d050 Academic writing

Faculty of Sports Studies
Autumn 2018
Extent and Intensity
0/0/0. 8 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
Anthony Kerr (lecturer), PhDr. Mgr. Libor Štěpánek, Ph.D. (deputy)
PhDr. Mgr. Libor Štěpánek, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Mgr. Hana Kuzdasová (assistant)
Guaranteed by
prof. Mgr. Martin Zvonař, Ph.D.
Department of Kinesiology – Faculty of Sports Studies
Supplier department: Department of Kinesiology – Faculty of Sports Studies
Timetable of Seminar Groups
d050/01: Thu 20. 9. 14:10–17:30 E34/225 - seminární místnost, Thu 27. 9. 14:10–17:30 E34/225 - seminární místnost, Thu 4. 10. 14:10–17:30 E34/225 - seminární místnost, Thu 11. 10. 16:20–18:50 E34/225 - seminární místnost, Thu 18. 10. 16:20–18:50 E34/225 - seminární místnost
Prerequisites
B2+ CEFR level, some experience with academic writing
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
This course aims to teach the fundamentals of scientific writing. Instruction will focus primarily on the process of writing and publishing scientific manuscripts.
The course will be presented in two segments:
Part (1) teaches students how to write effectively, concisely, and clearly.
Part (2) will take them through the preparation of an actual scientific manuscript. The focus will be on how to write and increase the chance of publishing scientThere is an increasing need among doctoral candidates to publish their work in various types of academic publications and engage with a wider range of academic, professional and public audiences. The goal of this course is to familiarize doctoral candidates with different approaches to scientific writing, take their academic writing skills in English to a higher level and offer them a range of tools to adapt their focus of language to address their target readers at specific, multi-disciplinary and general levels. The course addresses firstly the context of scientific writing to situate the styles of writing that doctoral candidates are working with. It will discuss aspects of clear and concise writing style, and lexical and discourse relationship patterns in academic text, along with functional perspectives for positioning and structuring information and argument in the wider scope of thesis and journal article writing.
Upon successful completion of the course, the course participant will be able to:
1. understand and use both generic and subject specific academic vocabulary
2. read and evaluate texts in appropriate ways to make use of them in writing
3. understand different text styles / structures (thesis and journal article)
4. know how to write a successfully titles, abstracts, paragraphs, and introduction, method, results, discussion, conclusion and recommendations sections of a journal article
5. evaluate strengths/weaknesses of written work ific articles.
Syllabus
  • The course will be organised around group and individual writing tasks, problem-solving and discussion activities in three intensive block seminars. It will also include peer review and consultation on writing with text analysts and publication professionals. Participants of distance programme will have access to an online substitute of the in-class course.
Literature
    recommended literature
  • HEWINGS, Martin and Craig THAINE. Cambridge academic English : an integrated skills course for EAP. Edited by Michael McCarthy. First published. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 176 stran. ISBN 9780521165242. info
  • FIRTH, Matt, Chris SOWTON, Martin HEWINGS, Craig THAINE and Michael MCCARTHY. Cambridge academic english : an integrated skills course for EAP : advanced. First published. Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 2012, 159 stran. ISBN 9780521165242. info
  • ŠTĚPÁNEK, Libor, Janice DE HAAFF, Alena HRADILOVÁ and David SCHÜLLER. Academic English – Akademická angličtina: Průvodce anglickým jazykem pro studenty, akademiky a vědce (Academic English: a guide for students, academics and scientists). Praha: Grada, 2011, 224 pp. ISBN 978-80-247-3577-1. info
  • HRADILOVÁ, Alena. Student’s guide to academic English. In CercleS Seminar: Ten years of the CEFR and the ELP. 2011. URL info
  • PORTER, David. Check your vocabulary for academic English : all you need to pass your exams! Oxford: Macmillan, 2008, 78 s. ISBN 9780230033641. info
  • DONTCHEVA-NAVRÁTILOVÁ, Olga. On expressing stance in academic English: Self-sourced reporting clauses (Abstract). In Book of Aabstracts, PASE 17th Annual Conference. 2008. info
Teaching methods
Seminar, individual consultation as appropriate
Assessment methods
A model text of an article / a section of an article that is suitable to be submitted to an ISI/Scopus journal.
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Study Materials
The course is taught annually.
Information on the extent and intensity of the course: 18 hodin/semestr.
The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2016, Autumn 2017, Autumn 2019.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Autumn 2018, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/fsps/autumn2018/d050