Academic Writing for the Sciences and Engineering

Felicity Anne Hope (University of Trento); Matthew James Millward (University of Trento)

Year:

2024

Credits:

3.00

Duration:

Objectives

The course furthers students’ ability to draft a part of an academic paper and then improve it through a variety of tools, applying their knowledge of textual, grammatical, and lexical features of written academic English. An active approach is used, with participants drafting, discussing, and revising short texts related to their academic work. Through pair and group discussion and teacher explanation, students increase their awareness of the effect of different language choices.

Program

The course focuses on shaping the draft of a text so that it best achieves its goals and meets the expectations of target readers. The texts produced will be sections of a research paper. The initial focus is on enhancing the clarity of the content through improving the flow, the placement of and emphasis on information, and the readability. The improved texts are then revised by an AI tool, and the differences between the original and the AI version are discussed and evaluated. Followup practice exercises are provided to develop understanding of common language issues. Specific topics to be addressed include:
• analysing genres to identify audience, aims, and patterns of organization
• understanding and avoiding plagiarism
• improving academic style: register, citations, structures, and punctuation
• writing effectively: achieving clarity through choice of grammatical subject and of verb, effective placement of information within sentences, appropriate amount of information in a sentence, connections between sentences, connections between paragraphs.
• considering readers’ knowledge: language options for prioritising or backgrounding information and explanations
• paragraphing for ease of reading
• writing concisely
• expressing an appropriate level of confidence: hedging and boosting
• automated revision of texts and other tools for academic writing
• evaluating rephrasing suggested by AI – which version is better and why?
• the effect of grammatical choices in areas such as word order, articles, tenses, participle clauses, noun phrases, relative clauses, parallel structures and punctuation

Schedule:

Course	Period	Schedule	Site	Enrolment dates
Session 4 (course n. 4383)	09/01– 15/02/2024	Tues 11 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. Thurs 11 a.m. – 12.30 p.m.	Sala Seminari, Povo 2	From 11 to 15 December 2023
Session 5 (course n. 4384)	08/01 - 14/02/2024	Mon 9.30 a.m. – 11 a.m. Wed 9.30 a.m. – 11 a.m.	Garda meeting room, Povo 1	From 11 to 15 December 2023
Session 6 (course n. 4467)	08/01 - 14/02/2024	Mon 2.30 p.m. – 4 p.m. Wed 2.30 p.m. – 4 p.m.	Rovereto	From 11 to 15 December 2023
Session 7 (course n. 4468)	09/01 - 15/02/2024	Tues 2.30 p.m. – 4 p.m. Thurs 2.30 p.m. – 4 p.m.	Rovereto	From 11 to 15 December 2023
Session 8 (course n. 4491)	21/02-27/03/2024	Wed/Fri 11.30 a.m. -1 p.m. and Tues 26/03 11.30 a.m.-1 p.m.	Garda meeting room, Povo 1	From 12 to 15 February 2024
Session 9 (course n. 4492)	08/04-13/05/2024	Mon/Wed 2 p.m.-3.30 p.m. and Fri 03 and 10 May 11 a.m.-12.30 p.m. NB: No lesson 01/05	Mesiano, rooms 1H and 1L	From 25 to 29 March 2024

HOW TO ENROLL:
Students must register online at https://cialsrv.unitn.it/cialweb/web-site/index.jsp from 10 a.m. on the first day of enrolment and enter their UniTn login details. NB: Registration opens at 10 a.m. Places are limited and the courses are in high demand.

During the online enrolment process you will read that you have to pay 50 euros. Please ignore this as the course is free and confirm your online enrolment. CLA will then change the wording to "free".

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