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The Student Learning Commons blog is your online writing and learning community


Conversation Partners

Published by Julia Lane

Are you a multilingual student who would like to improve your English conversation skills in a one-to-one setting with a student volunteer?

The Conversation Partners Program is for English as an Additional Language (EAL) undergraduate and graduate Simon Fraser University students who wish to be paired with a student volunteer to practice and improve their conversational English in a friendly, supportive environment.

The Conversation Partners Program is accepting registrations for the Fall 2019 semester. Only a few spots still remain, so register today to secure your spot!

5 popular time management strategies

Published by Julia Lane

Do you sometimes find yourself in ‘busy mode’ but not accomplishing much? Do you feel you could be more organized or productive? With the start of the fall semester, it's the perfect time to set some intentions about how you want to spend your time and get prepared!

Exams are over! More learning?!

Published by Julia Lane

Hooray! Exams are over and you have 2 weeks until fall term classes start! Time for travel, a staycation on Metro Vancouver’s many beaches, or just an opportunity to catch up on the other life things that you had to put aside during the exam period.

Summer time, exam time

Published by Julia Lane

When Ella Fitzgerald sings "summer time, and the living is easy", she clearly isn't singing about students who are preparing for summertime exams! But, with the summer exam period one week away, the SLC team is here to offer you some helpful tips and tricks. They may not make your exams feel easy, but hopefully they will make your whole exam experience a bit easier

Writing anxiety

Published by Julia Lane

Feeling anxious about writing your term papers this semester? You aren't alone! In fact, writing anxiety is experienced by writers across all genres and all stages of writing experience. This blog post explores the topic of writing anxiety and provides some practical suggestions for how to address the anxiety you may be experiencing. 

Note: this post focuses on "every day" writing anxiety and not clinical anxiety. If your anxiety is unmanageable, please get support from SFU Health and Counselling or from another health care professional. Your well-being matters! 

Got Assignments? Get the Assignment Calculator!

Published by Julia Lane

It's that time of semester when assignment deadlines can start to feel like they are piling up on you. And, it can be especially hard to get down to work when the sun is shining! 

Let the assignment calculator help you to break down your assignments into manageable steps. That's just good project management! 

Reading Guide

Published by Julia Lane

Get your summer semester off on the right foot by learning how to read smarter, not harder (or longer)!

Graduate Writing Facilitator Jennesia Pedri has generously shared with us a Reading Guide that she created to support her own reading during her comprehensive exams for her doctoral studies in the School of Communications. As Jennesia explains, the guide aims to help you read more efficiently and effectively. It also aims to make itself obsolete: eventually you won’t need it because you’ll begin to automatically ask yourself these kinds of questions as you read.

Join the Student Learning Commons Team!

Published by Julia Lane

The Student Learning Commons is scouting out new talent for our Writing and Learning Peer and English as Additional Language Peer programs. 

Both positions will allow you to develop transferable skills in the areas of client service, interpersonal skills, giving effective feedback, and cross-cultural communication, and will give you access to a professional reference as well as a private study/social space in the library.

We hope you will join our team! Apply now through http://myinvolvement.sfu.ca

Self-explanation for studying

Published by Julia Lane

I'm sure I don't have to mention that it is exam time! In this blog post, Donya Samadi --  PhD student in Educational Psychology and former Graduate Facilitator with the SLC -- shares how the concept of self-explanation can be applied to studying. 

Self-explanation, Donya explains, may be beneficial because information previously learned is recalled and integrated with new information to generate a self-explanation. In this way, self-explanation is a connection and elaboration to prior knowledge. When engaged in self-explanations, learners can develop new meaningful associations, and further understand the content they are studying.