By Daniel Chang

PhD candidate and SLC Writing Consultant Daniel Chang welcomes you to the Spring 2020 semester and offers some important reminders for how to get the most out of this term.

Wishing you all safe and happy holidays. See you in the new decade (2020)!

It's the first day of exams! Here are some of the SLC's top tips for exam season. 

The SLC Conversation Partners Program pairs EAL students with volunteer peers. Conversation partners then meet on a weekly basis throughout the semester.

In this blog post, SLC Peer Bessie W. interviews two of her conversation partners to hear their unique perspectives on the program and their experiences at SFU. 

Guest blogger and English as Additional Language Peer Educator, Ashley K. writes this week about her experiences with EAL Peer training. In particular, she reflects on a lecture presented by Dr. Ena Lee, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education. Dr. Lee's talk focused on the "commonsense discourses" of English language learning, and how these "commonsense" ideas are often actually wrong. 

Ashley connects this talk with her experiences doing a "Pluriligual Identity" exercise and reflecting on her own connections with language learning, identity, and culture. 

Want to learn a quick, and Halloween-appropriate, strategy for checking if your sentence is in the active or passive voice?

Read on, if you dare... 

For the third year in a row, the SLC will host an undergraduate writing contest. 

All contest details, and the submission page, can be found here: https://journals.lib.sfu.ca/index.php/slc-uwc

The contest opens on November 29th and  submissions will continue to be accepted until January 5th 2020 (at midnight).

Sharing more of the six word stories we have collected by asking members of the SLC community to reflect on their mistakes and/or what they've learned from them. Enjoy! Maybe you'll see yourself in some of these micro-stories! I know I do... :}

Have an argumentative or thesis-based essay coming up for one of your classes? Check out this blog post to help you develop a thorough and well-supported argument! 

Thank you to Teeba Obaid, PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Education, for contributing this post to the blog!

On July 29th, Julia Lane (SLC Writing Services Associate) did an interview with Ciara Reid on CJSF. Check out the link in the post to listen to the interview and learn about the SLC's forthcoming Inclusive Writing resources.