Course info

This 4-session writing course is aimed at PhD students and junior researchers who are looking for assistance with dissertation or article writing in English, or who want to expand their linguistic and strategic repertoire for writing in English.

The course focuses on the fundamentals of academic writing, i.e. sentence length and structure (e.g., conciseness and simplicity), paragraph structure (unity and logical development), cohesion (flow), and vocabulary (precision and useful academic phrases). We will also analyse and discuss the structure and rhetorical functions of different sections of research articles, e.g., Introduction, Discussion and Conclusion. Finally, we will look at different ways of expressing your voice as an academic writer, for example, by choosing a certain citation pattern or inserting evaluative words and phrases to position yourself in relation to your own and other scholars’ research. The overall aim of the course is to make your own writing clearer, more readable and thus more persuasive.

The course includes teacher feedback on four shorter texts during the course of the semester. The course is therefore designed for participants who have started the writing phase of their research project (PhD students) or are working on a research paper at the time of enrolment (junior researchers). If you are unable to submit samples of writing in progress, you will be expected to complete four short writing assignments based on your research topic. The texts will be returned to you with detailed written (electronic) feedback, and you will also have access to oral feedback from the instructor towards the end of each session. This feedback will help you improve your writing by raising your awareness of academic writing conventions and common pitfalls for non-native writers.

The course will consist of a mixture of teacher explanations, participant input, discussions and exercises. It will provide you with practical tools, tips and strategies to make you better able to critically evaluate and revise your own writing.

All materials will be provided by the instructor. PowerPoint presentations, including keys to exercises, will be made available after each session. The materials used in the course are tailor-made and based on recent research, and the texts used for analysis are drawn from research papers in the participants’ field of research.