Volunteer

Description

Each year the Regional Writing Centre hosts a National Secondary School Essay Writing Competition. The primary aim of the competition is to give students the opportunity to engage in a social debate through writing and to prepare them for argumentative writing at third level. In addition, the competition highlights the University of Limerick’s commitment to supporting the educational advancement of prospective students. The Regional Writing Centre is dedicated to helping students to develop strategies to become more confident, critical and autonomous writers, capable of writing persuasively in all contexts, whether academic or professional.

The competition started on a smaller scale in 2011, inviting essays from Transition, 5th and 6th-year secondary school students in the immediate vicinity of UL, from counties Limerick and Clare. Each year, the RWC has widened the scope of its competition until 2013, when it became a national competition. Initially, four prizes were offered, with a single winner in each province, one of which was judged to be the overall winner. Later, the RWC changed the format, offering nine prizes, an overall winner and two runners-up in each grade category, Transition, 5th and 6th year. Since there is generally little interest shown by Leaving Certs, in 2020 we began only inviting Transition and 5th-year students to participate.

The volunteers will be responsible for reading submissions and making judgments about whether an essay is a potential winner or not. The process will begin with eliminations, ruling out essays that the reader feels are highly unlikely to be competitive. The second stage of the process will task volunteers with identifying the top essays in each category; Transition year and 5th year. Once the top essays are put forward, volunteers and the director of the RWC will reach a consensus on the top three essays in each category. This is a process that must be completed in a month. Therefore, we are going to seek at least ten readers, reading approximately three hours a week, however please note that this estimation is subject to change depending on the number of applicants we receive and accept. While we realise that this configuration is idealistic, it is not necessarily set in stone, so we are open to other ways of operating the competition.

After the winners are selected, any volunteers who are interested will be invited back to help with the award ceremony (3 hours). There, volunteers would help guide the winners and their guests from Main Reception to the RWC. Volunteers will be asked to circulate and talk to the winners and their families and help them if they need information or direction (to toilets, or particular rooms, etc.) Finally, the volunteers will be asked to assist the RWC staff in getting the winners and their families together for photographs with the UL President (or her stand-in.)

 

Once you apply, we will get in contact with you to ask you to come in and talk to us about the process before we approve your application.

Is training provided?: Yes

Tasks that the volunteer(s) will be expected to undertake:

Reading and judging papers according to set criteria; keeping the essays in the correct files; discussing judgements with the RWC staff.

Skills required for this role:

Applicants must be good readers. Good readers:
o    Read fluently, their attention on understanding the text. 
o    Read with a purpose - in this case, with the judging criteria in mind.
o    Are able to identify the text structure - in this case, the argumentative framework.

o    Monitor their own understanding and, when their understanding is frustrated, identify reasons why and repairing if it is a reader error or, if it is a writer error, making a note of it.
o    Creates mental notes and summaries of their understandings of the text’s message, maintaining understanding by making what has just been read cohere with what was read earlier in the text. 
o    Makes predictions when they read of what will happen next as part of the monitoring process previously mentioned. 
o    Edit their thoughts as they read, distinguishing between important and trivial ideas and integrating new with existing information.

Details of time commitment needed for role:
It is hoped that the volunteer can devote three hours a week from the 27th of February to the 11th of April, approximately six weeks.

Minimum time commitment per week:
3 hour p/week

Additional screening required for this role:
Interview, just to be sure the task is right for the applicant