ELP Tutorial Programs
English Language Programs offers weekly 50-minute, one-on-one writing tutorials to undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Arts and Sciences. Oral skills tutorials are available upon request.
ELP tutorials are university sponsored and free to students. Spring 2024 tutorials will be offered online and/or in-person, providing students with the important opportunity to meet with their ELP writing tutors and develop their critical thinking, analytical writing, and academic oral communication skills via the modality of their convenience. In addition to making consistent improvements to students' levels of critical analysis and language structure, ELP writing tutors can also help students successfully navigate the online learning environment by giving them strategies for writing discussion posts, participating in online discussions, and interacting with their peers and faculty as required for online tasks. ELP Tutors help students build critical thinking and analytical writing skills systematically while improving students’ sentence structure and grammar. Meeting with the same tutor every week helps students set a personalized agenda with clearly determined goals.
Our graduate and undergraduate student tutors are familiar with the cross-cultural issues that make writing in academic English a challenge. Students often find that their ELP tutors also serve as cultural guides, offering resources to help navigate the unfamiliar academic landscape.
We also offer academic oral skills tutorials to students who wish to practice their speaking and listening skills in a comfortable and welcoming environment. In these tutorials, students and tutors set a personalized agenda and may work on improving pronunciation, presentation, interviewing and conversation skills in English. The goal of oral skills tutorials is to help students become more confident and competent in a variety of speaking contexts.
To request an ELP tutorial, please complete the ELP Tutor Request Form. Alternatively, you may contact Vinodini Murugesan, the Executive Director of ELP. Once you are assigned an ELP tutor, you are expected to attend each week. If you think you might only need occasional help with your writing, please make an appointment with the University Writing Center consultants instead, which offers both weekly appointments and a drop-in service with their consultants.
Please note that ELP tutorials are open to undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Arts and Sciences. We offer separate services for Heller and Brandeis International Business School students.
Format
During these one-on-one tutorial sessions, you will:
- Set a personalized agenda with clearly determined goals specifically designed for your needs.
- Sharpen your writing skills by learning to develop your argument, test your evidence and revise for clarity.
- Understand what your professor really expects in an essay and how American writing conventions differ from what you have been taught at home.
- Practice oral communication skills.