Concerned about your writing?

We are here to help you.

If you are concerned that your English writing skills may be stretched in a postgraduate study environment, get in touch with us now or in your first week of study.

Contact us

There are MAPAS Advisors (specifically for Māori and Pacific students), ELE Advisors (specifically for English Language Enrichment support) and SLS Advisors (general Student Learning Services Advisors) at the University of Auckland who can help you.  It is free to meet with them.

Te Fale Pouāwhina Learning Advisors
	Matt Tarawa Phone: +64 9 923 8608 Email: m.tarawa@auckland.ac.nz Mona O’Shea Phone: +64 9 923 8970 Email: m.oshea@auckland.ac.nz
MAPAS Postgraduate Student Support Advisor
	Email: mapaspg@auckland.ac.nz Phone: 027 836 5166 or 0800 20 20 99 option 6
Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences Postgraduate Advisor
	Or contact us at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences stepps.fmhs@auckland.ac.nz

Becoming a good reader at postgraduate level

To be a good writer, you need to start with being a good reader.  To help you with becoming a more effective reader, download the following sheet: The 3 Read Strategy for Academic Reading.

This page describes a simple but really effective way to deal with the volume of reading you need to keep up with at the postgraduate level of study.  

Attached on the second page is a template you can use to take bullet points / quick notes as you learn how to skim, focus on chunks and summarise key ideas and themes in your academic reading.

Download: The 3 Read Strategy for Academic Reading

There are some excellent online support tools that you may wish to get sorted in preparation for your study.  Especially if you feel your grammar, punctuation, vocabulary and/or English writing skills could benefit from outside assistance.  You may find it helpful to explore online grammar support software such as Grammarly.com.  

Grammarly is a Plugin tool that you can download and load into your Chrome or Safari web browser.  The Grammarly software will assist you in live time as you work on creating documents in Word - it gives you corrections and grammar reminders as you go.

Visit the Grammarly.com website for more information and to see how Grammarly works.

The following two resources are excellent, free online places where you can go to develop your English language and English writing skills for study at university.

Resource 1: The University of Auckland's ELE Writing Online 

The University of Auckland's Student Learning Services - Tā te Ākonga Advisory Team has developed a range of resources to help you in your English writing, vocabulary and grammar development.

Once you are enrolled as a student at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, you will be able to tap into all of the English Language Enrichment (ELE) Online resources. One of these helpful online resources is shown in the image attached: Grammar Smart.  GrammarSmart is designed to help you to improve aspects of your written grammer - all through online activities you can do at home on your computer.

Resource 2: The Beginner's Guide to Academic Writing Online Course (MOOC)

The University of Reading offers a really good open, free, online course (a MOOC) that lasts for 5 weeks.  It requires a workload of about 3 hours per week. The focus of the online course is on developing writing skills, vocabulary and grammar for English-speaking study at university.  

It is very easy to join the online MOOC course.  You need to go to the course website and create a login with an email address and a password.  

The course is being offered starting on 9th May, 2016.  To find out more, watch this short introductory video explaining who the Beginner's Guide to Academic Writing MOOC course may be suitable for.

A Beginner's Guide to Writing In English for University Study https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/english-for-study  The University of Reading

Find out what sort of a writer you are by taking The Writer's Diet Test.

Visit The Writer's Diet Test website developed by Helen Sword (Professor at the Centre for Learning and Research in Higher Education at the University of Auckland).  

You will be asked to insert a sample of your writing into the space provided on The Writer's Diet website.

Your writing sample will then be analysed for the sentence-level grammatical features that most frequently occur in your writing.

A 'diet diagnosis' is given to you which gives you a sense of how fit your writing is.

In this writing sample shown in the image attached, the diagnosis is FLABBY.

To find out more about how the Writer's Diet Test, and Diagnosis, works visit the website.