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Southern Oregon University

Academic Support Programs

SOU Writing Center


Our Mission

Our mission is to help Southern Oregon University students become more skillful, more effective, more confident, and more resourceful writers. 

How We Can Help

At the SOU Writing Center, we work with all undergraduate students -- from beginning writers to those finishing capstone projects.  As you begin to write papers in your major, you can come to the Writing Center for help with incorporating research, organizing longer papers, and properly citing sources.  From one-paragraph summaries to full-length research papers, the Writing Center provides guidance in all aspects of the writing process.

If you are writing a long paper or planning a research project, you may want to schedule a series of appointments. Regular weekly meetings with a tutor can help you stay on track and manage deadlines. Although we focus on writing, we can also help with speech preparation, including outlining, development, and delivery. 

Tutors WILL:

  • Brainstorm on how to get started on a paper or how to best approach a paper assignment or prompt, particularly in terms of how to construct an argument.
  • Read a full or partial draft of a paper and comment on its overall argumentation. This kind of comment can include, but is not limited to, logical flow of argument, effective uses of quotes and other types of evidence, persuasive placement of points, etc.
  • Read a full or partial draft of a paper and comment on its organization, both globally and at the paragraph level.
  • Make suggestions for how to revise a paper for greater coherence, clarity, and persuasiveness of argument.
  • Spot patterns of grammatical errors in a student's prose and teach the student how to identify and correct these patterns.  

Tutors WILL NOT: 

  • Copy-edit or 'correct' the paper. Tutors are there to teach students how to improve their writing, and not to 'fix' papers for students.
  • Correct grammar errors in a paper. Again, tutors can look for patterns and help teach students how to self-correct but cannot go through and adjust the paper to be grammatically correct (i.e., switching tenses, subject-verb agreement, etc).
  • Read papers longer than 10 pages.  

Appointment Policy:

While you may schedule an appointment in advance or even set up a series of appointments to work on a particular paper, you may also come to the center on a drop-in basis, first-come, first-served. We usually have two tutors working at a time, so you may find that if the center is busy, you have to wait for help or schedule an appointment for a different time.