Course Description
Are you a postgraduate student and worry about your writing skills? Do you wonder about the process and stages of academic writing? Do you wonder why notemaking is important for effective writing? Do you want to know how you can read more effectively for writing an academic essay or paper? Have you wondered about more effective ways to outline before you start writing your paper? Do you find it hard to structure your academic essays? Are you confused about plagiarism? Is referencing hard for you?
If you want an answer to any or all of the questions above, then this course is just for you.
Overview of the course
Academic writing is different from other kinds of writing. It needs a different kind of task flow and follows a logic that is quite different from more general-audience writing. The present course attempts to demystify academic writing and everything that lies within. During this workshop, learners will hone their academic writing skills by getting better at the vital preliminaries of better academic writing: close reading, notetaking, and outlining, all the time learning tohone the criticality of their authorial voice. They will also learn to do intelligent paraphrasing, which will help them to avoid plagiarism, and will get more confident about writing and styling their references accurately. Finally, at the end of the workshop, they will have learnt toplan and structure their essays, papers, and reportsbetter.
Learner profile
Graduate students
Pedagogy
The course will be broken up into two sections: Theory and Practica, which will be interspersed throughout. The course will be conducted through a mix of discussions and hands-on exercises. There will be some readings from stellar examples of academic writing in different genres. Aspects such as referencingand paraphrasing will be done via hands-on exercises. The results of the exercises will be shared in the class and peer-reviewed. The sessions will be supported with substantive handouts throughout.
Lesson Plan
Day 1 (28th August, 2019)
1100 – 1130: Warm-up and introduction with some discussion on the challenges of academic writing
1130 – 11215: The three prerequisites of good academic writing: close reading, notemaking, and outlining
1215 – 1300: What distinguishes academic writing: developing that critical authorial voice
1300 – 1400: Lunch break
1400 - 1500: Writing exercise: Descriptive versus Analytical
1500– 1600: Discussion based on the writing exercise
DAY 2 (4th September, 2019)
1100 – 1115: Warm-up
1115 – 1215: Mapping a piece of academic writing as a whole
1215 – 1300: Planning each ingredient of an academic essay with care
1300 – 1400: Lunch break
1400 - 1500: Writing exercise: Titles, abstracts, introductions, and conclusions
1500– 1600: Discussion based on the writing exercise and winding up