Academic Writing

Subject is not scheduled Not scheduled

Code Completion Credits Range Language Instruction Semester
940AW ZK 6 English

Subject guarantor

Name of lecturer(s)

Learning outcomes of the course unit

By the end of this course, students are expected to show growing competencies in:

•Process-driven approaches to academic outputs.

•The production of precise, economical, elegant prose

•The production of expertly structured scholarship

•The production of expertly structured paragraphs

•The adoption of practical editorial techniques

•The production of argument-driven scholarship

•The production of strategically positioned scholarship

•The production of introductions and conclusions showcasing key functions

•The production of professional quality abstracts likely to attract publishers

•Self-critique and peer-to-peer critique of academic outputs

Mode of study

Six Seminars (24.05; 31.05; 07.06; 14.06; 21.06; 28.06)

Tuesdays 16:00 – 19:00 (with built-in breaks)

This course comprises six weekly seminars conducted in the English language. Each seminar will include a necessary but small amount of instructor-delivered content, which will outline the weekly topics in a manner geared to maximizing practical application and life-long learning. Sessions will, however, mainly consist of student-oriented learning: discussions, self-evaluation, peer-to-peer evaluation, and practical exercises. Great effort will be made to synthesize the weekly topics with students’ career development in the sphere of academic outputs. Accordingly, students will work towards the production of an abstract that will come to reflect the cornerstones of the course, with the aim of facilitating the production of the proposed output and ideally securing publication for a project derived from it, such as a journal article, book chapter etc...

Prerequisites and co-requisites

N/A

Course contents

This course invites Ph.D. students to rethink their approaches to academic outputs through the early adoption of professional standards of development and execution. Students will focus on six fundamentals of their craft: 1) process-driven writing, 2) writing style, 3) organization, 4) argumentation and positioning, 5) editing, and 6) introductions and conclusions. Their introduction to the rigors of international academic publishing standards, will equip students with the thinking and skills needed maximize the impact and quality of their theses, and furnish them with transferable skills that will facilitate their production of world-leading outputs across their careers.

Recommended or required reading

Howard S. Becker, Writing for Social Scientests. London: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Assessment methods and criteria

  1. Participation (75 percent)

Given the practical nature and student-oriented approach of this course, it is essential that students are actively involved in all session. Accordingly, the breadth, depth, and relevance of their contributions will be taken in to account as will be their willingness to engage in constructive peer-to-peer evaluation.

  1. Final Abstract (25 percent)

At the end of this course, students shall submit a “final” draft of the essay abstract they have been working on across the semester. This will be graded on the extent to which it reflects the qualities introduced across this course: clarity, precision, elegance, organization, argumentation, positioning.

Further information

No schedule has been prepared for this course

The subject is a part of the following study plans