Smarthinking

Do you know about Smarthinking? This is a service that NDSCS supports to give you 24/7 access to tutoring and topic helps. Among others, there is a Writing Lab that can help you with papers for any class. Some things they can help with are lab reports, business plans and literary analysis. You can forward them a paper and have them critique it with you.

You will need a password and login to set up your account, so first contact your instructor or the library to find out how to get started. The website is

http://www.smarthinking.com/

You will set up a new username and password to use whenever you access Smarthinking for tutoring. Then you can get help whenever you need it.

Pros and Cons

A common essay given to English classes is to take a stand on an issue, either pro or con, and defend that stand with support from articles and books by scholarly or expert individuals. If you are looking for materials that will help you in this type of paper, here are some sources to look at.

Opposing Viewpoints: http://www.ndscs.edu/library/magazine.jsp
Choose the Gale Group and click on the link to Opposing Viewpoints.

ProCon.org: http://www.procon.org

Also, we have books from the Opposing Viewpoints series in the library, another set on Clashing Views, and others. Check in the ODIN catalog for details.

Writing Professionally

It has been said that the best way to learn to write is to apply the seat of the pants firmly to your chair and write. But everyone always needs some help in certain areas, often style, grammar, spelling and so on. We have recently added some new guides in writing, with some professional tips as well. There are many more out there. Take time to read some earlier posts and look at the new links on the left of the page. There will certainly be something useful to help you in creating the best written project that you can.