Academic writing
Autumn 2023
Stanisław H. Czyż
Plan for today
• About me
• About you
• About the subject
• About ... Let’s start
Plan for today
• About me
• About you
• About the subject
• About ... Let’s start
About me
• Stan
• Job experience:
University School of Physical Education, Wrocław, Poland
North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa
Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia
• Scholarships
University of California, Los Angeles, USA – 7 months
Research interest
• Motor learning
• Motor control
• Skill acquisition
• Physical activity and health-related problems
Plan for today
• About me
• About you
• About the subject
• About … Let’s start
About you
• Name
• Research interest
• Motivation to obtain Ph.D.
• Expectations toward the subject
• Have you published anything yet? (if so, did you experience any problems?)
Plan for today
• About me
• About you
• About the subject
• About ... Let’s start
Course objectives:
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.
Objectives – cont.
The focus will be on how to write and increase the chance of publishing
the scientific text. There 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, multidisciplinary
and general levels.
Objectives – cont.
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 scientific articles.
Study methods:
The course will be organized 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 program will have access to an online substitute of
the in-class course.
Academic writing
Two approaches:
Academic English – language issues:
• grammar
• punctuation
• spelling
• vocabulary
• writing style
• etc.
Scientific texts:
• Types of scientific papers
• structure
• writing - rules
• addressing reviewers comments
• etc.
Academic writing
Two approaches:
Academic English – language issues:
• grammar
• punctuation
• spelling
• vocabulary
• writing style
• etc.
Scientific texts:
• Types of scientific papers
• structure
• writing - rules
• addressing reviewers comments
• etc.
Evaluation & assessment
Student performance will be assessed and evaluated through:
• Lecture attendance and participation
• Term project: - A model text of an article / a section of an article that is
suitable to be submitted to an ISI/Scopus journal
Plan for today
• About me
• About you
• About the subject
• About … Let’s start
Classes and plan – - flexible
28 September – text types
02 November – original papers; experimental research - structure
16 November– the other side - article improvement and submission
23 November– writing your own paper; literature search
That’s all????????