Advanced Academic English: Writing Skills

Cluster

Communication Skills

Target group

PhD candidates

Level and Test

Participants should have an advanced knowledge of English, which will be tested before the start of the course. "English for Written Academic Purposes" can be taken at the UCT to prepare for "Advanced Academic English".
Furthermore, participants should already have some experience with writing academic articles as this can be useful for class discussions and they will be asked to bring own material to class.

A computer test has to be taken before the start of the course to ensure that your level of English in an academic context is advanced enough to actively participate in this course (see registration procedure).

Objective

The main objective of this course is to acquire a well-structured, coherent academic writing style and to expedite the writing process. An improved grammatical accuracy and expanded vocabulary range will support this.

Content

The course starts with a general focus on academic style, structure and register before individually tackling each section of the research article:

• Literature reviews
• Introductions
• Methodologies
• Results
• Discussions
• Abstracts
• Titles

Interactive discussion of authentic examples will be used to deduce guidelines and tips for effective academic writing. Within this academic context, several major grammatical items (for example tenses, conditionals and passive voice) will be revised to avoid frequently made mistakes. Vocabulary exercises will broaden the repertoire of the participants. Thanks to lively interaction, a discussion forum is constructed that does not strive for rigid rules and instructions, but rather boosts linguistic confidence in academic writing. The participants will receive both peer and teacher feedback throughout the course as they will be asked to hand in or bring academic writing of their own.

Time schedule & Venue

First Semester

Second Semester

Registration procedure and teaching material

The writing skills course necessitates a proper command of advanced English in an academic context in order to safeguard comfortable active participation. Should you doubt whether your English proficiency suffices, you can take our self-diagnosing placement test.

• Follow this link and log in to ANS with Microsoft using your UGent account info. The platform is set to English or Dutch depending on your personal settings. You can alter the language via the top right user icon.
• In your recent activity on the right side, you will find “PT DS > Placement Test Writing Skills”. Follow this link and click “start / starten”.
• You have 60 mins to complete the test, which includes listening excerpts among other input. After tackling all questions, you click “submit / inleveren” to finish the test. 
• After submitting the test, you can see your score and our advice towards course participation.

Should anything be unclear, feel free to get in touch with Tom De Moor, coordinator of Academic and Professional Language Education of the University Language Centre (UCT): tom.demoor@ugent.be

*² The course book is not included and can be bought at Standaard boekhandel, Kouter 31, 9000 Gent. Please ask for 10% discount as a UCT-student.

Registration fee

Free of charge for the members of the Doctoral School. The no show policy applies.

Language

English

Number of participants

Maximum 23

Evaluation criteria (doctoral training programme)

During the course, participants will already receive feedback to a short excerpt of academic writing. After the end of the course, they will be asked to hand in a longer excerpt for their final evaluation which takes the received remarks into account.
This course is situated within the framework of continuous training and may count for 1 transferable skills training in the cluster Communication skills. After completion of the entire cycle and a final evaluation on the basis of a research paper, participants receive the continuous training certificate "Advanced Academic English: Writing Skills".