Getting Started:

For Master's Students

1. Paper Review Appointments

   Make a one-on-one appointment with one of the Writing Center’s writing instructors, who will review essay drafts, discussion posts, annotated bibliographies, or other written course materials.Writing instructors provide students with writing feedback that is nondirective and that focuses first on grammar, clarity, organization, paragraphing, and idea development as well as overall cohesion and synergy.

2. Writing Center Email Support

   Contact our team! Through our email support service, writing instructors provide answers within 24 hours to questions about academic writing, APA style and citation guidelines, writing process, word choice, sentence structure, and general grammar.

3. Writing Center Blog

   Read our blog post on Top 10 Tips for Writing Topic Sentences and other posts on scholarly writing.

1. Introduction to Academic Writing

a. Writing at the Graduate Level Webinars
Take advantage of our webinars on writing at the graduate level. These webinars provide students with great stepping stones through graduate writing expectations and common course assignments.

2. Scholarly Voice & Scholarly Writing

a. Scholarly Voice Basics
Formal language is required in the academic setting. At Walden, the use of “colloquialisms, slang, contractions, biased language, rhetorical questions, and second person pronouns” is discouraged.

b. Writing Concisely
At the graduate level, some students are tempted to incorporate long words or long sentences into their writing. While long words and long sentences can be effective, graduate level writing requires that you communicate your message as directly as possible. This means that writers will need to revise their text to omit unnecessary words or phrase.

c. Scholarly Tone
Consider scholarly tone in your writing. Achieving scholarly tone means to incorporate academic voice in your text. Everything from a discussion post to a capstone document should be written in scholarly tone.

d. Scholarly Writing Webinars
Access our recorded webinars on scholarly tone. Keep in mind that scholarly tone encompasses more than just academic voice. Also part of scholarly tone is essay organization, elimination of bias, and flow.

3. Revision & Self-Editing

a. Grammarly
Grammarly is an automated grammar and writing revision tool for academic writing. Grammarly will not edit your work for you; it is up to you to incorporate Grammarly's feedback and decide what suggestions are most appropriate. For a more comprehensive paper review, consider making a reservation with a writing instructor.

b. Incorporating Grammarly into Your Writing Process

4. Grammar Help

a. Grammar Modules
Writing Center modules are multimedia, self-paced tutorials focused on a particular topic in the categories of grammar, APA, and plagiarism prevention.

b. Grammar Webinars
The Writing Center releases a webinar schedule every month. Our webinar series presents a live, interactive space for communal learning, where students are welcome to present their writing questions.

c. Writing Center Blog on Accessible Grammar

5. Basic APA

a. APA Style Guidelines
In every college at Walden University, students are required to follow APA style citation guidelines. Giving credit to the authors of an idea is of vital importance, and following APA guidelines can help you to avoid plagiarism.

b. Course Paper Templates
Walden University requires students to format their papers using the Walden course paper template.

c. APA Webinars
APA webinars provide for students a live, interactive setting in which to learn about APA guidelines and present your APA queries. We record these webinars so that you can easily tap into this valuable information.

d. APA Modules
Writing Center modules are multimedia, self-paced tutorials focused on a particular topic. APA modules cover APA reference formatting and citation formatting and style rules, as well as an overall introduction to APA style.

e. Common Reference List Examples
You will likely have journal entries and website entries in all of your reference lists. This resource provides writers with formatting guidelines for these and even more common reference list entries.

f. Citing Electronic Sources
Students can find information about digital object identifiers (DOIs) on this page.

1. Common Course Assignments

The writing center provides brief overviews for many common course assignments.These overviews provide links to helpful resources to aid you in completing your drafts.

2. Library Research Process Guides

These guides, created by the Walden Library, provide additional and specific information that may aid you in your research process.

3. Ask a Librarian

Just like our option to contact the writing instructors, the Walden Library also gives students with the ability to contact campus librarians.

4. Plagiarism Modules

These modules provide all of the needed information to avoid plagiarism during your time here at Walden University.They also provide additional links and resources to clarify different forms of plagiarism such as intentional, unintentional and self-plagiarism.

1. Outlining

The provides specific information on outlining, which may save students time on their first drafts, allowing them to spend more time focusing on the in-depth aspects of their assignment.

2. Prewriting Basics

The Writing Center believes in providing students with multiple different ways to get their paper started.If outlining doesn’t work for you, you may find our pre-writing techniques helpful.

3. Brainstorming Techniques

Brainstorming is a great way to avoid writers block.Here at the writing center we provide you with multiple different techniques to beat writers block.

4. How to Organize Your Thoughts

The organization of ideas is something that a writer not only needs to address during their drafting period, but also during their revision period.

5. How to Create Cohesion

* The Writing Center’s Top 10 Tips For Writing Useful Topic Sentences

* Writing Effective Paragraphs

* Lead Your Readers with Flow: A Thursday Thoughts Reflection

Please also see our page of resources for master's capstone writing.