The Basics of Academic Writing in English: Academic Writing 1 (104)

10 September 2021

Dr Jeannette Regan

Purpose:

This training course covers the importance of audience design, the paragraph as the basic unit of writing in English, and distinctions between academic English and other varieties of English. These concepts and their application are crucial for publishing in scientific contexts.

Target group:

The workshop is designed for doctoral candidates who are not native English speakers. Please review carefully the information below before you request registration.

The course is aimed at doctoral candidates who have reached the B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). To assess your level, please use the following tool based on the CEFR: ec.europa.eu.

Participants are strongly recommended to take this or an equivalent course as a first training course prior to Academic Writing 2.

Learning objectives:

The main aim of the course is to support the development of the individual writer's skill, confidence, and ease when writing texts necessary to complete their doctorate. By the end of the course, participants should be able to:

• better understand the writing process,
• target their writing to various specific audiences,
• distinguish the main features of general academic writing from other kinds of language,
• analyze basic paragraph organization by applying the principles of cohesion and coherence,
• begin to apply the principles of text flow to their writing,
• start thinking about developing 'language friendships' with other CUSO doctoral candidates to continue improving their texts.

Training content:

Four topics will be included in the course: the importance in writing of audience, purpose, and tone; the key features of general academic style; coherence and cohesion in paragraph organization, and the principles of text flow.

Preparation for the training:

Please use the template provided to prepare a writing sample consisting of a brief written language biography and a one-page summary in English of your doctoral work or current research. Please use a spelling and grammar checker before submitting your writing sample.
Secondly, please also select a file (e.g., a pdf document) of what you consider to be a ‘model article’ (in English) in your specific field of research. Ideally, the article should be from a high-impact international journal and the type of study should be similar to yours. You will use the model article as a source of stylistic and linguistic information during the course.

The writing sample and model article should be emailed to the instructor at the latest one week before the course (9 a.m., Friday, 3 September 2021). During the online training course, you should have ready access to the writing sample (biography and one-page research summary) and model article that you submitted to the instructor.

Form of the training course
The course will take two forms. Input will be followed by offline individual or online pair /small group opportunities for practical application, questions, and discussion. During the opportunities for individuals to work on their own or participants to work in pairs or trios, the instructor will speak with each participant concerning their specific questions about academic writing.

ONLINE !

Date: Friday, 10th September, 2021

Schedule: 9.30 am to 5 pm

Location: Online, using Zoom!

Trainer:

Dr Jeannette Regan, freelance instructor, editor, and learning advisor to doctoral candidates and several Swiss doctoral programs (www.jeannette-regan.ch), formerly of the language centers at the Universities of Lausanne and Fribourg.

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