Academic Writing in English for Non-Native Speakers (Part 1)

Description:

Although researching and composing a thesis at the doctoral level is regularly considered work done alone, academic writing, and especially good academic writing, is seldom done in isolation. Moreover, writing academically in a language that is not one’s native entails both having a proper command of the language in order to construct persuasive arguments and to convey one’s ideas in a concise, coherent, and clear manner. Finally, writing well at the academic level in English means being acquainted with, attuned to, as well as adept at using conventions of style, vocabulary, and syntax of the respective field of scholarship in particular as well as of the English language in general.

In this workshop, we will tackle some of the challenges posed by academic writing in English for non-native English speakers-Early Career Researchers regardless of their academic background. In the first part, we will begin with the pre-requisite for good writing, that is, good reading, and discuss and practice techniques for different types of reading and note-taking in academic study. We will then move to discuss structuring paragraphs and centre on what a successful paragraph is made of. The participants will be asked to select an, in their view, particularly well-written scholarly paragraph, as well as one of their own, and bring both to the session. Lastly, we will discuss the planning and structuring of academic essays.

The second part of the workshop will zero in on matters of language and will follow a more hands-on approach. To start us off, we will reflect on and correct the most common mistakes in advanced-level grammar made by non-native academic writers in English. We will then proceed to discuss proper paraphrasing and summarising ideas and arguments, which is an all-too-frequently overlooked aspect of academic writing in English. Finally, the workshop will provide the participants with the opportunity to regard their own writing in terms of sentence structure and flow, and generate ideas on and specific examples of how they might improve them relative to their specific subject matter and writing preference.