Abstract
The Centre for Academic Writing at the trilingual (German–Italian–English) Free University
of Bozen-Bolzano was created in 2021 as a means of supporting student writing at the
institution and for carrying out research in academic writing and communication in
plurilingual contexts. It offers a number of self-access services, specifically credit-bearing
courses, writing groups, and a Helpdesk service. This paper provides an outline of these
services, discussing challenges encountered, how they have been addressed and how the
services have evolved as a result. It offers a particular focus on the Helpdesk service, with an
analysis of the kinds of queries most commonly received from the students. The data suggests
that students most frequently access the helpdesks having received negative feedback from a
supervisor on their writing, and most generally have queries relating to structure and
citations, with linguistic issues rarely addressed.