University Language Centre

School of Arts, Languages and Cultures

Course Outline: In-sessional Academic Writing (Science and Engineering)

This course aims to help you write clear, grammatically accurate and well-organised
academic English. A major focus of the course will be on the language used to express
the main communicative functions used at all levels of academic discourse (eg defining,
comparing, describing cause and effect). In addition, some sessions will cover certain
common features of academic text (style, conventions, phraseological patterns). Examples
of different types of text and the language used in them will be examined and discussed,
and you will have a chance to practise a series of writing tasks, both individually, and,
where possible, collaboratively, in groups.

Semester 1
08 October 2018 to 14 December 2018

University
Workshop
week Week beginning Session Focus/Activity
Introduction to academic writing
1 3 08 October 2018
Academic style
2 4 15 October 2018 Paragraph development and cohesion

3 5 22 October 2018 Referring to the literature

4 6 29 October 2018 Identifying functions in academic writing

5 7 05 November 2018 Writing definitions

6 8 12 November 2018 Language of cause and effect

7 9 19 November 2018 Describing methods/experiments

8 10 26 November 2018 Introducing work

9 11 03 December 2018 Discussing data and results

10 12 10 December 2018 Writing workshop: synthesising materials

Semester 2 (Provisional)
 University Language Centre
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
28 January 2019 to 22 March 2019

University
Workshop
week Week beginning Session Focus/Activity

1 1 28 January 2019 Paraphrasing

2 2 04 February 2019 Summarising

Research issues:
3 3 11 February 2019
Describing your research
4 4 18 February 2019 Writing a dissertation: methods

5 5 25 February 2019 Writing a dissertation: introductions

6 6 04 March 2019 Writing a dissertation: literature reviews

7 7 11 March 2019 Discussing results and presenting findings

8 8 18 March 2019 Writing abstracts