Introduction to Academic Writing

In this course, the students will learn the basic principles of academic writing. They will look at the fundamental aspects of writing and how to apply they apply to research papers. These are audience, purpose, organization, flow, style, and presentation. To reach this end, the course will place emphasis on these goals:
1) To build writing competency so that the students can meet the requirements of graduate-level academic writing assignments.
2) To become more proficient and comfortable in writing English for Academic Purposes.
3) To understand and follow the conventions and expectations of graduate-level academic writing in general as well as in the students’ chosen field.
4) To help the students understand that each discipline has its own genre/s and rhetorical characteristics,
5) To develop familiarity with and practice several academic genres (e.g., summaries, different types of essays, critical reviews, research papers).
6) To review all aspects of English syntax to produce error-free papers.

Key skills and concepts to be covered
l Review of basics: topic sentences, main ideas / thesis statements, transition devices, and coherence
l Concepts for analyzing genre: field, mode, tenor, purpose, and audience
l Clarity and conciseness
l Establishing a critical voice
l Writer-reader relations
l Modality: hedging and boosting
l Doing research
l Paraphrasing and plagiarism
l Documentation: citations and references / following a style guide
l Introduction to online tools useful for analysis of own writing and writing in a specific field