring papers, and for revising papers. This presentation is particularly effective for new college students and for students in Writing Flag courses or other courses that require at least one major writing assignment. Audience: General, Undergraduate |
Instructor Training
| Improving Responses to Student Writing (45-50min) | In the University Writing Center, many of our consultants and administrative staff are also instructors at UT Austin. Accordingly, in addition to supporting student writers, we also offer support for instructors and teaching assistants who are responsible for responding to student writing. This presentation outlines strategies that instructors and teaching assistants can use to maximize the effectiveness of the feedback they gave their students. Please request at least two weeks in advance. Audience: Instructors |
Research Papers and Lab Reports
| Revising Lab Reports (45-50 min) | This is an interactive workshop applicable to lab reports in the hard and social sciences. The workshop prompts students to identify and critically examine the key components of their drafts: introduction, objectives, body paragraphs, claims, evidence, and conclusion. It also offers strategies for sentence-level editing and clean up. Students should come prepared with 1) a paper copy of their draft and 2) writing utensils in at least three different colors. Audience: Consultants, General, Instructors |
| Writing Lab Reports (45-50 min) | This is a presentation that discusses best practices for planning, creating, and revising lab reports in the hard and social sciences. It covers the different sections of a report (title, abstract, materials and methods, etc.) and details the goals of each. It also advises on cultivating the concise, direct, and active sentence-level style that is particularly important in science writing. Audience: General, Undergraduate, Graduate |
| Writing Research Papers (30-40 min) | This is a presentation that is applicable to research papers that argue specific thesis statements or answer non-experimental research questions. It outlines how to plan, create, structure, and revise research papers, with a focus on constructing arguments. It closely resembles the Writing in Process presentation, but focuses more closely on successful paragraphing, supporting claims, and integrating evidence. Audience: General, Undergraduate |
Writing Guides
| Revising Essays and Research Papers (45-50 min) | This is an interactive workshop applicable to thesis-driven essays and papers that focus on non-experimental research. Specifically, it asks students to locate and think critically about the essential elements of their papers: introduction, thesis/research question, body paragraphs, claims, evidence, conclusion. It also provides tips for sentence level editing and clean-up. Students should come prepared with 1) a paper copy of their draft and 2) writing utensils in at least three different colors. Audience: General, Undergraduate |
| Sentence Clarity (45-50 min) | This is a presentation that offers simple and straightforward advice for writing clear, direct sentences without resorting to complicated grammar rules. It also includes activities for students to practice the discussed writing strategies. The presenter will review the answers, as well as the process for arriving at the answers. Audience: Undergraduate |
| Transitioning from College Writing to Graduate Writing (30-40 min) | Designed for graduate students, this is a presentation that addresses many of the common challenges of transitioning to graduate-level writing, including: working in new genres, determining your audience’s expectations, and tackling long, complex projects. We suggest solutions to these challenges and introduce the UWC’s services for graduate writers. This presentation is available for graduate seminars, orientation events, or informal student-led groups. Audience: General, Undergraduate |
| Transitioning from High School to University-Level Writing (45-50 min) | This is a presentation that introduces students to some of the salient expectations and conventions of university-level writing. It explores the key differences between high school and college-level and gives students an opportunity to raise questions and concerns regarding college writing standards. This presentation prepares students to close read assignment prompts and scholarly articles. It also dispels certain “myths” that new college students tend to believe about writing, such as “good writers write quickly and effortlessly.” Audience: General, Undergraduate |
| Writing Abstracts (45-50 min) | The is a presentation that provides students with the definition and purpose of abstracts, as well as strategies and tips to compose their abstract for an intended audience. This presentation is also equipped with a workshop activity that allows students to jumpstart their writing process in class. The activity shows students how to pull information from their larger work to draft content for their abstract. If students have not yet drafted their larger work, or if you feel this activity does not fit for your class, please let your presenter know. Please keep in mind that skipping the activity will shorten the presentation. Audience: General, Undergraduate |
| Writing Effective Internal Transfer Essays (35-45 min) | This is a presentation that prepares undergraduate students to develop and write effective internal transfer essays. The presentation covers topics such as common concerns, audience, approaching the prompt, and drafting. Audience: Consultants, General, Graduate, Undergraduate |
| Writing Literature Reviews (25-35 min) – Undergraduate – Graduate | This is a presentation that is divided into three parts. The first part walks students through the basics of writing a literature review by explaining how conventions and expectations vary across disciplines, and asks students questions about their current project to jumpstart their brainstorming process. The second part introduces students to common challenges we often face when writing literature reviews, and the third part offers multiple solutions to these challenges. The presentation concludes with a “Further Reading” list, directing students to other helpful source material. Audience: General, Undergraduate, Graduate |
| Writing Personal Statements (35-45 min) | This is a presentation that prepares undergraduate students to develop and write effective personal statements for internal transfers, graduate school, medical school, law school and beyond. The presentation covers topics such as common concerns, audience, approaching the prompt, and drafting. This presentation also provides students with other campus resources willing to review and offer suggestions regarding the content in personal statements. Audience: General, Undergraduate |
| Writing Resumes, CVs, and Cover Letters (45-50 min) | This is a presentation that positions the resume, CV, and cover letter as persuasive documents, and provides writers with strategies for constructing effective materials. In this presentation, we will explain the purpose of each document, review the general structure of each document, and suggest methods for generating material content. This presentation uses resume, CV, and cover letter examples as a reference to help students visualize the layout of their materials. This presentation also provides students with a bank of section headings and action verbs they can use to describe and organize contributions to previous work/academic experiences. Audience: General, Undergraduate, Graduate |
Additional Resources
| Developing Writing Partnerships (40-50min) | This is a presentation that gives suggestions on how to select an accountability partner, provides a structure for holding you and your partner accountable, and outlines strategies for setting and keeping goals using mental contrasting. Audience: General, Graduate |
| Writing Groups (45-50 min) | Designed for graduate students, this is a presentation that introduces the benefits of writing groups, which provides structure, accountability and encouragement. The presentation includes an overview of the UWC’s group services for graduate writers, strategies for asking for help with writing and giving feedback on others’ work, and ideas for how to start your own writing group. This presentation is available for graduate seminars, orientation events, or informal student-led groups. Audience: General, Graduate |
| UWC Peer Review (45 min) – Peer Review Worksheet – Peer Review Presenter Template | This interactive workshop is a version of the Revising Essays and Research Papers workshop that has been modified for peer review. It is applicable to thesis-driven essays and papers that focus on non-experimental research. During a Peer Review workshop, a UWC presenter will lead your students through a peer review process in which they will read a partner’s paper and review it for the clarity and coherence of its thesis, main claims, evidence, analysis, and conclusion. Students should have a peer review partner and should come prepared with 1) a paper copy of their draft to share with their partner and 2) writing utensils in at least three different colors. Audience: Undergraduate, Graduate |
Additional Support
Interested in other ways the UWC can support you? Head over to our How We Help page to find out about all the services available to you at the UWC.