The University of Delaware Writing Center is offering free workshops this spring on a variety of specific challenges facing college writers, both undergraduate and graduate students, beginning Wednesday, Feb. 22.

Workshops will be held in the Multimedia Writing Center, 017 Morris Library, from 3:30-5 p.m. The Writing Center is part of the College of Arts and Sciences, but its services are available to all UD students.

“The University Writing Center workshops are among our most popular offerings,” said Melissa Ianetta, professor of English and director of the center. “Students enjoy the opportunity to spend a short, focused period of time improving a specific writing skill or strategy.”

In addition to popular topics covered in previous semesters, this spring the Writing Center is tackling speech anxiety, research posters and active versus passive voice.

To register for one or more workshops, graduate students and undergraduate students can visit the Writing Center webpage and select the workshop and date to sign up.

Following is the workshop schedule.

• Feb. 22 and April 24 — Statements of Purpose for Applying to Graduate Schools. For those applying to master’s and doctoral programs in the sciences, social sciences, humanities or arts, this workshop will explore general principles for writing convincing personal essays and statements of purpose ― ones that highlight your undergraduate work and emphasize your research interests successfully.

• Feb. 27 and April 26 — Conquering Speech Anxiety. The workshop is for those who get anxious at the thought of giving a presentation, or whose hands shake when standing in front of a crowd. Speech anxiety, or "the fear of public speaking," is a common fear among individuals and manifests differently within each person. This workshop will explore the common causes of speech anxiety as well provide techniques to help reduce its effects.

• March 8 — Taking the Mystery Out of Citation. Citing sources can seem like busy work, but doing so is a crucial part of researched-based writing. How does someone show that they have done their research and have used their sources ethically? This workshop will show participants how to cite their sources throughout their papers in different formats (MLA, Chicago, APA), as well as use citation styles to craft how the reader will respond to their sources. Bring a copy of a research paper to practice during this interactive session.

• March 22 — Learning to Be Your Own Proofreader. For those who struggle to get rid of all those pesky typos before submitting a paper, this workshop will offer suggestions for how to improve editing skills and polish final papers. The workshop will provide both hands-on experience and tips and tricks for improving your proofreading strategies. Participants will work to build a "self-editing" checklist and to apply these principles to their own writing.

• April 5 — Research Posters. For those preparing a research poster for a class or conference presentation and are new to the genre, this workshop will arm participants with the basic principles of visual rhetoric and design required to present research clearly and effectively in a visual format.

• April 12 — Active vs. Passive Voice. People often give the advice about using active voice instead of passive voice, but what does this really mean and why should writers care? In this workshop, attendees will bring some of their own writing and will learn how to identify weak prose and what questions to ask to strengthen their writing and make their ideas clearer. They will walk through the many creative (and even fun) ways to restructure sentences to make them active.