Computers can’t replace people. The tutors at the Writing Center urge you to visit in person.
Make an appointment for one of our convenient campus centers:
- The Lincoln Center Writing Center, Lowenstein, room 302E or call (212) 636-6417
- The Rose Hill Writing Center, Dealy, room E533 or call (718) 817-4032.
Just have a quick question? Email us at: lcwritingctr@fordham.edu
Please read the following information fully before submitting a draft!
As a Fordham student currently enrolled in nearly any undergraduate or graduate class, you can email a draft of a short essay, or part of a longer essay, to a Writing Center tutor. The tutor will then respond to your draft by email, writing comments and suggestions for revision, asking questions for clarification, and, if needed, giving grammatical, citation or transitional models to show you how to correct these issues. Moreover, the tutor will respond to your writing issues by paying close attention to your goals and concerns.
Frequently Asked Questions:
How does online tutoring differ from traditional face-to-face tutoring?
There are advantages to each form of tutoring. While nothing can replace the immediacy of meeting a tutor one-on-one in the Writing Center, online tutoring can help students whose schedules don't permit face-to-face visits. Online tutoring also provides a written record of questions, comments, suggestions, and model, so if you’re a student who likes written notes, online tutoring can be particularly beneficial.
However, e-mail doesn’t have the personal dialogue of traditional face-to-face tutoring, so you can’t ask the questions that may arise during a tutoring session, you can’t write or rewrite and get immediate feedback, and you lose the human interaction that makes one-on-one tutoring enjoyable. Finally, online tutoring requires you to budget in a three-day turnaround time for your papers, so online tutoring doesn’t meet the needs of last-minute writers.
What kinds of papers can I send?
Online tutoring works best with shorter papers, so we can’t accept drafts longer than five double-spaced pages. If you’re writing something longer, you want to send just a portion of the paper, but more likely, you probably want to visit the Writing Center in person.
Just as e-mail differs from conversation, online tutoring differs from face-to-face tutoring. You will find we can’t work through grammatical issues as thoroughly, nor can we show you the “nuts and bolts” technical aspects of writing like citation styles as readily. Instead, online tutors will focus on broader, global, or conceptual issues, rather than issues on the sentence level. Therefore if you recognize your issues as being primarily sentence level, you want to visit the Writing Center in person.
What writing qualifies for online tutoring?
Almost all writing for almost all Fordham undergraduate and graduate classes! You cannot send a paper for an instructor who has expressly forbidden online tutoring, and we will not accept student writing that is a take-home exams or writing for a current law school class (only papers for past law classes). We will help you with everything else, including writing that is not for coursework such as personal essays, résumés, and cover letters.
What kind of response will I get?
Check out our samples to see the kinds of responses you can expect. These sample papers will not only help you see what to expect, but they’ll also help you in forming your questions and stating your goals for your online tutoring session.
When will I get a response?
Our tutors only work and check their e-mail on business days (Monday-Friday, excepting all school holidays). Your draft and email will be e-mailed to a Writing Center tutor by 5:00 on the weekday, or next weekday, of the day you submit it. This Writing Center tutor will contact you within three business days. Check out our timetable to see exactly when you’ll get a response.
Please note that on weekends, and during busy points in the school calendar like mid-term and the end of the semester, our online tutors can get quite backed up. Although we want to give your writing the shortest turn-around time possible, these periods of high demand will necessitate the full three business days. Writers working on a deadline will want to rely on face-to-face Writing Center tutoring sessions by making an appointment (x-6417).
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